Panama to Patagonia

by Charles M. Pepper

A morning or an evening stroll along the Alameda de las Delicias—Delicious Walk, in English—shows much of Chilean life. It is a shaded avenue with a central paseo, or walk, a roadway on either side between rows of poplar trees,—the roadway being given over to the trolley cars, and then the main thoroughfares which form the street. There are some handsome residences and many commonplace ones. The stores are not fine. The Alameda is too long (three miles) and too broad for trade, and the shopping district locates itself elsewhere.

Chilean patriotism is rampant on the Alameda, though it is not always artistic. The avenue has statues to O’Higgins and other national heroes, with groups commemorative of incidents in the war for independence. A statue has been erected to the international hero, San Martin, the Argentine chieftain who led the allied armies of the patriots to victory against Spain. An unambitious monument to Buenos Ayres typifies the completion of the telegraph line between Chile and the Argentine Republic across the Andes in 1865.

While many of the groups on the Alameda commemorate war heroes and war incidents, peace also is recognized. There is a statue to Benjamin Victor MacKenna, the historian, with the inscription that the heroes thus pay tribute to the chronicler of their prowess. He was defeated for the Presidency by a soldier. I like even better the memorial to Father Molina, the Jesuit naturalist, who rendered distinguished service to science. It is an obscure little statue, yet it shows that the warlike nation has thoughts of the sacrifices and the achievements of science as well as of arms.

Santiago is an ancient capital, for when the Boston tea party was held, its population was larger than that of either Boston or Philadelphia. With its suburbs included, it numbers about 300,000 inhabitants. It was laid out by the old Spanish town-makers with the customary regularity of streets and plazas, but not in the usual checkerboard form. The Alameda and the Mapocho River form a triangle which encloses the most densely populated sections like a fan, so that the east and west streets are not parallel. Santa Lucia is at the vertex or the rivet. The fan opens from the Alameda, and spreads over Cousiño Park, the race-track, and various public institutions.

The principal square is the Plaza of Arms, one corner of which is occupied by the Cathedral. Nothing about the Cathedral is especial, nor are the churches themselves particularly striking, for they are not mediævally ecclesiastical. Some of them are Florentine. Santiago as a whole has less of the typical Spanish architectural appearance than any other large city in South America. The business blocks are substantial structures of two and three stories, with many arcades and portals. The private residences have fronts with many façades, and are quite ornate. The patios, or courts, within are paved with variegated tiles. The glimpses of the fountains and of green trees and yellow oranges afford a pleasing picture to the stranger. He longs to enter and be at home in these secluded orange groves, set, as they are, in the amphitheatre of the snow-covered Cordilleras.

Some of the public edifices are comparatively new, while many are of the Spanish and colonial epoch. The Moneda, or Government Building, belongs to the latter class. It is rambling and old, with no exterior pretensions, but with many courts, circular balconies, and grilled windows. The President occupies a smaller house for his residence. The Congress building is new, and is of the architecture of the Renaissance. It is on the site of the Jesuit Church that was burned in 1863,—one of the world’s holocausts, in which 2,300 persons lost their lives. In front of the Supreme Court building is a statue to Andre Bello, the author of the Chilean Civil Code and an eminent authority on international law.

The National Library is housed in the old Congress hall. It has a very extensive collection of manuscript records of the Inquisition, brought from Lima, and of other rare historical documents, including the colonial archives. I visited the Library one afternoon, and was shown some of its treasures by Director Montt. But the atmosphere of secluded scholarship did not come upon me until in a remote recess I met the Orientalist of the institution, a priestly bookworm in his clerical sotana, a skull-cap covering his tonsure, keen eyes peering from the spectacles across a large inquisitive nose,—altogether a striking figure of the recluse in the midst of the musty wisdom of the past.

Some sections of the capital city are shabby. A walk in the poorer parts—and they cover much territory—disclosed to me even more than shabbiness, grinding poverty. Across the Mapocho, the walled and bedded river, is a church with a gaudy blue front and a dreary triangular plaza. Penury stretches on all sides. The dwellings are low, with floors below the street level and in the cold and rainy season under water. The interiors are repulsively forbidding and unsanitary. The comforts of life, let alone the decencies, cannot be acquired in such squalid surroundings. No subject of municipal legislation is more pressing than that of sanitary tenements, and no municipality has shown greater indifference to it heretofore than Santiago. Until something is done in this direction, the palpitating social question will continue to palpitate, and purely political issues will have to be decided under the scowl of the proletariat.

The women conductors on the Santiago tramways have been often described. They are not many, and they are not all of them the loveliest of their sex, but they are faithful and obliging. They collect the fares about as rapidly as men would do. The motorists on the trolleys are men.

A pleasing view of the poorer class of the population may be had on a national holiday or a Church celebration. I had it one day when the festival of Corpus Christi was commemorated. Both Church and State took part. In the Plaza de Armas were altars with burning candles. There were the troops in their gayest trappings; the infantry in blue breeches with yellow stripes, wearing white plumes; the cavalry with blue plumes, and the military bands with red plumes,—a gorgeous grouping of colors. It was a fine army showing, more imposing than the priestly conclave which, approaching from the adjoining streets, entered the plaza in front of the Cathedral. The parade was led by the Procession of the Cross, composed of various societies. Delegations from the different parishes followed. Next came the religious communities,—the Franciscans, the Dominicans, the Capuchins, the Mercedarios, and the Augustinians. After them the parochial clergy brought up by the prebendary under the pallium, the archbishop being unable to occupy that place on account of illness. The pallium was preceded by the archbishop’s cross, and was conducted by local notabilities.