In case you didn’t know, Chile is mourning the loss of a famous television personality, along with 20 other people who went down in a plane crash on their way to the Juan Fernandez archipelago, a small collection of islands (among them Robinson Crusoe, which I grew up saying Caruso, believing that everyone other than me, was, in fact, Italian) that is part of the Chilean territory. The area was badly affected by the earthquake, and lost much of its infrastructure, and among the plane passengers was the head of a rebuilding effort, plus the news crew, and of course, the cabin crew.
One of the things it has done, is what I casually mentioned to a friend of mine about five weeks ago, which is to have the news media focus on something other than the student protests. We’re hoping (and many others are hoping, too) that it will give people some time to come up with a plan which will let everyone save face and give a solution that is acceptable, and in the end, good for Chile.
The thing about saving face goes on and on here in Chile. I have blogged about how people don’t really cry in public, how it’s important to toe the line, not make anyone uncomfortable, etc. But in the aftermath of the last protest I want to, I thought I’d landed in another country, if only briefly. Here you see a picture, a woman in red with the arm of a woman in black in her hand.
In going back through my pictures, I see the woman in black on several occasions, taking pictures and looking back to see who is behind her. I didn’t see the precise events that led to the woman in red grabbing her by the arm.
Soi sapa! the woman in red shouted (you’re an informant, this comes from the word sapo, which means toad, but is also used to mean informant, busybody, or a guy who used to tell the buses under the old bus system in Santiago how recently another bus of the same number had passed). The soi is a verb conjugation that’s used informally in Chile, the same one that yields cachai, but we’ll leave that for another time.
No soy sapa! (I’m not an informant)
Soi paca, es paca culiada! (You’re a cop, she’s a fxxxn cop!)
No soy paca! (I’m not a cop)
Paca culiada! (fxxxn cop!)
A group of people formed around her, screaming that she was an informant, a cop. Insisting that she’d been taking pictures of the masked protesters, one by one, that she was cataloguing them systematically.
If you’re media, show us your press pass! If you’re not media, you’re a cop! an informant! people insisted.
People were grabbing at her, at her camera, at her long black hair, at her bag.
Take the memory card! she’s an informant!
I clicked through a series of photos of her, which show her and her assailant’s faces more clearly, but won’t publish them. People kept on shouting at her, and a circle of people formed around, staring, pointing and finally screaming themselves red at her.
I don’t know how, but she got away, and walked briskly past. She had stopped taking pictures, and now seemed intent on getting away from the crowd.
A guy standing next to me shrugged, and asked if I thought she was an informant. I told him I had no idea. I told him I wouldn’t know how to find an informant in a crowd, much less an undercover police officer.
“You should be careful, people could think you’re a sapa, too,” he said, motioning at my camera.
It had honestly never occurred to me.
I wonder if it had ever occurred to the woman with the long black hair, or the one in the red shirt.
And honestly, I still wonder what was really happening there. Was she a sapa? a paca? Was the woman in the red shirt just a distraction from something else that was taking place? So much of what happens on the street in Santiago during protests seems so otherworldly, that I never really know what’s going on. I just float through the crowd, stupidly confident with my gasmask, goggles, giant camera and most importantly, my tarjeta gringa (gringa card, used to refer to the special privileges given to foreigners here in Chile).
I was thinking the same thing about the media having something different to focus on this week. I think if you are not in Chile or do not watch national TV, you wouldn’t understand the effect this plane accident has had on Chile.
It was very sad last weekend, when everyone was hoping, and then realising there was no hope. But now it seems to have just turned sick. Watching on the news that they have found a few pieces more…black plastic bags of pain.
Maybe this will give everyone time to think about what is important, and let everyone involved in the student negotiations time to calm down.
By the way, there was a program on last week that was following different “hooded people” during the protests, taking pictures and showing how quickly they moved from one area of Santiago to another. They try to change their appearance by changing clothes. So who knows how many people help by taking photos of them.
I was expecting a natural disaster, to be honest. The plane crash is very sad, but also kind of routine, at the same time. People die in transit accidents all the time. The high-profile of some of the people involved made all the difference in the media treatment of it.
As for the encapuchados, which people call the hooded ones, but really, aren’t they masked, more than hooded, I have no doubt that as soon as they take off their face covering, they just look like any old protest participant. I often try to wear bright colors so it’s clear I’m not hiding from anyone. That report sounds kind of interesting, but since I don’t watch TV, I’d never have seen it! I don’t know if this woman was a sapa or not, but I know that the police’s efforts to taking people into custody are quite weak. Oftentimes they could take a whole group by surrounding them, and they never do, just have a standoff until they throw tear gas at them. So I don’t know how much taking pictures of them has any effect on their later being brought to justice.
Thanks for popping in, as always, and you know, if you’re ever in Santiago we’ll have to meet up!
I am not sure they were taking their pics for legal reasons or just trying to show who they are and how they move around Santiago. I think the program wanted to prove they were hooligans that weren’t really part of the student movement. But, I am not sure they could prove that.
My daughter had taped the program and was watching it, and I wasn’t putting all my attention on it.
And yes, I hate to say it, but I am not sure if it had been a plane of normal people they would have had so many planes, boats, equipment out there.
It’s really true the part about watching TV… Chile is such a “mediatized” country and since it’s a small country with only a few channels, the impact has been oversized. I don’t actually have a tv, so I didn’t think it was such a big deal (no flames, please, I just mean not a bigger deal than other tragedies, like the prison fire or the bus accident, both in the last year), but my students were pretty darn affected.
I cry in public sometimes and I am pretty sure I make everyone uncomfortable… so very non-chilena.
Now why were you taking the series of photos of this chick and her assailants? Soi sapa?
jajaja, nope, I was taking wide open shots, and it wasn’t until afterwards that I noticed her in many of them. Then when the situation was going down I was taking pics of it because I wanted to see what was happening. This one shows the crowd coming in and looking at her.
Not a sapa! Nor a paca. Nor an alpaca!
I actually don’t like how much focus has been given to the accident by the news. Of course it is sad, but with such excesive coverage it just seems like they are exploiting people feelings, while they don’t show other important news (or they show them much less).
Also the goverment is getting alot into this (like they did with the miners) and probably will end up winning a few points of popularity just because of the same exploitation. And of course there is the fact that they are complaining about students wanting to protest tomorrow (well, today, later) claiming that they are not being respectful, like protesting has something to do with having respect or not for the tragedy (this is, in my opinion, one of the goverment efforts to turn the opinion of the population against the student movement, I hope it doesn’t work like any of their previous moves though), wich are things completely unrelated (and in fact the same Felipe Camiroaga supported the student movement).
I agree with everything you have said.
I also think in the first days after the accident TVN should have gone off air (for a little while) and let everyone deal with their pain in private. And let everyone who works there rest a bit, they must have been emotionally and physically exhausted.
but in the end, they’re just cogs in the media machine, and their ratings probably went through the roof. There’s no way they could let that opportunity pass them by. But it would have been a great idea.
Yes, agreed. It makes me sick to think of the government gaining points over sympathy for the families of the dead. And protesting has nothing to do with the plane crash. I guess we’ll just have to sit and wait to see what happens.
Strangely, I was asked the same thing about a month ago. It wasn’t during a march, just during one of those nearly-daily tired burnings right outside the U de Concepción… I was standing with my partner waiting for another friend to arrive to go to a bar, and a guy came up and asked us if we were pacos. It wasn’t agressive, we laughed, and said “why do you think that?” and that was the end of the whole non-story. Well, not the very end, since an hour later in the bar in wafted a thick cloud of tear gas. Anyway, I didn’t think twice, but now I see it could have become ugly.
As for your contention that the tragedy could end the movement, I think you’re probably right. The students have won a lot if they can get the government promises concretized into law. If they double down, they might lose it all.
I don’t have a TV, either, and I didn’t watch much coverage. Also, I don’t know why they singled you and your partner as pacos, did it look like you were surveying things? I wonder sometimes if my tarjeta gringa would really get me out of something in an emergency. I like to think so. Are you in Santiago, btw?
I’d never thought of the possibility that someone taking photos might be a cop, but it makes sense. Whether the woman in black was or wasn’t up to something, I’m glad you have your gringa card. I wouldn’t want you to be accused of being an infiltrada!
I can scarcely think of anyone less likely to be an infiltrator, both because of my politics and because I can’t really keep a secret! And yes, glad nothing odd happened (at least to me).
I’ve been accused of being a sapo a couple times. I go right up to the accusers and tell them they are full of shit, that they don’t know what they are talking about, and that I was taking on cops a decade before they were born. They have never stuck with their BS.
I did see some punks try to stone one photog for allegedly being a sapo. They missed.
One thing to keep in mind is that the first person to yell “sapo” often is one. It’s a classic divide-and-conquer technique that also takes the attention off the real cops in the room.
You’re not the first person to comment to me at how bad of a shot (how bad shots?) the encapuchados are. I’ve only seldom tried to throw a rock at someone, but I’m pretty sure they’re better at it than me.
I’ve never been accused of being a sapa, but I think people have an image of what that would look like, and it probably doesn’t look like a gringa on a bike with a photog’s-type camera. Who knows.
Good point about the person yelling sapo potentially being one. Something smelled rotten about the whole scene, and I wasn’t confident in the red-shirted woman’s “transparency” (as it were). Maybe that’s why. Thanks for responding!
Hm- I had never given a thought to the possibility of sapo accusations! Could be scary & nasty.
Now, just playing devil’s advocate for a moment… When I look at that picture, I can’t help but wonder if the woman in the red shirt was actually picking the other one’s pocket! Or am I just being cynical (in the English sense of the word)?
Any way you look at it, it must have been a very uncomfortable situation for the young woman with a camera!
yeah, there was something weird going on, up above settysoutham wonders if it was all on the up and up as well. Troubling, to say the least. Whatever the woman in red may or may not have taken, she did not take the woman in black’s camera!
Reminds me of that old classic The Monsters are Due on Main Street.