Month: September 2018

I’ve made a hobby of showing you some of the amazing places around our world, with a focus on the most obscure and unexpected, like the South Dakota – Montana border, and the Russian republic of Kalmykia. But of course all of the world’s most famous sights are there too, letting you play virtual tourist all over the world.

And here is one of the most famous of the famous: the Great Pyramid of Giza:

But even such a famous sight holds surprises. Zoom out a little to see the surprising amount of development around the Great Pyramid, including superhighways and golf courses:

Bullwinkle’s Corner:
An occasional series about poetry

Part 1: When Spring Comes

This is also part 3 of a series of posts about my terra ultima australis, the city of Puerto Montt, Chile

Part 1: A visit to the Deep South
Part 2: The other side of the South

Here’s another post from Bullwinkle’s Corner, an occasional series about poems that speak to me in some way. See the sidebar for the others.

Today’s entry is a song, which of course is a type of poem. And it’s a powerful one, about a real historical event: the Puerto Montt Massacre, in which police fired shots and tear gas into a crowd of protester/squatters, killing nine people. The singer-songwriter is Chilean folk singer Victor Jara (1932-1973), a Chilean folk singer, teacher, and political activist who was murdered in the early days of the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

Of course, music is meant to be listened to, so here is an audio recording of Jara performing the song live in Valparaiso, Chile. After an introduction and some silence, the song starts at 0:34. The song is in Spanish, but if you don’t speak Spanish, a translation is below.

Two things are helpful to know in interpreting the lyrics. First, Puerto Montt i is like Seattle in that it is a temperate city on the Pacific coast with a cold polar current offshore – so it rains a lot. The Chilean expression equivalent to “Is the Pope Catholic?” is “¿Lluvia en Puerto Montt?” (Is it raining in Puerto Montt?).

Second, who is the “port monkey” in the chorus? It’s Interior Secretary Edmundo Pérez Zujovic, who gave the order to evict the settlers. (He probably didn’t order the police to shoot, but you can imagine his attitude towards the settlers might have contributed to the violence.)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqjfOxKFnB0&w=560&h=315]

Such a raw evocation of a tragedy – so angry yet so sensitive.

Last November, we found something so new that we had to invent a new way to describe it: presenting Asteroid 1I/`Oumuamua.

The letter I stands for Interstellar, and the number 1 means it’s the first of its kind ever seen. `Oumuamua (pronounced “oh-MOO-uh-moo-uh“) means “advance scout” in Hawaiian.

Here is the fascinating story of its discovery, told by some of the people who found it:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbL1ZoAQgUU&w=560&h=315]

And now it’s gone, headed back from whence it came after a quick half-spin around the Sun. 1I/`Oumuamua at a mind-blowing 26 kilometers per second (58,000 miles per hour). It has already gone so far that it is invisible to all but the largest telescopes.

On Monday, I wrote about visiting Puerto Montt, a medium-sized city in southern Chile. I only had a few hours, but I enjoyed walking around the downtown area beside Reloncaví Sound. But, as I alluded to at the end of Monday’s post, there is another side to Puerto Montt.

Far away from the tourist area where I was sits a somber memorial in the shape of a mural:

The mural commemorates La masacre de Puerto Montt (The massacre of Puerto Montt), a tragic and influential event in the history of Chile. In early 1969, a group of about 90 homeless families settled on empty land in the neighborhood of Pampa Irigoin in Puerto Montt. (I haven’t been able to find the exact location where events took place, but it seems safe to assume it was at least near the current site of the memorial.)

The families built temporary accommodations on the site, with the intention of using squatters’ rights to apply for ownership of the land based on occupancy rather than payment – a procedure which was legal in Chile at the time. Nevertheless, the nation’s Interior Minister, Edmundo Pérez Zujovic, ordered the national police (Carabineros) to tear down the encampment and evict the settlers. For four days, the police and settlers were locked in an uneasy standoff.

Early on the morning of the fifth day – March 9, 1969 – the police moved in. The police hoped to catch the residents asleep and evict them peacefully, but the residents had set up a simple alarm system consisting of tripwires connected to tin cans that would shake loudly when disturbed. The residents were awake, and angry.

And thus transpired what so often transpires when a crowd of angry but unarmed people meets a well-armed official force. Police fired rifles and threw tear gas containers into the crowd. When the dust settled, 50 residents and 23 police officers were injured. And 10 residents were dead, including Róbinson Montiel Santana, aged 9 months.

One end of the memorial is shown here – the names of the 10 victims, forming a rainbow.

It’s time for another virtual trip through our Amazing Earth. Unlike previous entries, I’d like to show you a place I’ve actually been. Let’s go south – as far south as I have ever been. Welcome to Puerto Montt, Chile.

The map below shows where to find it (click for a larger view), on the Pacific coast about 60% of the way down the length of Chile:

Although the map shows that there is a lot of Chile still remaining to the south, Puerto Montt is the only even-slightly-large city until you get all the way down to Punta Arenas. Thus, it acts as the gateway to the beautiful wilderness of Patagonia to the south. It also acts as a gateway into Chile. In the late 1800s, while millions of European immigrants were coming to the United States, they were also coming to Chile. Puerto Montt acted as Chile’s version of Ellis Island, the entry point for the largest number of immigrants. It’s even named after an immigrant: Manuel Montt, President of Chile from 1851 to 1861, was born in Catalonia.

The city has about 200,000 people – similar to Providence, Rhode Island – and it lies about as far to the south of the equator as Providence does to the north. This zoomed-in map shows the area around Puerto Montt more clearly (click for a larger view).

The city lies at the end of a large bay, offering a sheltered harbor on the South Pacific. The island to the southwest is Chiloé, home of one of Chile’s most famous national parks, as well as the ancestral home of the potato.

I had the good fortune of visiting during a recent trip to the Chilean capital of Santiago, itself a lovely city that I could write about extensively. I had an extra day after my work event ended, so I looked at a number of possible destinations for a quick one-day trip. Puerto Montt had the best combination of affordable plane tickets and “that looks like a cool place,” so I went there. By the time I rented a car and sat in surprisingly elaborate traffic to get from the airport to the city, I had only three hours to visit, but it was well worth it.

Sadly, I don’t have any pictures, because my camera was out of charge and I left the charger in a different hemisphere. But once again, Google Earth comes to the rescue and shows me a view of the city similar to my own view (click for a larger version):

This photo also marks the approximate location of my Terra Ultima Australis – the farthest south I have ever been.

Puerto Montt is a lovely city, and I highly recommend it as an unexpected tourist destination. But it has another side, because it was the home of an important and tragic episode of Chilean history. More about that on Monday.