There are periods of life that have a crystalline nature, that stand out among the grubbier or more mundane chapters for their clarity and density. Love, grief, stress, or just poignancy (travel, for me now). I think of this mostly as a product of rapid and rich stimulation, the brain working its hardest to compress and organize its memories. Sara Wheeler, in
Travels in a Thin Country, describes how poetry can be a "compress[ion of] the meaning of language until it vibrates" and I feel that the metaphor works for when life experiences lead to this kind of hard-edge scribe of memory. (Also a reason I love poetry!)
I'm in a period that feels like this now, and it's also the reason I'm reading Wheeler's 1994 book: I am spending a semester as an Investigador Visitante at Universidad Técnica Federico Santa Maria in Valparaíso, Chile. I showed up in the thin country with only some gringo basics in spanish, a big pile of work, and persistent sleep deprivation. Despite that, things are smooth so far. I'm finding some speaking partners for spanish (my landlady—who speaks no english—is very patient with me) and crawling my way through all of the
chileñismos in day-to-day life. My goals is by the end of the semester, to be able to make some normal chit-chat with my landlady and colleagues at the university.
As I wrote in a
previous edition, it is also a rich experience to simply set up life anew somewhere else, where some of the basic assumptions of lifestyle can be reconsidered. I am focusing on simplicity. I don't have a bicycle here, nor a car, so I've been walking a lot, and will probably do more ocean swimming than surfing. (My first morning here was a bracing swim with an 84-year-old named Virgilio out to a buoy, with sea lions nearby—"mi bautismo," he called it.) The end of my PhD is on the horizon and I can hear the roaring suction of the great funnel of work to get everything done. Mix one part wide-ranging curiosity and one part unmoderated internet access since age 12 and it's obvious why I have a hard time focusing on anything for a long time; the next year is going to be an excellent challenge.
I am here partly because the landscapes and rivers of Chile and California have much in common, but I am also here just because I wanted to come. Chile is a fascinating country across many facets, and now is a curious time, where the waves generated by the 2019 social unrest are still sloshing around, if not on an upswing due to Boric's new progressive government and relatively recent lifting of strict shelter-in-place orders. I am enjoying reading this history and context through my lens of water and all of the things it touches. I found Linda Schilling Cuellar's
The Avocado Toast a juicy little portrait into some Chilean patterns (or at least the palta/avocado-producing regions), especially on water infrastructure. It's a portrait of the interesting intertwined technological and social developments that leads to your
pan con palta, touching on neoliberalism's logics of prioritizing global avocado supply chains over equitable drinking water access, a case study that reflects individualized yet global demands over local needs and resources.
This exchange is nothing new, just another case of what I call "global backyards," where combinations of (often colonial) coercion, financial imperatives, and information gaps allow for the refuse or strife of the world's industrial processes to collect out of sight to those who consume its fruit. Of course this happens domestically, too, and
here are two examples, though both a bit old now. Hooks and Smith call these "National Sacrifice Areas," which, in comparison to "global backyards" (which harkens an overgrown zone of forgetfulness), helps remind us how these places can be highly intentionally designated, where the sacrifices have been deemed worthwhile by some kinds of entities and processes. One of my favorite Californian
conversations: "Is Los Angeles Worth It?" The city's growth and possibility has hinged on water pulled from an enormous area, and famously,
sucking dry the Owens Valley region of the Eastern Sierras. Am I sad for the loss of most of the Owens Valley ecosystem? Of course. Am I glad Los Angeles exists? Also yes. No reason not to continue to encourage efficient water use, the abolition of lawns in Southern California, and mobilization of overhaul in priority of water in draught-prone climates—there is plenty of ecosystem left to fight for. But let's bring it back to Chile: is year-round avocado toast worth Río Petorca running dry? I feel closer to a "no" on that one, but I'm pickier about cities than I am about food, and am much less sure how to consider the good and the bad effects of the economies hinging on palta production. For me this all points to another reason why civil engineers—of which Chile has a strong culture, given their earthquake- and draught-prone country—need more conversations on environmental ethics. Maybe I've gotten lucky, but my conversations with engineers here thus far have been wide-ranging and critical when reflecting on the social context of the work. It's got to be so: there's too much in this reservoir of socio-techno-economic systems not to dive in deep enough to try to see the bottom.
Nos Vemos,
Lukas