The Fourteenth of July

To most people, the date refers to Bastille Day, but for me it has a very different, personal significance. Forty-six years ago today I arrived in Santiago, Chile, to be with my then boyfriend, Santiago, now my husband.  And I’m still here. That day I never imagined that I’d be spending almost my entire adult life here, more years that I lived in the States. I was just living the moment.

    Yesterday I chatted with an American friend here, who also hadn’t expected to be living over two decades in Chile. I threw out this question to her: what is the difference between an expat and an immigrant? Why are we considered “expats?” Is it because we are light-skinned and speak English? Is it due to our reasons for coming here (not fleeing violence or hardships)?

    Most of us “expats” feel like we’ve lost something and feel an ever-present nostalgia within. But to come to terms we also know the importance of identifying and appreciating what we’ve gained: new perspectives, different cultural values, thinking and expressing oneself in a different language. Over the years I’ve come to realize that a sense of place, this place, has grown within me. As I traveled north and south, I learned to identify local birds and their songs, and flowers and trees and their fragrances, unique to the varying landscapes. I miss the rich natural world of my California home, but have learned the importance of bonding with this Chilean landscape where I find myself. Big city living does not make this easy. I must work at it: appreciating the light and shadows on the slopes and peaks of the Andes, planting shrubs and trees pleasing to bees in my garden, scattering crumbs for the birds, noticing the fall colors and the purple glow emanating from flowering jacarandas in spring.

jacaranda tree

    My Scottish great-uncle, Robert, immigrated to Chile with his wife, Elizabeth, in the 1800’s to settle in Valparaiso. I wonder what her “expat-immigrant” life was like. What means did she use to adapt? After several years, our youngest son recently returned to Chile with his American girlfriend. A repeat act. This globalized world will make her adaptation experience different from mine or Elizabeth’s. Yet she is still far from her family and must adjust to speaking and understanding a new language, perhaps the greatest difficulties of all, true whether you’re an expat or an immigrant anywhere in this world.

History in the Making

The signs are subtle. Shadows fall at a different angle in the backyard. The sun has taken up a more northern position. Scattered clouds drift across the sky. Today it is refreshingly cooler – only 85 degrees. In this last week of February I savor the summertime quiet of the city. Next week the onslaught of vacationers returning from ocean and mountains begins. Children will don their uniforms to return for another year of school.

    The earth follows its orbit, slipping us here in the Southern Hemisphere into fall. School days. Cooler days. The seasons according to schedule. We pull on sweaters. Leaves turn brown and orange and yellow. Flowers make way for seeds. These events are so totally predictable that they don’t make the headlines or the history books. They just are.

    I’m outside cutting dead flowers when with the new guard on our street walks by. “Buenos días,” we say. I think from his accent he might be Colombian or Venezuelan. I ask. “Venezuelan,” he tells me. He arrived five months ago. “It’s so much easier to get into Chile than the United States.”

    This is history in the making. Peruvians. Colombians. Venezuelans. Dominicans. Haitians pour into the country. Word gets around. In Chile there are jobs. The country is stable. Skin tones on faces on crowded downtown streets are darkening. In this insular country most surprising are the growing numbers of black faces – janitors in the supermarket, gardeners in public parks, truck drivers, and construction workers. Others attempt to eke out a living on the street selling black market purses and scarves made in China.

    How brave and how desperate the Haitians must have been to find a way to reach this distant country where a different language is spoken. Television reports show classrooms in the modest sectors of town sprinkled with children with big brown eyes gazing out of round black faces. Chileans joke that in a few years, the national soccer team will be a dream team of tall, dark immigrants’ offspring.

    I'm considered an expat, not an immigrant. Is that because my skin is lighter? Because I speak English? Because I have a profession? Perhaps it's due to my reason for coming to Chile. When can an immigrant be considered an expat? A look at the big picture reveals that all history has been shaped by movements of populations. Thoughts worth considering.

    I like seeing this increasing diversity and smile at the black man I pass on the street. It is a smile of welcome. I hope he knows that. 

All I could do was laugh this afternoon when my husband asked me how my morning went.

    I´d gone downtown again to the office of the Electoral Services. This time the office was open and -wow!- no line. I explained to a pleasant, mustachioed gentleman my predicament - that my ID number had been eliminated from their voter list and I'd been unable to vote. I reassured him several times that I'd voted in all previous elections. He was puzzled and went up several flights of stairs to consult with someone else. He returned smiling, and I thought: problem solved. But no. He directed me to the office of Foreign Affairs several blocks away to obtain a certificado.

    At Foreign Affairs I was sent to the third floor and told to ask for a "preferential" number for those over sixty. My grey hair does have its benefits. The line from the third floor office snaked down the stairwell to the second floor. I breezed into the office to encounter a mass of people of every hue of skin color, all immigrants, some sitting, some standing in lines. My number was 114. The number up on the screen was 34. I stood there wondering which line to join, when I realized I didn't possess the patience to wait until number 114 came up.     

    Back downstairs at the information desk, I was directed to the fifth floor. Only two people in front of me. I explained about the paper I needed and the reason. A plump, young girl searched on Internet and found that the PDI, the Policía de Investigaciones, had emitted a form stating that I'd left the country for over a year and, my status as permanent resident was expired. She explained that I must get the elusive certificado from the office of the PDI and bring it to her along with a letter from me requesting to correct my current status. She wrote down the address of the PDI four blocks further downtown.

    I trudged the city blocks, thinking: Downtown is a different Chile. Teeming sidewalks; vendors selling medals of the Virgin Mary, sunglasses, lottery tickets; newspaper kiosks; shops displaying children's clothes next to cocktail dresses. In that unfamiliar neighborhood, I felt like a tourist noticing the architecture of old buildings. At last, I reached the address given me for the PDI. Outside it's closed doors was a sign indicating they moved yesterday to a street totally unknown to me. The good news was that there was an empty taxi in front of me. Yes, he knew the new location.  Twenty minutes later, he delivered me to the PDI office. Inside a massive room sat hundreds more immigrants. My preferential number was called immediately.

    Again I explained my dilemma to a young woman who seemed quite confused by my story. She checked on her computer, where she verified that, indeed, I had never left Chile for more than a year. I showed her my passport and my Chilean ID. She thought the confusion might have stemmed from the fact that my U.S. passport only lists one last name, whereas, my Chilean documents display two last names, my maiden name and my mother's, as is the custom here. Human error somewhere along the line in the entangled web of the "system".

    I still won't be able to vote in the presidential run-offs next week. But my bigger worry is: what's to prevent this from happening again?