The morning started dark, with an unusually overcast sky and light drizzle. I have made it a habit to walk to school wearing a T-shirt, drawing askance looks from the Chilean passers-by, who are muffled up for winter. The temperature at this time of the morning is usually healthily in the teens, but even I donned a jumper in this morning's chill. The streets were also relatively empty, presumably as the exodus for the holiday weekend begins. Thursday is the only official day off, but many will make a four-day weekend and flee the city.
The test proved much more difficult than I had imagined. Instead of testing solely the knowledge we had gained in class, which has largely focused on use of the present tense, the article offered for comprehension and subsequent questioning included constructs unfamiliar from the teaching material.
The subject of the afternoon conversation class was sparked by a newspaper article on how the majority of genes of the average Chilean come from Europeans - versus indigenous Latin American people or from Africa. While the 'discovery' by Chilean geneticists was incidental to their search for a cure to certain diseases suffered by Chileans, my teacher considered the tone of the article (or at least the motivation behind its particular spin) to be symptomatic of deeply entrenched racism in the country. She's radical like that.
I had to agree, even with my shaky grasp of the article's contents, that the subtext behind the headline was, at best, suspect and, at its ugliest, a celebration of the Chilean people's ethnic purity and an attempt to distance the 'average' Chileno from indigenous Americans with associations of poverty and poor education, and, by extension, to align themselves with affluent, developed, white-skinned Europe. It was a nasty window into a world that seemed all too familiar to me from reading the British press and listening to received opinions on immigrants, their doubtful qualities and their apparently deleterious effect on British society.
The subsequent text presented for comprehension revealed a similar set of erroneous beliefs about immigrants and exploded the myths one by one. Immigrants to Chile are predominantly Peruvian, are better educated than many Chileans, and do not seek to burden the public infrastructure, paying for their use of the education and health systems as any other. However, stereotypes and prejudices cause specious logic to take root in the public consciousness. Immigrants from neighbouring countries with a higher percentage of indigenous people and questions over an individual's racial composition co-mingle in a way that leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.
The teacher was surprised to learn of similar, if not identical, concerns from a certain camp in Britain (naming no Ukip voters). She wondered how such negative stereotypes of immigration could persist after decades and centuries of cultural mixing on the island. I conjectured that it was an attitude born of fear of change and difference, in which each new generation of Britons (themselves descended from immigrants) may fear and resent the effect that the newly arriving immigrants will have on their established society.
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| Inside-out rolls |
As if to underline the cross-cultural influences, the area around the school abounds with sushi restaurants. I'm not entirely sure how the archetypal Japanese dish arrived in Chile, as there does not appear to be a large Asian community. I suspect its popularity came by way of California, as the offering is almost exclusively the filled and sliced rolls that have sparked a slew of variations in North America.
A little digging revealed a local enterprise serving up an inventive vegetarian and vegan take on the California rolls. WunjoSushi does not have shop premises - the owner makes and sells the sushi directly from their apartment. Having placed an order (pedido), I arranged to pick it up in the evening. Finding the flat was simple enough, but being buzzed in to exchange cash for sushi felt more like making a shadier exchange and I left wondering whether I would be picked up by the Carabineros to investigate the contents of my bag.
The mixed box contained three varieties of 'inside out' rolls, with the nori on the inside, leaving the outside ready for a variety of treatments. We had palta, tomate envuelta en almendras (avocado and tomato rolled in almonds), sevillana, zanahoria, queso en sésamo mixto (pepper, carrot, cheese in mixed sesame), and champiñón, palmito, queso en ciboulette (mushroom, palm hearts, cheese in chives). Each was delicious and reminded us of how much we miss Asian food.
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