Culture Shock

I´ve been thinking about this post all week. Last Saturday I saw an awful event that made me really feel that I am in a different culture, but it took me a whole week to come to terms with it enough to write a post about it. I´m warning you now that it´s terrible..............................................................................................................................

Nick and I were headed to the mall or something to do some looking around for the apartment and we came to a busy intersection that we´ve passed a thousand times. All of a sudden I heard a loud bang and instantly realized that a truck had hit a passing dog in the road. I screamed and couldn´t avert my eyes from the poor creature laying in the middle of the road. The truck didn´t stop. Nobody stopped. We were stuck behind a red light and I was frantically trying to undo my seatbelt to go try to help it. Before I could get out, though, we saw a pedestrian heading toward the dog and I realized he was better off dealing with it than I was (it was a big dog... I´m a small person, no cell phone, not a clue as to whom to call). So I sat back a bit but I could not look away from the poor dog with its life literally running out onto the street and a thousand cars passing it by as though nothing happened. I was horribly shaken up for the rest of the day and it really stifled the good mood I had awakened in.

I suppose this could have happened anywhere, but the thing is that it happens here all of the time. I don´t think we´ve made a single trip to the farm where I haven´t seen the poor body of a dog laying on the side of the road. It´s really macabre. And it stems from a huge cultural difference-- for one, dogs here aren´t fixed as often in the US and the result is a large feral population. This probably contributes to the cold attitude that people take here in regards to animal death. There are so many and they aren´t family members here that it´s like seeing a squirrel on the road. But for me it is very very hard to take and has been the most shocking difference so far; the thing that I suspect will never become any easier here for me.

The other unexpected difference is in a much more benign realm, although likely equally as difficult to overcome. Chile is a very class-oriented society. I don´t really know what the terms are to describe the classes, but there are working class people (maids, cleaners, maestros, manual laborers) and higher class people (wealthy people, business people). I am not exactly sure where the line of demarcation falls but there is a line. We are considered upper class people (which to me is hilarious because we are very US-middle-class and by no means wealthy) and interacting within our class is fine, no problems. But interacting with people of other classes, as we do at the farm or working on our apartment, has been uncomfortable at times.

It feels weird even typing this to Americans because the concept is so foreign, but the attitude among the working class to the higher class is one of submission and service. You can´t really expect to develop a friendly relationship with employees, for instance, because there is always that distance there. Our apartment even has a separate, miserable little bedroom and bathroom for a maid, but it´s not a room I´d expect a human to live in. I imagine that upper class people generally act condescending toward the working class as well, but Nick and I have made it a point to treat them as well as anyone. I feel like this could cause us some problems with other upper class people because this attitude is relatively uncommon. Even middle class people often have domestic workers, so there is not as much of a true middle class here as in the US.

Nick and I have resolved to be, in his words, unabashedly American in our attitude toward class differences; that is to say, we´ll act as though they don´t exist. Americans have a well-known reputation of being somewhat obnoxious and self-righteous, and I generally do not want to perpetuate this reputation while abroad. But being on this side of things made me think: would I compromise what I consider to be a core American value in order to fit in and keep from being a beligerent American? After some consideration, my answer is No. The idea that all classes are equally deserving of respect, opportunity, and so on, is too innate to us. I would rather stand out as a self-righteous American than submit to classism because it´s the local way.

I´m not sure how this will affect us at all. Perhaps we will just be the quirky Americans. Perhaps it can encourage others to break down some of those walls. I don´t know. What I do know is how surprised I am to find such a level of classism in a country nearly 200 years past colonial rule.