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January 2007
by Dan Morgan / January 29th 2007
A letter from Chile
Dear everyone, this is my letter about 2006.
Last year I had hopes of starting an Institute for teaching English, because it would have helped to finance Miriam’s work here, and I knew several English teachers who would have welcomed better-paid work. The hopes were largely based on
recommendations by an ex-student of mine with contacts in small and medium businesses. Unfortunately the contacts that came from this were only individuals and it was impossible to put courses together.
As with most things in Chile (and probably most places), to start something like that you have to have personal contacts. Just a couple of reasonable sized companies could have made this work but it didn’t happen. So I concentrated on the private students that came my way from my own contacts, and this went well. I have a ‘star’
student who owns a medium sized firm. He came from a modest home, has a good sense of humour, is very positive and encourages his partners to use me. I also do some translations for him and this is good because his ‘international’ work is increasing.
He has three classes a week (in his third year now!), another partner has two, and a secretary there organised a group of her classmates for conversation classes twice a week towards the end of last year.
I also continue with a few classes at the Violeta Parra School, where I started really, and which has a good mix of students from all backgrounds. At the moment there are no group classes, as it’s summer but I have some individual classes. I have also had translation work from this school.
So with 8 to 12 classes a week, a total of 11 to 17 hours, mainly private students, I earn between 100 and 140 pounds a week. This is enough to run the house, including rent, and buy a few extras. Translation work adds to this, so lately things have not been tight.
The big limitation of this work is the time spent travelling; I limit this by not accepting classes more than about 12 km from home, and make a virtue of necessity by using the bike, which keeps me fit (10 miles a day minimum normally) or by reading on the bus. There is now a cycle path for most of my 5-mile journey to the centre (in the middle of the Alameda main street). It’s not perfect (my campaign to have it finished properly awaits more of my energy) but much safer than before. Use of it increases all the time, I’m glad to say.
The buses here are still terrible but very frequent and not expensive (38p any trip). The problems are largely due to the poorly trained drivers being paid on a percentage of the fares, so they race, stop anywhere to pick up or put down, and pay no attention to passenger safety or comfort. Also there now enough cars in Santiago to snarl up the traffic in rush hours; there are a lot of bus lanes but policing these has become poor. In February a completely new system starts, with big companies replacing the small existing ones, drivers paid mainly a fixed wage, new routes and stops and a card payment system like the Oyster in London.
Apart from this, I have spent a lot of time out of Santiago helping Miriam with her bee-keeping enterprise in Curacaví, about 55km (33 miles for the unmetricated) Northwest, off the privatised motorway to Valparaíso. This spring started well and previous losses were made good with new families, we got up to 160 hives. But the new site was very dry. It rained little last winter, and in this zone it hardly rains from October to February. So we began to lose hives again from ‘pillage’ as they say here.
Luckily the owner of the site found us another place, another 15 miles up the valley, where it is still green and there are native trees in flower in almost every season.
The height is only 500 metres, compared with 200 metres for the other place but it is at the head of a valley in the coastal mountain range; the hills rise steeply to about 2,000 metres, and very green on the northern slopes (where the fierce sun here has
less impact). Amazingly to me, a small stream almost always runs here, so after work with the bees we have a late lunch or tea under trees beside a cool mountain stream. After the semi-desert just 10 miles below it is bliss.
Otherwise we have had a few weekends on the coast at Cartagena, near the big port of San Antonio, west of Santiago. Two different friends have houses there, high up overlooking the sea. The nicest one is on a cliff 45 metres high, looking down on a small rocky cove. There is a sea lion colony (6 to 15 of them) on a rock, and you can get to within 20 metres of them. There are loads of seagulls and cormorants, and pelicans often fly by. They always make me laugh.
This year I had time and energy to make jam and bottle plums and apricots from our trees at home.
So the year was a good one, personally speaking.
As we thought, little has changed with the new government of Michelle Bachelet. Her finance minister is in real control of spending. He is described as thoroughly ‘orthodox’ and the business community is happy with him, so that’s alright then. Luckily, the year was tremendously good for copper, an average of over 3 dollars per pound when costs are 1 dollar.
Pinochet did not dare to privatise Codelco, the state copper company formed by Allende, so government finances are embarrassingly good. So Michelle could propose an increase in spending of nearly 9% for this year, and propose her flagship reform, a universal retirement pension, which we have not had till now. This should start at the end of 2008, and the only argument is about the amount. The government proposes 60 pounds a month to start, rising to 75, as the minimum, with a phased subsidy for those who have made some contributions but qualify for less than 200 a month. This is of course very little but, based on our budget, can cover food, gas, water and electricity. Plus, the principle of a universal pension is very important.
Despite massive protests by secondary students, proposed education reform appears to be very limited. Municipal education is generally bad, most children go to private or the ‘subsidised’ private sector, and universities are expensive, even the state ones. This is a real contrast with Argentina, Brazil, even Bolivia, where the universities are free.
With honourable exceptions, even the government (‘centre-left’) politicians show little enthusiasm for the moves towards real South American integration, as an alternative to economic domination by the USA. Some of them are cynical, snooty or dismissive of it. This is a key issue, where I hope there could be some progress.
There are really strong moves against neoliberalism (read Thatcherism, or unbridled capitalism) in many countries now. The presidents of Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and probably Nicaragua are openly against neoliberalism, and want integration of the south as the alternative to ‘free trade’ agreements with the USA. They are backed up by some pragmatic leaders like Lula in Brazil, who I think sees this integration as in the best interests of his home-grown capitalists.
Kirchner in Argentina is very interesting. He comes from the left wing of Peronism, and while not advocating socialism, has made progressive moves on several fronts. He has eliminated the influence of the IMF and World Bank and is making strong economic ties with Venezuela (the bogey-man for our media). He intervenes without fear; I laughed when Shell increased petrol prices a couple of years ago, and Kirchner told the people to boycott Shell! Within days, their prices came down again. He has led a good recovery from the dramatic economic crash caused by previous right-wing (‘orthodox’) policies, and last year growth was 8% in Argentina. This is hardly mentioned in the press here, where despite the copper bonanza growth was only 5%.
Best wishes to friends everywhere,
Dan Morgan.