Castro, Isla Chiloe, Chile
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Imagine that shortly after the Boston tea party, some King George loyalists decided to hole up on Manhattan, cut off all ties with the rest of the nascent nation, and just get real weird for awhile. That´s pretty much what happened here on Chiloé, the last stronghold of the Spanish crown here in Chile until 1844. This isolation wasn´t voluntary, as in my ridiculous example, but rather was a result of the uprising of the indigenous Mapuche people against the Spanish imperialists in 1599. The Mapuche were content to have gained back their territory in the mainland, and pretty much left the island of Chiloé to fend for themselves. Once a year, a ship sailed from Lima to Chiloé, bringing them supplies and news from the rest of the Spanish empire. Chiloé was not officially incorporated into the new republic of Chile until nearly 50 years after the Chilean war of independence had begun. All these years of isolation allowed the Chilotés to come up with some crazy cultural practices and mythology pretty distinct from the rest of Chile. Some of them remind me of ghost stories from the low country in South Carolina, or of how Haiti´s hybrid of Catholicism and voodoo, albeit with more emphasis on fantastic creatures. Apparently, the Spanish conquistadors were quite superstitious and brought all these silly ideas over with them, which were then blended with indigenous creation myths. My favorite creature is the Chiloté basilisk, a chicken with a snake´s body. He happens when you allow a rooster to incubate a chicken egg (always watch your roosters carefully), and then sets up shop underneath your house to do his dirty work. As you may have guessed, he´s there to suck up the saliva of all the house´s inhabitants until they get dehydrated to death (obviously, that´s what a chicken snake would do.) The only way to surely rid yourself of this nasty character is to burn your house down. Like I said, these Chilotés really know how to make stuff up.
The island is also famous for it´s churches, built with distinctive architecture and an almost complete absence of metal, owing to the only one supply ship a year I was telling you about earlier. They used wood for everything down here, including nails and machine gears. To tell the truth, they made a lot of stuff out of wood that you ought not to. For instance, the pitiful wooden anchor on display in the Castro city museum. I promise to upload plenty of church pictures if I can ever find a USB connection.
We spent about a week in Chiloé, which is literally infested with tiny villages and a crack bus system linking them all together. We hiked around in the most disorganized National Park we´ve been to in South America, (the park office just pretended there were trails and campsites)which was nonetheless a nice taste of the wild, temperate rainforest that covers the entire western side of the island. All the local people were accomodating and thoughful in that way that only country people can be (the largest city on the island is 30,000 people, most are around 2-4,000.) No haunted houses though. If anyone from Chiloé is reading this, you guys need some haunted houses. Just make them up, y´all are good at that.
pictures someday, I promise.
Update: look! `pictures:
special rewards for those who identify the scary cat skeleton
