La Serena: Communist traitors or Atacamaña mummies?

We had a few hours to spend in the coastal city of La Serena on our way from the valley to the desert. What a surprisingly charming town, what with its colonial era architecture and ocean air and all.

And Christmas decorations. In June.
It is winter, so...

I still see a guy with a huge head,
skinny neck, abnormally long arms
and stumpy legs.

This is the same statue

La Serena has 29 stone churches in the neoclassic and baroque styles, so we did a quick tour of the churches (we arrived about 15 minutes before all the churches were closing for the afternoon, so by quick I mean quick). 

Iglesia Catedral

Iglesia Catedral

What does the flayed skin
mean in this picture?

Iglesia San Francisco

Iglesia Santo Domingo

Iglesia Santo Domingo

Iglesia Santo Domingo,
and the most open-air confessional
I have ever seen.

With the remaining time we could choose between history at  Museo Histórico Casa Gabriel González Videla or mummies at Museo Arqueológico. 

We chose history, and toured the house of President Don Gabriel Gonzalez Videla. As president (1946-1952), he claimed Chilean Antarctica, gave women the right to vote, and extended social security to more Chileans. 

Casa de Gabriel Gonzalez Videla

The man himself

Just the day before, I had read in Mi Vida Junto a Pablo that he used the support of the Communist party to get elected to the presidency, and then quickly outlawed the party (this was toward the beginning of the Cold War) sending Pablo Neruda (among others) out of Congress and into exile. 

They didn't mention that at the house.

The many, many faces of Gabriela Mistral

Gabriela scowling

Gabriela frowning

Gabriela looking displeased

Gabriela looking displeased again

Gabriela ¨gazing blankly up at the sky
from a watery pit"

Born Lucilia de María Godoy Alcayaga in 1889 in Vicuña, Chile, Gabriela Mistral would become the first Latin American to accept the Nobel Prize for literature. She was an educator who worked to reform the Chilean and Mexican education systems in the early 20th Century, a journalist, a feminist, and (like other Latin American artists) held various diplomatic posts throughout the world.

Gabriela´s birthhouse

Water filtration station
from the 1880s

Gabriela´s primary school

Gabriela´s primary school

Gabriela´s gravesite in Montegrande,
a village in the Valle de Elqui

I did not get the chance to learn about her as much I would have liked to, and reading her poetry and about her life is on my ever-growing to-do list.  One quote of hers stuck out to me, though.She wrote, in Recados para America, that El aprendizaje de un idioma fue siempre una aventura fascinante el mejor de todos los viajes. (Learning a language was always a fascinating adventure, the best of all travel).

I think she might get me.

Piscology 101

You mean, this has been going on
since the 80s?

The first I heard of pisco was in December of 2013, when my friend Ann first heard about my trip to Chile. "You have to drink pisco!" So, as part of my very important research I did try some pisco at home before I left. The pisco sours were good, but not great. I was very happy to discover that I was doing it wrong, and that I now have a better idea of how to make a proper pisco sour.

Welcome to Chilean Pisco Country
otherwise known as Valle de Elqui

The Spanish introduced vineyards to the west coast of South America in the late 1500s/early 1600s, and grapes thrive in this valley. It is where the majority of Chilean pisco comes from. (It hardly ever rains, and yet the grapes grow with a minimal irrigation system in place). 

Pisco, like other alcohols, is made by first fermenting the (in this case) grapes (similar to wine), and then distilling them by evaporating the alcohol, collecting the steam, and condensing it back into liquid form. Ask any Chilean, and they will tell you that Chile invented pisco. Ask any Peruvian, and they will tell you that Peru invented pisco. 

This is such a popular and long-term debate that the president of Chile changed the name of La Unión (a small village in the heart of the Elqui Valley) to Pisco Elqui in the 1930s, just to give Chile a bit of an edge in the debate over who gets to claim pisco. I think he was going for the same prestige of the Champagne region of France. 

Pisco Elqui Iglesia

We toured two pisco production places - an artesenal distillery called Los Nichos, and the Capel plant.  

Los Nichos started production in 1868, and have done little to change their process since then. They produce their pisco in small batches, and have perfected the craft over the years. 

Fermentation station

Distillery room

Pisco in the making

Pisco barrels

The founder had little recesses in the basement of Los Nichos (nichos means niche, or alcove in Spanish). He would regularly invite his drinking buddies to sample his product, then filled the recesses with bottles of pisco in their honor.

Los Nichos

Each buddy received a poem and pisco

The Capel plant (this is the only brand of pisco I was able to find in Minneapolis) operates on a much larger scale. While it is a smaller operation than I was expecting, it is definitely a different feel than the small distillery in the heart of the valley. 

Trippy welcome sign

Do not eat the grapes at Capel. Do drink them, however.

123 days without an accident at the plant.

Fermentation room

Distillery process

Barrels and barrels of pisco

This picture did not turn out well, but these are pallets of oak-flavored cubes that they add to the pisco somewhere in the process. I was surprised to see them out on the floor during the tour!

Oak barrels aren´t enough?

Bottling room

Capel makes a variety of pisco flavors that I can only hope become available in the US. They brilliantly created manjar lucuma pisco. The caramel and the fruit are some of the best flavors to be found in Chile. 

Don´t forget the maoi.

Pre-Colombian art in South America

The Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino in Santiago, Chile is a must-see to get a good sense of the traditions and art of South American and Andean cultures before the colonization period.

I love the expressions that are portrayed in the faces of the masks, figurines, and sculptures. 

Who, me?

He appears to be expressing
his displeasure

Such a relaxed
look on his face

Pitchers and pots in the shapes of revered animals were used by several of the pre-Colombian cultures. 

Pitcher in the shape of a cat.
The arch of the back and the straight tail
are portrayed perfectly.

Animal Pitchers: monkeys, and jaguars, and birds

Weapons are among my favorite things to see from any culture.

This club is the only
weapon I noticed.
I guess it was an art museum...

Some Andean cultures used a "lost wax" technique to make gold figures. The technique involved making a figure out of wax, then covering it with clay. As the clay baked and hardened the wax would melt, creating a mold to use with smelted gold. 

Golden lizards
created using the
lost wax method

There were quite a few references in the art to gods and goddesses dressing themselves in the flayed skin of men, women, and animals. (One of the gods, Xipe Totec, translates as Our Flayed Lord). The next two are wearing the skins of a monkey and...a bird? (I forget). 

From a distance, this handsome god
looked like Chi McBride to me

Bird skin?

Animals were not the only revered creatures. Pregnant figurines was a prominent theme among many of the cultures of the Andes. 

Mothers are still very important today

You may have noticed that several of the figures are seated. Seating was a gesture of authority and high status (for both the gods and the human leaders) throughout the cultures of South America. 

A chair fit for a god

Seated Coquero chewing
his coco leaves.

Unfortunately I wasn't allowed to photograph the fabric, which is incredible in Andean tradition. Weaving arrived before ceramics and even before village life in the Andes, and the fabric was used by religious leaders to share their iconography to the coast lines, as well as in funeral rites. Oh, and as blankets. It can get super cold.