segregation and racism

Racism is a problem that we can see more frequently because inmigration to chile has been increasing during the last years.

The problem is with some particular kind of foreigners, because while most chilean people are very kind and can be well integrated with some foreigners like americans and europeans, racism and discrimination have been aimed at people from other latin american nationalities like peruvian, haitian and colombian .

Racism has been linked with another problem, which is segregation. For example the most of the haitian foreigners that came to Santiago live in Quilicula, because there is a growing haitian community who live there because they work in the factories of Quilicura, and this created another problem, which is segregation, because they only have been involved in this place, and can only know the reality of this place.

Segregation is a problem that no only affected  foreign people, because in Santiago the distribution of the “different kind of people”, has been very segregated, and the design of the city is not helping to improve the integration of its inhabitants.

the segregation towards foreign people also affects the inmigrants’ children, because it is very difficult for them to be integrated into the chilean educational system, because they have to validate their studies with the chilean school system, and this validation process can be very annoying, because they have to take tests in a retroactive way. There is a problem also with the chilean law of immigration, which was created during the dictatorship, and this law does not facilitate the process of immigrants settling down in Chile, but this is currently under discussion to be changed.

The problem with racism and segregation is that they produce ignorance, and reduce the posibilities of integrating new kinds of people. Integrating new kinds of people means incorporating new ways of thinking, and this is positive for any society.

internet: good or evil?

I think the internet can have positive and negative effects on people, depending on how it is used. There are many good things about the internet. The first is that it makes life easier in many ways. For example you don’t have to go to a bank to pay the bills, because you can do this from your home if you have internet connection. In this sense the internet saves you a lot of time and that is a good thing. Also, there is more access to information in the internet and people can learn about anything they want. And the information is in general more attractive because you can read, watch videos, etc. The other positive aspect of the internet is that it is a powerful tool for communication. You can send emails with text, images, videos, links etc and that was not possible 30 years ago with normal mail. Additionally, you can “meet” people online in a videoconference and this is almost like meeting face-to-face.

But the internet can have negative effects too, especially on teenagers. There is too much information on the internet and teenagers can spend a long time watching irrelevant stuff. so with the internet and also with tv you could stay in front of a screen for hours and you don't know what happen around you, and you can be totally disconnected to the other people around you. 

In general I think that the most important thing is education and values. The internet is more dangerous if values are not strong, but if this is ok the internet is a great tool to make life more simple. 

huerquehue

My favourite holiday was about three years ago, when I went to visit to my father and brothers that live near to Pucon, so after a few days with my family, I went to the national park Huerquehue, I knew this place before because I visit it with my family a lot of times ago, and I like so much.

So that time when I went to Huerquehue again, at least I climbed the hills, this stretch is very beautiful because I was walked in a leafy native forest and by the path there is a few of waterfall and I can saw  the change of the vegetation across the path while I was climbing the hill. Also I can saw when the forest is clearing, a view of the lake caburgua and his surrounding area.  When I was in the top of the hill, I swimming in a very cool lake and after that I prepared the campsite for keep going the next day to cross Huerquehue Park to arrive to río blanco hot spring. So the next day I woke up early and started to walk, in this stretch the forest begin to be more clearing until disappear completely and I was the experience of the transformation of the forest to a high mountain landscape. After that I was descend to the Rio Blanco hotspring and when I arrived I was very hungry and I think that I was eating the best food of my life, I think this is because the hungry more than the quality of the food, and after  that I prepared again the campsite and was sleep so much because the last trekking was very hard, so when I was relaxed in the evening I went to swim to the hotspring that is placed in a side of the river in the open, so you can relaxed in the hotspring and see a lot of star in the night.

Education in Chile

The education in Chile was suffering some kind of changes since 1973 with the dictatorship of Pinochet; these changes, in a wave, have installer economics interest in education,  and that for,  in a wave,  the direction of education respond to economics interest and don’t necessary respond to people’s education.  For that reason I think education is going make inequality with people, according to his economic situation. We knows that in general terms people that have enough money can pay for a good education, and the other people,  cannot choose for his quality of education.

When the students finish the school, the quality of education that they received is very broad, from a very good education to a very bad education, and mostly is defined for his economic situation. when the students made PSU test mostly of the results generate a difference between economic situations of the students, for that reason, we have in general term that students with good economic conditions can study  in a good university, and because the education is been a kind of market, the student that cannot study in a university, can study in an institute or private university or some similar, because in Chile is been installed the idea that all the people have to study, you are “nothing” if you don’t do it.

The problem with the inequality of opportunities of education bound to the economics conditions is the heart of the demands that students made. So we have a lot of people that get into debts for tuition, and bad education. the government is making some change that mitigate the problem, like give money for grant, or made the possibility of get into debts but this solution don’t attack the heart of the problem and don’t make a solution for all the students.

 

 

Manal al-Sharif

The video show us about a woman named Manal al-Shariff, she dares to drive a car in  Saudi Arabia, film the event and post the video on youtube, even though in her country don’t exist a law that bans  women from driving a car, is installed a tradition that the women can´t drive cars. The tradition is very strict; for example Manal's brother was harassed to the point that he had to leave the country just because he gave her the car keys.  So Manal al-Shariff started a campaign for the right of women to drive car in Saudi Arabia, and made a call to women to 17th of july to get out onto the streets and drive cars. As a result, on  this day 100 women got out onto the street and drove cars, and in that moment the tabu was broken.  therefore, from so this moment onward, there have been little steps for women's right to drive cars, for example the council recently approved the petition for women to drive cars after having rejected it four times. In my opinion Manal al-Shariff was a very clever woman because she realized that society's rules had been immersed in a very narrow way, and she had the courage to make society understand that there can be another possibilities that is been in the society's tradition and also that we can question the way we live our lives. 

Summer museum.

This summer I was working in the museo de historia natural at the quinta normal park, the museum is placed in a very nice building, this building was change by the time because the different earthquake. After the last earthquake in February 2010, that leave the second floor of the museum disable for the exposition, was a renovation of the first floor of the museum. This renovation make the creation of two working public eyes, one of palaeontology and another of taxidermy.

So I was called to  working in the working public eyes of taxidermy, in that public eyes working I was made different kind of work, I was assemble the skeleton of different animals like choroy parrot, yaca, queltehue, culpeo fox and  I was skin animals like hawk, long tail snake, chercan, cachudito, hare and rabbits.

The work was a little bit weird Because I was working at the view of the visitant of the museum, and some reaction of the people when I do things like skin or clean the bones, make them get away of the working public eyes, mostly of the women,  the reaction of the children are mostly of curiosity.

Is a little funny when I was working very concentrated, and for a second I see a lot of children glued to the glass of the working public eyes, so I have to repress the laugh that make me this situation.

So, that I was made this summer.