Chile, Day 9: una turista en Copiapó

Today I got picked up for work at the usual time but I could tell right away that we were taking an unusual route to the Institute. It wasn't until the truck stopped that I understood we were going to the museum, not to the Institute. This trip had been promised last week but it just hadn't worked out.

The Regional Museum for Atacama is housed in the original home of la Familia Matta. The Matta brothers were major players in Copiapó 150 or so years ago and the house furnishings reflect their status. But the museum also houses artifacts from far distant times. Chile has been populated for thousands of years and over that period there have been six different major conquests. You wouldn't think that an area with barely 12 mm of rain would be that attractive to foreigners but of course it's all about gold. The Incas, for example, left a well-stamped trail through the desert (still visible today) and lots of artifacts. The Spanish conquistadors swooped down along the same route, for the same purpose, from Peru. Apparently the first railroad in South America ran from Copiapó to Caldera (about 50 km westward on the coast). People have been marching through Copiapó for a very long time.

It's interesting for me to see how Chile has developed a distinct cultural identity out of such a diverse ethnic background. The museum guide, when describing the Spanish invasion, summarized the contribution of the Spaniards: language and religion. "And that's why we speak Spanish", he said. He did not say, "And that's why we are Spanish." There have been six such waves of invaders but all have been absorbed into the population in one way or another and it seems that the resultant people have only become more Chilean.

After the museum trip we went for lunch and I finally got to eat an empanada marisco. It's a deep-fried pastry filled with ... seafood, I guess. I did recognize what could have been a shrimp but the rest was pretty mysterious. Never mind, it tasted very good and I really didn't need to know.

At work in the afternoon, we had an interesting discussion about the vocational focus for the graduates of the tourism program. Will they (or should they be) generalist tourism workers prepared for a variety of entry-level positions? Or could they contribute in a new sort of role, a kind of 'tourism facilitator'? Such a person could provide a first line of contact for visitors to an area and offer essential information about what tourism products and opportunities are available and how they can be accessed. Based on my recent experience in Copiapó, a person like this would indeed be providing an essential service. Such discussions are one of the reasons I love curriculum work. You are not assisting just to maintain the status quo, you have the opportunity to help evolve it. It's also one of the reasons why curriculum development works so much better when local people -- rather than just foreign 'experts' -- are in control of the development process.