ZThemes

y estamos tan cerca

kasi, chilean, 21: a jack of all trades with a degree on failure who enjoys to make herself cry and has a predictable passion for cats and sob stories.

♥ ~ ♦ ~ ♠ ~ ♣

iguanaco:

foldingcranes:

nikofag:

Do you realize that everytime we talk about “Andean Bros” we always picture Perú and Bolivia …

But we should actually be including Chile, too?

I mean, he has a goodamn huge portion of the cordillera

and he has the fucking condor in his national emblem.

(Althought hat sounds totally peruvian/bolivian for me)

Thank you, Nikobro.

I’ve always been afraid to say it… but when people talk about ANDEAN BROS and include Ecuador and even Colombia sometimes, I feel deeply sad. I feel a sadness that comes from a particular isolation that my country has experienced since a long time ago.

We are an Andean country. Our culture it’s very Andean in a lot of aspects.

And when I see how everyone goes all ANDEAN BROS and forgets Chile, I don’t blame them. I just feel super, super sad.

(A thing to clarify: Chile it’s culturally considered an Andean country. This kind of thing doesn’t only depend on having a part of la cordillera, it implies more than it.)

Hello I’m sorry too enter into this but I ave thought the Is Chile Andean trough and I’ve never decided whether to do it or not. If Chile is culturally Andean I apologize but I think sometimes I run with my own definition of what Andean culture is. That’s because Ecuador is a very decentralized country and one is taught to feel Andean, Costeño or Oriental before feeling Ecuadorian.

For me Andean culture is something between tecno-huayno and eating cuy, and drink derivated from maiz morado, it’s deeply poor and indigenous communities and a set of tradition dealing with mountains or spirits (duendes, apus, shamanes serranos). And cities strategically built between active volcanos that will get us. I think I have always associated it with a sincretism of “Quechua” (because not all the traditions are quechua either) and Spanish tradition (the use of some word like wachafo or the traditional “r” done like a sh +r). Also with more traditional lifestyles and the historical predominance of the system of latifundios and ore mines. 

I think everyone have his definition of Andean and it’s something that is not delimited and can be argued. I’ve seen the same thing about Panama (is he Central america? South American? sometimes they consider themselves Caribbean). But hum the point is I agree with Kassi that the cordillera don’t make you culturally Andean. And I would love to hear about Chile Andean culture.

Okay, I’ll write something more well-thought and better documented tomorrow when I’m not DYING and I actually use my cool stuff. I’m sorry if I’m often annoying  about the topic but denying andino culture in Chile for me it’s a sensitive subject because, as I’ve said many times before, I was born and raised in Northern Chile where our andino culture was born and it lives and it prospers and it’s present through so many important things. Andino culture it’s strong from Azapa Valley to the Atacama desert through Elqui Valley, it extends from Arica to Coquimbo. Andino culture in Chile it’s a reminder of the past, did you know that the Incans ruled a lot of native communities in Chile? They extended until El Maule, actually and that influenced those communities to this day. Like Diaguitas, who didn’t enjoy paying tributes to anyone so they copied Incan patterns wrong on purpose and their crafts looked funny with those weird sloppy patterns on them!

Andino culture talks about burials with corns and tools and beautiful mummies and burials where people got stuffed inside llamas and it talks about actually eating llamas and using alpacas for warm and vicuñas for labour and it’s about beautiful telares with so many colors and it’s about communities speaking quechua and kunza and aymara in the north (and chedungun by the mapuches and picunches and other communities in the south and, I’ll remind you, chedungun it’s strongly related to quechua). It’s about dances and sunsets and crafts that belong to people who live from the earth and worship the sun and the mountains.

Welp I swear I’ll write something better tomorrow.