part 2: pascua-lama, the debated mining project

It’s rumored that certain trusty canine friends are “good as gold.” An honest and generous person might be said to have a “heart of gold,” something for which Neil Young has been mining for decades. A yearning for a pot of gold lies under the arc of every rainbow, the gold medal is clearly the most prestigious, and if you are an outstanding and productive person you may be deemed worth your weight in gold.

In its scarcity, the shiny metal has garnered the reputation of having great worth, and for thousands of years has been cherished for the beauty societies have given it. The extraction of the metal and subsequent use of it has played crucial roles in many civilizations as leaders have struggled for power, wealth and beauty. The war over gold today, even in light of the countless other precious objects over which we fight, is still ravaging the land in which it rests and the people who live and work on it.

Gold mines have periodically intrigued me for a couple of reasons. My grandmother told us how two of my ancestors, a father and a son, came from an economically depressed Slovenia to the United States around the turn of the 20th century to work in the gold mines of Colorado. The father died in an accident, and the son moved to Chicago to stay. I always thought it was just a story, but after meeting the descendants of the family they left behind in Europe I learned it was true. Strange memories of an elementary school musical will occasionally drop themselves in my lap, the rhyming lyrics about the Yukon Valley in Alaska which made the gold rush era seem like a sentimental fantasy. But while I personally have never nurtured an interest to wear the precious metal, I also had never had a particular aversion to it until I heard about the No Dirty Gold campaign.

No Dirty Gold is a campaign to demand change by “calling on retailers to identify and disclose the source of the gold they sell-and to ensure that jewelry, watches, cell phones, computer chips, and other products do not contain gold mined at the expense of communities, workers and the environment. Currently, retailers and consumers do not have an alternative to dirty gold.”

The campaign states that:
The production of one gold ring generates 20 tons of wastes.
More than half of all gold comes from indigenous peoples' lands.
80 percent of all gold is used to make jewelry.

The good news is that the campaign exists, that it is making headway, and that media attention has been drawn to the issue. The troubling news is that it hasn’t had enough media coverage, that not enough headway has been made, and that gigantic mining corporations are still excavating with poor practice around the world.

Barrick Gold is the largest gold mining company in the world. They recently celebrated their 25th anniversary, and their slogan is “Responsible Mining.” With headquarters in Toronto, this Canadian company is mining at 27 locations and has 10 development projects; some of the locations include Papua New Guinea, the United States, Canada, Australia, Peru, Chile, Russia, South Africa, Argentina and Tanzania. They are also exploring on 100 sites across 16 countries. On their website, they boast about their corporate responsibility. They contend that they work in support with local citizens, and imply that they have the community’s best interest at heart.

One of their projects, Pascua-Lama, is located on the border of Chile and Argentina. I traveled to the area twice to learn more about it from the perspective of the local community, and discovered many contradictions between what Barrick says and what local Chileans think.

The Huasco Valley is a narrow alley through steep and jagged Andes Mountains. A river cuts through the center, and flows all the way from the glaciers housed on the Pascua-Lama mountain to the Pacific Ocean, providing the only natural source of water for the valley. Located in the Atacama region, named after the direst desert in the world, these glaciers defy science in their existence, and are already suffering severe damage from climate change and the explorations for the proposed mine. Dry, rocky terrain juts up to the fertile vegetation made possible by the river: this is a farming valley. It is also a valley of economic depression, with the worst unemployment rates in the country.

In an attempt to understand the predicament more personally, we met with activists and with families, we stayed with them in one of the towns along the river, Chingüinto, and we attended a weekly community meeting on the battle between the people of the Huasco Valley and Barrick Gold. What we learned needs to go beyond the rugged walls of the valley. Even though so much has been written and published about the destruction of land and communities by mining, how can a small community face up to the likes of the abominable Barrick Gold?

To be continued…

See photos from the Huasco Valley
Read Part 1: Pascua-Lama
Read more about the No Dirty Gold campaign

OJOS nuevos to begin workshops in Chicago

OJOS nuevos began in Santiago de Chile in the fall of 2006. While the workshops still continue in the southern hemisphere, we are about to expand to include a new location: Chicago.

Planning for a May start, workshops will be offered to a small group of adolescent women in collaboration with La Casa Central Community Center which is in Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood. Stay tuned for updates!

the weight of wealth: Potosí, Bolivia

Potosí had captured my attention before I began planning the trip through the north of Chile, Bolivia, and into Peru — but I had never heard of the city before I moved to Chile. Then I began to hear stories of the mines in Cerro Rico from an Italian photographer friend. A Chilean executive businessman described to me the influence of Bolivian mined silver on the European economy of the 16th to 18th centuries. Because of my interest in the mining industry and the intriguing historical accounts of this towering city, I felt compelled to visit.

The bus ride from Uyuni to Potosí is ordinarily about six hours long. My friend Lena and I decided to make this journey during the day, as we weren´t sure about the quality of roads and buses. It was June of 2007, and an incredible heat saturated the air that fell in direct sunlight; a remarkable difference in temperature waited in every angled shadow, and at night, especially in buildings without heat, the Andean chill proved most persistent. My seat on the bus collected full sun, and a decision had to be made between opening the window and filling the bus with dusty air from the arid countryside or dealing with the crowded heat. Unfortunately I had to use the restroom so badly (a result of the scarcity of bathrooms) that the decision seemed too trite to deal with, and I simply did whatever the Bolivian in front of me chose to do.

I believe that was the first time in my life that I rejoiced at the announcement of a flat tire, something that seemed to be taken in stride as a rather common event for our fellow passengers. We filed out of the bus, many of us looking for an obliging rock on which to lean. An abandoned house made of mud or clay bricks sat on the banks of a trickling river, and many passengers wandered down to take a drink. A flock of sheep bleated at us as they wandered by, monitored by a woman in a gathered skirt and a cap. A team of passengers assisted the driver with the tire and we continued.

The bus stopped for a second time at a small family run restaurant situated in the middle of a dry field dotted with tufts of yellow prickly plants. A couple of pigs wandered around, licking clean a collection of discarded bones. All along the drive we had seen individual houses, like the one with the restaurant, spotting the vast land. They were made of bricks the same color as the dirt blowing in the air and coating your skin, the same color as the earth that seemed to be pulled taut and stretching out forever, the same color as the low hills rising around us on all sides. The bus traveled up and down, but always more up, on a constant climb towards the highest city in the world. See photos here

Lena and I befriended an Argentinian traveling through some of our same cities, and, in need of a hostel, he followed us to ours. The trek might not have been so arduous had we not been with our heavy clothing in the mid-afternoon sun, packed with our backpacks and walking up steep hills in a city of 4,090 meters above sea level—about 13,419 feet. Potosí is much larger and condensed than Uyuni: Germán, our guide from the 4x4 tour, had told us that about 7-8,000 people live in Uyuni, and current population estimates for Potosí are about 125,000. We dropped off our backpacks and several layers of clothes, and began walking the streets.

While we spent a good deal of time wandering — buying fresh juice from stands in the street, oranges from the central market, submarinos from a little café, flat breads from sidewalk vendors (and unfortunately for my stomach, some street cheese) — a top priority for me was to visit the infamous mines that weave through the mountain looking over the city. Cerro Rico literally means “Rich Hill,” but it has a much more complicated significance to regional and world history. It is said that the Spanish gave the mountain this name once they discovered the astounding silver deposits it guarded, but the local indigenous people had already known about the mountain’s content. The root of the name Potosí is still debated by some, as it could have roots in Quechua or Aymaran, the two most prominent indigenous languages of the central Andes area.

The next morning Lena and I rose early and headed toward La Casa Nacional de Moneda, where a large painted mask smiles effusively (and a bit unnervingly) over the courtyard just inside the entryway of the old expansive building. This building is the second mint constructed in Potosí, by order of the Spanish crown. The original mint lasted 192 years, from 1575 to 1767, during the peak of silver extraction from Cerro Rico. The coins created during this period were circulated throughout the world and at one point symbolized riqueza, poder y gloria – wealth, power and glory.

Records say that 45,000 tons of silver were extracted from the mines at Potosí from 1556 to 1783. The silver was shipped to Spain, but most of it didn’t stay there. The surge in wealth helped the king pay off large debts. New connections between continents and countries forged and the silver taken from Potosí and other Latin American locations flowed through trade routes and across borders. The European economy saw dramatic changes in the definition of wealth, and inflation spiked. The value of silver plummeted to a dramatic low, and Europeans began to desire — and buy — luxuries which they imported from around the globe.

Slave trade also increased, and Africans were shipped to work in the mines as well. The altitude proved fatal, however, and the local indigenous were forced to work the belly of the mountain for Spain. Many sources estimate that 8 million miners died during the most productive years of the mines at Potosí, but our tour guide encouraged us to remember that the number is most likely much higher.

After choosing our tour guide company, of which there are several, Lena and I suited up in plastic orange outfits, attached our lamps onto our hardhats, and drove with our guide up to the Miner’s Market, El Mercado de los Mineros. Here we purchased 2 liter bottles of orange or cola flavored pop and large bags of coca leaves for the miners we would encounter while walking through the shafts underground. We drove high up one side of the mountain to a mine entrance that still had blood spattered above it: about a week ago there had been the annual sacrifice of a llama, asking for the safety and productivity of the miners.

Shortly after entering the opaque darkness of the mine, we met with whom is now called Tío, one of the statues representing the god of the world underground for the miners who work in it. Every day they begin with a ceremony to Tío, a name the Spanish mistakenly took for their word “uncle.” We were told that it comes from a word in Quechua for god, because although the Spanish said that it was the devil, for the indigenous it was not so negative. Our guide told us that just as there is a god for the world above ground who protects and guides people, there is a god for the world underground; in following, the miners ask for protection and prosperity every day.

Unfortunately, even though the mine is now a collective, and miners can keep their earnings for themselves, it is terribly risky and difficult work. Shafts that have been closed for decades will be discovered, and the desperate will weave their way through dangerous tunnels looking for minerals. The hope for striking it big drives many impoverished into the mines, including children. Many live in makeshift dwellings around the mountainside, hoping for a better turnout. Illness and disease often follow the years spent inside the mine, after exposure to toxic materials. Although we met many who have said they have benefited from working in the mine, it is not questionable that what they have endured inside it has not been humane.

Walking out into the sunlight at the end of the mineshaft surprised me with its starkness. Exhausted from a few hours of crawling and bending and climbing, I wondered how the miners subsist an entire day on the large wad of coca leaves packed in their cheeks, even if it does mask their hunger. We stumbled back to our hostel, took showers during the hours that the water heater could be used, and spent the rest of the day meandering, chewing on our tourist view of one of the most infamous mines of the new world.

Zequi had decided to extend his stay in Potosí and explore a nearby town and some hot springs in the mountains, daytrips that are advertised in pamphlets at the hostels and tour guide offices; Lena and I decided to stop next in Sucre, slipping the city into our agenda last minute. We met for dinner the night before we left, and toasted to the crossing of paths in the highest city in the world.

See photos from Potosí here.

benet academy hosts camera drive

Recycling Cameras for Chile, the latest OJOS nuevos campaign, asks for the digital cameras that have been replaced by shiny new ones during this recent holiday season. In an effort to redistribute resources to where they can be better utilized-- other than that dusty shelf on the computer desk or shoved in the back of a drawer nestled in knotted cords-- this campaign will send donated digital cameras to OJOS nuevos, a photography program for youth at social risk in Santiago de Chile.

Benet Academy, a high school in Lisle, Illinois (and my alma mater), is currently hosting a camera drive to collect digital cameras for the campaign. A series of posters have been hung through the school hallways explaining the mission of OJOS nuevos and encouraging students to ask their families and friends for any unwanted cameras, and announcements are read daily over the loudspeaker. The drive officially began on January 7, with plans to wrap up on this coming Friday the 18th.

This morning I received notice from the assistant dean of students that nine cameras had already been brought into the office, a pleasant surprise; I had originally set the goal for ten total. Around lunch I opened another message saying that three more had been brought in. I also found out that a Spanish teacher is having a fundraiser in his class to raise money to buy a new camera.

Benet would like to extend the camera drive until the end of the month, and of course I have no objection. The generosity has overwhelmed me and already exceeded my optimistic expectations. Please stay tuned for final results!

recycling cameras for chile

With the holiday season here, lots of you are looking for the perfect gift to give. Sale advertisements are bombarding you in the newspaper and the mail, and every toy, gadget and oddity is waiting to pounce into your shopping cart. And what will you be receiving from your friends and loved ones?? A new iPod, a watch, a web cam, maybe a Wii, if you're good...

A new campaign is spreading its wings this December: Recycling Cameras for Chile. The goal of this campaign is to send 15 new or used digital cameras down to the OJOS nuevos photography program in Santiago for kids at social risk.

Voluntarios de la Esperanza, or VE, is a non-profit organization that brings volunteers from around the world to Santiago de Chile to create educational, recreational, cultural and social programs for children who have been abandoned or abused and thus live in shelters. VE works at 14 children's institutions, helping over 1000 kids. OJOS nuevos is proud to mark its first full year as a program with VEGlobal. OJOS nuevos is currently in only one shelter, but with new volunteers arriving every three months, programs are passed along so they continue and grow. It's not human power that's threatening the future of OJOS nuevos: it's the lack of cameras.

OJOS nuevos is a social documentary project that puts cameras in the hand of youth and teaches them to become visual storytellers, capturing what life is like for them in Santiago de Chile. Using digital cameras and computers in the shelters or in local libraries, 16 girls and young women have participated in extensive workshops where they learned the basics of image-making, watched slideshows exposing them to photos from around the world, and learned about the history of the medium. They explored their city and their personal reality, experimenting with journalism and self-expression. In more advanced classes students learned to share their images with the world on blogs and public websites. A fieldtrip to the picturesque coastal city of Valparaíso, two hours away from Santiago, allowed students their first visit to this port and showed them the thrill of discovering a new place through the lens of a camera (see photos here). At the most recent end of the workshop exhibition, over 100 young women, staff members and volunteers celebrated the photography of 10 participants in one of the most prestigious photography institutes in Chile, Instituto ARCOS, located downtown Santiago. After five months of study, this final exhibition allowed these young women a public space to show their work and to tell their own stories from their perspectives (see photos here).

We are counting on you to help continue the momentum of OJOS nuevos in Chile. New and used digital cameras will be collected from now through February. If you see a nice-shiny-new point-and-shoot on sale, we would be honored to accept the donation! Or if you have received a nice-shiny-new digital camera for the holidays, maybe you would like to donate your old one and recycle the same act of giving.

Please contact ojosnuevos.chile[at]gmail.com to arrange a donation, if you have questions or want more information. Included in your donation will be shipping the camera to Chicago, IL, where we can arrange one bulk shipment of the cameras to Chile at our expense. Thank you!

If you would like to purchase a new digital camera for OJOS nuevos, here are some links to help you:
Kodak Cameras
Tiger Direct
Best Buy

OJOS nuevos video sale en español

OJOS nuevos es un programa en Santiago de Chile que ayuda que los jóvenes de alto riesgo exploren fotografía digital. Lindy Drew y Christine Mladic fundaron este proyecto en asociación con VEGlobal en el año 2006. Más información en español viene pronto. ¡Gracias!

from San Pedro to Uyuni: the smell of raw

They say that smells carry your memories. Smells are like little turtles, carrying secrets on their backs, secrets of the past, secrets that escape in wafts and whispers. I sit at my desk, and I smell in the dark a wintry London night of 1998, when I was only eighteen, on a senior trip. I can see the hotel room flickering in, the beige carpeted floor, the expansive window opening up screenless to let the night inside. I sit here at my desk in a soft blue bathrobe, fresh from a hot shower, lotioned and scented like a perfume ad: comfortable.

Some smells are bottled or pushed into candle wax, to be released in a room far away from the source of the scent. My eucalyptus lotion used to tell me about its history via its presence: I would not have purchased such an expensive treat for my skin, my old boss had given it to me after rescuing it from his wife’s attempt at tossing the brand new bottle into the garbage. Now the smell of eucalyptus awakens my hunger and spreads an immense calm over my body as I remember my time on Isla Amantaní on Lake Titicaca. Eucalyptus wood is used in the kitchen’s fire, and the smell of it burning will always bring me back to this paradise of an island.

The second chapter of my trip from Chile, through Bolivia and Peru is marked by the journey away from people and into nature, where smells, colors, and landscapes cleaned my senses and offered them something new. Choosing to cross the border on a tour instead of the “death train” or the midnight bus from Calama, my friend Lena and I made a good decision. We signed up in San Pedro for a four day three night tour in a 4x4. With six passengers and a driver, people filled up the jeep, and our food, water, fuel, and personal belongings were stored on the roof. After living in a city of six million people for nearly a year, spending time in crowded neighborhoods and feeling the soot of pollution invade my pores, this thrust into nature delivered a much welcome shock.

We passed the Laguna Verde, spent a night at Laguna Colorado and visited geysers at over 4,000 meters above sea level; the stench of the sulphuric belches of the earth carried on the smoke billowing from craters in the rocks (see large photo above). I had hours and hours for reflection, for daydreaming, for inventing or learning the magic of the land. In an environment completely new to me, I dispelled my ignorance of southwestern Bolivian landscapes, and discovered profound beauty in the dry hills, sandy deserts of stone sculptures, and mineral rich soil. I remember the raw smell of earth and the rainbow colors in the sand, as if in their carefully structured patterns they told not only the story of their past but that of my future. The rare alpacas and llamas we saw provided us with sporadic sparks of entertainment, and I grew quite fond of the small, yellow spike plants. Lena and I, without high tech sleeping bags like the rest of the passengers, cuddled under as many alpaca blankets as we could find but still, as the electricity turned off, could not get warm. Perhaps it was our rather gradual path of altitudinal incline, the morning and nightly doses of coca tea, or just luck, but any hint of altitude sickness completely passed me by. Flamingoes wade in the mineral rich lagoons and lakes, and as we made our way to the salt flats outside Uyuni we stopped to see them, random volcanoes, rock formations, and any other passing item of interest. That afternoon, at the salt hotel, I was the only lucky one whose shower temperature fulfilled my lengthy pleas. The quinoa soup the first night was delicious, but I still remember the quinoa soup at the salt hotel, on the salar’s rim, as totally doing me in. I can still smell it now…

Waking before dawn, I stood on the edge of the salar and felt as if I were standing on the moon. I know I have heard this description before, but of all the times in this trip through the southwest of Bolivia I felt that I was on another planet, the salar wins at convincing me that this was truly the case. The largest salt flat in the world, you can stand in the middle of a white plain and see nothing but white extending around you as far as you can see. As the sun rose, the salt turned from black, to grey, to turquoise, to a glittering white. I kept reaching out to touch it, expecting it to be cold, like the frozen Minnesota lakes of my childhood. The salt played tricks with your mind and with your eyes, giving perspective a new meaning and toying with your silly ideas about distance. Our guide told us that underneath the layers of salt there is still water, the remains of an old salt lake, and we visited Isla Pescado, an island shaped like a fish, made of coral, and home to hundreds of enormous cacti.

While on our journey we had visited a couple of very small towns that look to Uyuni as a kind of central city for the area, it still registered as a very small city to me. Our tour ended in Uyuni, and Lena and I said goodbye to our fellow passengers from the 4x4. I liked Uyuni, to be sure, and I wish that I could spend more time there. All said, I wish I could spend a lot more time in Bolivia as a whole, the country captured me and my curiosity. But unlike in Chile, where a female walks onto the Metro and any male will willingly insist she take his seat, where arms are lent to steer down stairs and doors are held open, I felt a distance between Bolivia and me. I questioned the motives for my photography more than ever, I felt intrusive, and found myself arguing ethics in my head, arguing many things actually, and feeling challenged to come up with satisfying answers. The frigid nights on the altiplano, the same clothes layering on day and night to fight for warmth, dirty hair, scratchy skin, it seems so far away now in this fuzzy bathrobe, with my lotion, with my memories.

See more photographs here.

maestra vida, holding class daily

Two months have passed since I left Chile. As I settle into what still feels temporary, I try to find replacements for the holes and vacancies that remain. Some things are just too disparate: roaming the streets of the Chicago suburbs can’t replicate Barrio Brasil, communal public spaces here don’t really even try to act like the bench-filled Plazas, and since volunteering here will not be possible for some time, I am working on a giant pile of letters to my girls, the act of which relays their laughs or stories only in my head. The suburbs of Chicago are their own entity, and while I am here to enjoy my family for awhile, living within their boundaries and moving among them I am fascinated by the strange mix of behaviors and find myself doing miniature studies of people and places. The thing about the suburbs (it could happen anywhere, but I am here, so it follows to be my example) is that due to their design, one could become incredibly isolated in a very short amount of time. I remember having discussions in Chile about how some Chileans think people from the United States are too individualistic. I’m not sure at what point being individualistic becomes too, becomes extreme, becomes solitary, but I know that the lifestyle of the suburbs could facilitate this extremity, if one is not careful. Especially if one is unemployed and broke: duly noted. I realized it was time to do something. Time to go out. Where? The only place I could think of on a Thursday night: salsa.

If I could describe downtown Naperville in an un-biased manner, I would. But I don’t think I can. It has good schools to be sure, and a picture perfect river-walk, but many will make the argument that its fairytale appearance tricks some members of its population into forgetting or overlooking problems that need attention: international problems, problems in other areas of our country, and problems even within the same neighborhood. Naperville has changed a lot over the years since I moved there as a junior high school student, including the increase in monetary wealth. But the attitude that I carried with me to Frankie’s Blue Room one recent Thursday night was as positive, determined, and bold as I could muster, an almost desperate attempt to find a niche I could occupy despite my personal history in its realms. I imagined my friends in Chile at the same moment, on a Thursday night, slicking on lip gloss and selecting earrings to go with their strappy shirts and jeans. An hour later in Santiago, they would be taking the metro to Bellavista… perhaps buying a sopaipilla on the way… Downtown Naperville should not be confused with the image in one’s head of “downtown.” Naperville does have a large population, over 140,000, but I think it’s rather family oriented, and its nightlife scene thus may suffer a little. Last year Money Magazine named it the #2 Best Place to Live in the United States. Interesting. I think it depends on what your standards are, where your priorities lie. I’m going to narrow it down to Salsa dancing on a Thursday night.

I think my expectations were a little high. Not a surprise really, since I cannot put a leash on my optimism; but this trait can often be difficult to manage and appropriately curb. At least I can say I tried. I’d rather not remember the music, some kind of soft-salsa, or elevator salsa, none of the blazing trumpet solos and definitely no change in tempo. It was in-the-lines salsa, diet salsa, safe salsa. I sipped on a sprite at the edge of the bar, trying to look welcome, open, nice. Every once in awhile some muffles would rise in volume in response to the american football game blinking from the tvs above the dancefloor. I turned to the waitress to get a water, when the man next to me asked me if that was all that I wanted. Even in my peripheral vision I could see signs that he was older than my father. Yes, please, just water. When I was finally asked to dance by a reserved and polite young man, I walked to the dancefloor with a smile: a good song finally fell upon us. A rush of excitement washed over me and I felt my heart carrying the drums. We began dancing, I swayed through the steps as if I had become liquid, passing forward and back, smiling, letting him lead me around in circles. I closed my eyes and remembered Maestra Vida, Bellavista, the live music, dancing until sunrise….. We stopped suddenly. I stood looking at him, my mouth open, then turned to see the guy next to us pick his glasses up off the floor and look at me as if clearly, since I was the blonde, it had been all my fault. I left shortly afterwards, encouraged by the unwelcome attention of a couple of drunk guys who had stumbled in by mistake and were asking me, 2 inches from my face, their necks thicker than my thighs, to clarify what salsa dancing is. Maybe they would be better off watching the football game.

Naperville has one other salsa dance locale, as far as I know. Wednesday and Saturday nights, Esteban’s opens its dancefloor to salseros, with a live band on Saturdays. This time, I had my mom come with me. I didn’t plan on dancing, I felt just scoping the place out for a night might be a more reasonable way to assess the situation. Sitting on the edge of Naperville in a strip mall, across the street from the more diverse suburb of Aurora, Esteban’s is unassuming from the outside. We arrived just before 9pm to avoid the cover charge, and watched the free salsa lessons from our floor-side table. My skepticism wrapped around me, I watched the dancers slowly arrive. Perhaps the recent flop at Frankie’s tainted my view of Esteban’s, but I left that Saturday night quite impressed with the range of dancers that had showed up. All things considered, I’ll give Esteban’s a thumb up, but just one. The music and dancing seemed miles away from the sad travesty of Thursday night at Frankie’s, but the ambiance still felt closed to me. Maybe I had become spoiled, having visited Maestra Vida so many times, but I feel that a good salsa club is one in which people are dancing. Not sitting around watching, but dancing. If not dancing, then people are tapping their feet in anticipation, because the music is just too good to listen to sitting still. I felt like that night Esteban’s seemed like a closed circuit, with small groups staying within their small groups–which really only made me more determined to break my way into some circle somewhere, and soon. More than anything, I think I miss the sense of community that I felt in Santiago, even amidst its rumors of being, in general, a distrustful society.

Maestra Vida is the oldest salsa club in Santiago. Some people make fun of Briana, a friend of mine, and I when we talk about it, because our obvious glee seems to make us hover in the air and we nearly shake upon entering like an addict might before their hallowed substance. Tiny square wooden stools kneel around tiny square wooden tables which hold a single white pillar candle. Inebriated murals cover the walls, each seeming to change every time you look at it. By 2 or 3 in the morning it’s completely full of people, and I pray that they never expand. You learn to lose control in more controlled turns, everyone dances just a little closer, and you have to beg to rest enough to get a glass of water. Maestra Vida is named after a song by Rubén Blades, a singer originally from Panamá. He filled the vacancy left by singer Héctor Lavoe in Willie Colón’s Orchestra in New York in the 70s. “Maestra” means teacher, and “Vida” means life, reminding us some things we can only learn by living them.

The best salsa night depends on three things: the location, the music, and the people. The destinations are vast, spanning from my living room to clubs in cities around Latin America and the world. Then there’s the music, which any salsero has in bundles. But the people, the right mix of energy and skill and patience and fun, that’s something that you can’t fake, and that you can’t force. You never know when everything will align and move forward until you’re in it, until you’re being whipped around by some mystical force and all you see are colors, all you hear are trumpets and even well after you leave at dawn, your feet are still pattering to the drums. I know I can’t replace it; I don’t want to. But months later, I still find myself searching for something that’s even just similar, a taste of the feast of the past.

OJOS nuevos video released in english

The english version of the first OJOS nuevos video is here to be released. While a more descriptive, lengthy video is being worked on, it won't be finished for quite some time. Meanwhile, we have this piece which introduces the program and showcases many of the girl's photographs. Enjoy! Spanish version coming soon...

OJOS nuevos is a social documentary project that puts cameras in the hand of youth from the hogares in which Voluntarios de la Esperanza works. Photographers Lindy Drew and Christine Mladic started the projects in order to let the participants explore the creativity, enjoyment, and importance of photography. By letting young women be the photographers, they were able to lose themselves in a rewarding activity and tell their story from their own perspectives, capturing what life is like for them in Santiago de Chile. Using digital cameras and computers in the hogares or in local libraries, 16 girls have participated in workshops, each session lasting about five months. They watched slideshows exposing them to international photography, they learned about the history of photography and about cameras that use film, they learned how to protect and hide their cameras in public (the hard way), and they felt the anticipation of waiting for their pictures to come back from the printer. The grand finale to the workshops was to photograph for a day in Valparaíso, a picturesque coastal city about two hours away from Santiago. Lindy and Christine organized the workshops to include slideshows, assignments, editing, and fieldtrips. Some girls preferred to shoot in their neighborhood, others only found interesting subject matter in new surroundings. Some young women would walk right up to strangers and take their portrait, others focused the camera back on themselves. With so much to document and so much to learn from the process of making pictures, the youth soared with the opportunity. OJOS nuevos was first introduced to Hogar San Francisco de Regis with cameras collected by Christine as private donations. She continued the project at Hogar Aldea María Reina afterwards. Lindy Drew brought OJOS nuevos to Hogar Nuestra Señora de la Paz thanks to a donation from Pentax and the www.TakeGreatPictures.com.

San Pedro de Atacama: tourism has two sides

After the melancholy of a Santiago submitting itself to the chill of a rainy winter, San Pedro seemed like a perfect first stop. A fellow volunteer and I had planned a near month long trip which would take us through the north of Chile, across the border into Bolivia, and after passing through Lago Titicaca, bring us to Cusco, Peru just in time for the Inti-Raymi festival at the end of June. San Pedro is a 24-hour bus ride north of the country's capital, and is a tiny pueblo in the middle of the Atacama Desert: the driest desert in the world. We enjoyed deep, blue skies, the kind that make you feel like you could see beyond your universe, the kind that evoke that same feeling of awe as the ocean. I've heard these blue skies are a daily occurrence.

As I learn more about South America, I would like to return with the resources to travel off the main tourist routes with a knowledgeable guide, but for my first time through Bolivia and Peru I decided to see what opportunities arose and play things rather safely. I prefer to travel in a manner that interacts with the local community rather than observes it, but this is difficult if you need to keep the pace fairly quick. Unfortunately we felt pressured by time and money during these travels, but I didn't want to think of it as limited; I looked at these weeks rather as an introduction to places and cultures in which I hope to be immersed again, and soon. I do not like feeling like a tourist. This can be very difficult to avoid when you have pale skin and blond hair, and are traveling through Latin America. While I can surprise people with my language skills, locals still know that I am an extranjera. Sometimes tourists are looked down upon, depending on the behavior of previous tourists who may have made a name for themselves, but in San Pedro tourism has given an enormous boost to the local economy. With all of the sites and natural beauty located just around the town, it's no surprise that this oasis in the desert is the perfect base from which to explore.

In comparison to other small towns in Chile, San Pedro is unique in many respects. First, the use of adobe for walls and buildings seems to make its long history more apparent. If you take out the tall tourists with backpacks, I think the town has a sense of being untouched. I remember standing outside the town on a hill, with the vast, infinite desert expanding all around the tree-lined pueblo, and thinking how different the sense of space felt. In Santiago, sometimes the city seems to go on forever, neighborhood after neighborhood. But here, it was the opposite. Around San Pedro, under an unending sun and hidden in intimidating expanses, are geysers, prehistoric ruins, the 3rd largest salt flat in the world, archaeological wonders, and natural rock formations that create intriguing shapes and shadows. We choose to visit the Valley of the Moon and the Valley of Mars. The Valley of Mars cannot support one bacteria of life, and among its choppy rocks and reddish sand NASA practices their robot which is then used on Mars. We spent more time walking through the Valley of the Moon, El Valle de la Luna, and stayed there to watch the sun set. It looks like you have left earth, and are on an entirely different planet.

The actual sunset is not nearly as impressive as the 10 minutes following. Across from the sun, to the east, you can watch the cordillera become literally a rainbow of color. The mountains and clouds reflect the separated light and turn from yellow to red to blue with such an intensity you forget that this is natural. I walked away from the line of tourists and found my own place in the sand to witness the marvels. I imagined what the town and the area had been like when the Spanish built the church in 1745, and even the thousands of years before the Spanish had arrived. Chile, I learned, has been greatly influenced by immigrants from all over the world. With a recognized indigenous population estimated at nearly 7% of the whole country's population, Chile seems to be a sort of complicated mix of cultures. But rather isolated pueblos with such long histories as San Pedro make me wonder how much the local citizens have been able to retain of their heritage. And how much, in the face of the strong wave of tourism that is flowing through its adobe lined streets, will influence its future.

After discussing options of crossing the border into Bolivia with other travelers in our hostal, my friend and I decided to take a four day tour in a four wheel drive jeep. We booked with a local company, and settled in for one last night in San Pedro.

See fotos from San Pedro de Atacama here.

OJOS nuevos: exhibition at ARCOS

Technically, 10 young women and girls had participated in the second session of OJOS nuevos. But if you stood in the crowd at Instituto ARCOS, watching groups of girls run around from panel to panel of their friend's photos, shoving mini-empanadas into napkins and sloshing Fanta into little plastic cups, if you saw the caravans of cars and a bus that had made the trek into the city center from the south side of Santiago, if you saw the proud care-givers and volunteers sharing conversations and snapping photos of the festivities, you would see that the photo program included many more people than 10.

I had brought OJOS nuevos to an hogar in Santiago's Puente Alto neighborhood: Aldea María Reina. I included four young women, ages 13-17, in a 4 month long workshop. Lindy Drew, a very close personal friend and photographer also working with VE, opened another branch of the program at a second hogar in the same southside neighborhood, where six girls participated; their ages ranged from 9-12. While we ran slightly different curriculums in our workshops, the general idea was always the same: not only to enable the participants to learn about photography and take pictures, but to explore their city and look at their world with a new perspective. This is the reason why the program is calledOJOS nuevos: it means "new eyes."

The exhibition at ARCOS displayed the work by all 10 young women. I had met with Hector Lopez, director of the photography program at ARCOS, several times, and we had discussed the idea of blending the photos into one show and placing them in a larger context that would pull them together instead of hanging photos one by one or dividing them by photographer.After weeks of going through all of the participant's photos, Lindy and I created large collages based on theme. We looked for common visual elements as well as more subtle implications of the images that we could use as a thread to weave the photos into a more cohesive group. The titles we decided on included: Calle/Street, Manos/Hands, Graffiti/Graffiti, La Vida del Hogar/Hogar Life, Soy Yo/It's Me, Retratos/Portraits, Místico/Mystical, El Taller/The Workshop, Repetición/Repetition. In addition to the collages of photos, Lindy and I posted large bilingual explanations of the taller, the hogar, the organization, and our biographies. We hold the hope that one day this photography show will be able to travel outside of Santiago's limits and OJOS nuevos will find more stability as a social project.

I knew that I had learned a lot by running the workshop, but I used to wonder if the girls had learned what I had hoped they would. I remember at the end of my time at the hogar in July, C.M. stood up at the end of the table and overtook her shyness
with a bold, beautiful smile. She began a slow, serious farewell speech for me, at the head of a long table in the administration building of the hogar. Her long black hair, a creative mess of tiny braids and loopy waves, was tied up in knots with clips and rubberbands asymmetrically. Clearing her throat, she addressed the small group that had gathered for my goodbye party. She began: Sometimes we come without motivation, we come with pain and sadness. But even though it may be difficult, we can get past it... In the photography classes I learned that you have to be creative. There are small details that you normally wouldn't see, that you would ignore. But sometimes these things can be so important. I looked down at my orange drink and manjar cake and burned the memory into my brain, knowing that at that moment there was nowhere else I would have rather been.

Someone asked me recently, if I were given all the money I needed to live, what would I do? Without hesitation, I responded: Go back to South America, travel and learn about the cultures there, and continue the photography project OJOS nuevos. Given that money is not often "given" out in lifetime increments, this is much easier said than done. The means are not present to justify this end. One year away seems ok for one year, but beyond that, for me, visits home are crucial. Maybe it was during my workshops or maybe on the long busrides traveling but I realized that I am not as solitary as I once believed, and I thrive on relationships. The desire for new ones has driven me far from home, and the value of old ones has brought me back. Hopefully, OJOS nuevos will continue in the hogares in which we implemented the program. I know even though I will be living in the States, there is no reason it cannot proceed. I am certain I will continue to be a part of OJOS nuevos.

While the cameras and memory cards I used for my workshops were supplied by generous donations from Chicagoans, Lindy Drew used cameras lent by Pentax through TakeGreatPictures. Please visit the website to read articles about the OJOS nuevos program, and see more photos from the exhibition. Go to this page, then just scroll down until you the blurb about us.

You can also visit FLICKR to see photos from OJOS nuevos.

santiago to chicago

Back where the toilets flush clockwise, where August means sitting on the stoop in the summer heat, and where the colors in the sky at sunset call all of your attention due to lack of mountains or really any topographical variation, I have returned to my home town. Traditionally, I suppose it is my home town, the greater Chicagoland area, although my idea of "home" shifts and changes sometimes. Home could be the feeling of having dinner around a full table of friendly faces, home could be the sensation of a hug from someone you haven't seen in a long time. Home could be a place where you are living and experiencing your daily reality, or home could be of historic importance, where your memories live.

The last couple of months in Chile made it even more clear to me that they will not be my last at all. Chile, South America, are still just developing their roles in my life. With a rush of activities and events at the end of May, including the OJOS nuevos exhibition at ARCOS, I left Santiago in a blur, running to the bus terminal and arriving just in time with a good friend of mine to begin our trip up north, through Bolivia and to Peru. Spanning the month of June, this journey has been extensively documented and will unfold here in a series of essays referencing the notes I scribbled along the way, electricity permitting, and countless photographs. But in regards to my time in Santiago, most importantly, my connection with the foundations and people with whom I worked are still intact, and I look forward to continuing these relationships. I won't always know exactly how much I meant to the people I met, the girls, my friends; I know that with some, we shared a mutual understanding about the power of our friendship. Without a doubt, my year in Chile will not be forgotten, nor will it remain untouched, tucked in a frame on the wall in some obscure, private room. In the most humble sense, I have been changed, and it was change that I was seeking. Hopefully this change has gone beyond me. Without a doubt, my attitude and perspective has shifted. The force of my experiences has picked me up out of the rut in which I found myself one year ago, and I feel that I have embarked on a different, much more satisfying-- albeit challenging-- path: I am so glad that I went.

OJOS nuevos: second exhibition announced

Photography Exhibition
featuring the work of ten young women from Hogar Aldea María Reina and Hogar Nuestra Señora de la Paz of Puente Alto, Santiago de Chile.

The opening will take place this Thursday, May 24th, at 6.30pm, in the Instituto Profesional ARCOS, a prestigious visual arts institute near Plaza de Armas in Santiago's center.

All participants will be in attendance! Many more girls and young women will be present to share in the opening festivities. If you are in Santiago or know someone who is, please spread the word, and stay tuned for postings of their work.
Congratulations to all ten participants and the many other girls who have been able to enjoy the cameras.

OJOS nuevos: viaje al valparaíso

After plastic cups of chocolate milk, marraqueta bread with butter, and a short nap, four teenage girls, the subdirector of the hogar, two extra volunteers and I filed off the bus at the terminal in Valparaíso. Full of anticipation, none of the four young women had ever visited the city before; this would also be the first time our taller had ever left the Santiago city limits. I had passed out the cameras on the bus so the girls could document the two hour ride, and as we left the terminal to the east of the city everyone was smiling and chatting with excitement. Briefly explaining the purported reputation of Valparaíso as being unique in its beauty but dangerous in its layout– tiny, winding streets ideal for quick robberies– the girls tucked their cameras safely out of sight and grabbed each otheŕs arms as we headed towards the center.

I didn’t even see it happen, really. We were waiting at a stoplight, and as I turned around to join the conversation a man ran into the center of our group, bumping into a few girls and then took off running. Still close to the bustling crowds around the bus terminal, he blended in and we lost him quickly as he darted between trucks, cars and street vendors. One fo my girls looked down to see the camera strap around her neck dangling empty, and I became instantly filled with rage at the implications of the episode. Besides the fact that we only have a limited number of cameras and resources, the camera could potentially be replaced. But this particular girl sometimes has difficulty feeling motivated to participate in group activities. Now she felt irresponsible, she felt she was to blame, and she didn’t think she wanted to take pictures that day; of all the people to rob, I wish it wouldn’t have been her.

The best thing for us to do was to forget about the camera. There was nothing we could do but continue with our day and hoping she would change her mind, I explained that we could all share cameras and take turns with the video camera I had brought as well. We quickly moved on. Even though the late morning dulled the city with gloomy clouds and a brisk chill, the newness of the city brought everyone’s spirits up. But even in just the first plaza we crossed, the girls shuffled around exploring every detail in the tiled patterns in the ground, the carved women of the fountain, the people sitting on the benches with the morning newspaper or with their kids.

Valparaíso is a coastal city with a historically important port. In the late 19th century, ships traveling between the Atlantic and the Pacific, through the Strait of Magellan, would stop in Valparaíso, which is one of the reasons for its international influences and cultural vitality which it still retains to this day. The city rolls over hills and tucks into corners, a series of acensores assisting with the steep inclines. We spent the first part of our day strolling through the city over to the port, and during this walk the clouds completely broke and we arrived at the ocean with the sun. The ships mesmerized the girls, we sat on the cement steps and watched the waves bounce the smaller boats around like toys.

After the port, we decided to climb one of the hills; it was much more my decision than anyone else’s, and I definitely had to do a lot of encouraging to get us all the way to the top. The panorama of the bay spread out before us with saturated colors and deep shadows. Sidewalks and pathways wound around sharp corners and stopped and started whenever they felt like it. The graffiti along the way intrigued everyone– we definitely have our fair share of graffiti in Santiago, but here there were also many murals and more artistic designs and scenes. With everything new and interesting before them, they took pictures constantly. We had to have stopped every 5 meters as someone found some detail or reflection of interest. I tried very much to encourage more portraiture, but only the oldest participant really ever found the courage to stick her camera right into the faces of strangers and capture them for just a moment.

We took an acensor down, and even though there are drastic differences between these teenage girls and the ones from my past in the Chicago suburbs, there are still many similarities. The old, rickity wooden elevator jerked into motion and set off a series of high pitched squeals that kept me laughing the whole way down. The ride was definitely worth the $2.80 investment. With an hour to spare before we needed to catch the bus home, we found an amusement park set up in another plaza. Before I knew it, a highly competitive game of foosball had erupted and had all of my girls and the volunteers playing and jumping around. We watched little kids waving to their moms and dads from plastic horses riding in circles, and I wondered if these girls had ever been able to do that before. When they caught sight of the swings, these teenagers, with their black sweatshirts and matching fingernails, with their eyeliner and tough attitudes, revealed that they’re still kids. They swung with smiles on their faces, they swung in all seriousness, watching something I couldn’t see, beyond the plaza, beyond the hills. We took turns pushing them, I took their photos as they flew past.

By the time we looked at the clock we had to sprint all the way back to the bus terminal. Gasping for breath we settled into our seats and fell asleep as the sun set outside the giant windows of the bus. If you ask me if the trip was a success I would ask you how you measure success. Did they take amazing photos? Incidentally, they did. Did a camera get stolen? Unfortunately yes, but later in the day this young woman did decide to take photos, when she regained some confidence, and so we don’t even mention the camera. Everyone was safe. We shared jokes, our photography, the pain of walking uphill forever, and hard-boiled eggs. For me, I know without a doubt that it was a success, that the girls had an opportunity that they wouldn’t have had otherwise.

Please visit flickr to see our photographs from this trip.

Part 1: pascua-lama, the debated mining project

Barrick Gold is a mining company from Canada who has mines all over the world: North America, South America, Africa, and in Australia and the Pacific. One possible mining project in the north of Chile, seven years after being proposed but still waiting to break ground, is the controversial project Pascua-Lama.

Pascua-Lama is a mountain that sits on the border of Chile and Argentina- Pascua being the name on the Chilean side, Lama being the Argentinian name. In the middle of the driest region in Chile, Pascua-Lama's glaciers are a critical source of natural water for the whole Huasco Valley. These glaciers create the Huasco river which runs across the width of the country to the Pacific Ocean. The mountain contains large deposits of gold, silver, and copper, which will be mined over the estimated period of time of 20 years. A highly debated project, those in favor say that Barrick will bring jobs to the Huasco Valley which suffers from staggering unemployment. Those against the project argue that the damage to nearby glaciers and environmental contamination do not justify the promised jobs and question whether the people of the Huasco Valley even have the skills to be accepted as workers with the company.

Mining has long been the driving force behind Chile's economy. Companies from around the world have been involved in the mining scene on varying levels. Chile's mineral deposits have been the source of profit and destruction for hundreds of years, and the politics of mines, the rights of companies and those of miners have continually been debated. Pascua-Lama has technically been approved by the Chilean government, and some-- like the Barrick website-- may argue that is has also been accepted by the inhabitants of the Huasco Valley. Upon my recent return from a second trip into the Huasco Valley, I will begin to dissect what my team and I are learning about the project and about the mining industry.

When I first read about the Pascua-Lama project, I had already been in Chile for 4 months. An article appeared on the BBC World News website debating some of the key issues at hand such as contamination and unemployment. As I began to read articles online severely criticizing Barrick Gold and viciously condemning the Pascua-Lama project as an environmental disaster, I decided to plan a trip to the valley to speak directly with the people there and see if the 94% of the farmers and water users who Barrick says voted in favor of the project truly embrace it. What we discovered is a complicated fight that involves multiple countries and their governments, a cast of powerful individuals who are so invested in the project you have to wonder why, an agricultural valley with a history that dates back before the Incas, and a mountain of gold that has this huge corporation willing to do anything to move forward with their plans. Some say that Chile, still referenced as a developing country, needs this mine and needs the jobs. Some may argue that this is the way the world works, and if not Barrick, then another corporation will move in and do the same. Others favor the valley, the environment, and those who have been living for centuries working the land. With the project approved but stuck on a legal debate, many in the valley still have hope that they can stop it. For both sides, each day is crucial.

OJOS: part of a larger picture

OJOS nuevos is not an isolated project, but shares the similar vision of a larger movement of social photography projects aiming to provide increased opportunity to marginalized or frequently overlooked members of society. I believe developing and supporting these programs is important not only for the real benefits of the students involved – be they children, teenagers, or adults – but also for our global society, for photography and art, for the inclusion of stories and perspectives in the broader scope of culture and history that might otherwise not have been given space. In addition to the personal growth of the participants of these programs– stronger self esteem, confidence in self-expression, a deeper understanding of their community and a new perspective on their society– educational opportunities or scholarship may also become available further increasing the common goal of breaking the cycle of poverty and helping to enable these participants to change the course of their lives.

In 1991 photographer Nancy McGirr founded FotoKids as Out of the Dump having started the program with six kids living and working in Guatamala City’s garbage dump. Now, some 16 years later, the program reaches out into six different communities and has added many other classes to the original documentary photography workshops. Supporting the participants with educational scholarships helps the children have access to a better future. Visit the site.

Kids with Cameras, a project initiated first in Calcutta’s red light district by photographer Zana Briski in the year 2000, might currently be the most well-known program of its kind due to the moving documentary Born into Brothels. A New York based photographer spending months at a time living among the prostitutes in this district, Zana befriended some children who lived there as well and began to teach them photography. An incredibly successful project on many levels, including a safe home and educational opportunities, Kids with Cameras continues to improve the lives of children now in multiple countries. Visit the site.

In the year 2001 photographer David Jiranek, inspired by Imbabazi Orphanage founder Rosamond Carr, began workshops in Rwanda with the orphans of the 1994 genocide. The children photographed for themselves, to learn about their country and to document its rebuilding. Now the project, Through the Eyes of Children, has grown, exhibitions are touring and all proceeds benefit the education of the children involved. Visit the site.

Other interesting projects include:
BRIDGES to Understanding, The Home Alone Project.
Please share any other similar programs you may know about.