3 Hamburgs

I am really sad that there is no more half-naked dancing in my Tuesday dance class. When we have our final exam in two weeks, male students from another class will come to dance with a class of nearly entirely girls (there are two boys, but like half the class they never show up.) Entonces, there is still hope.

Tuesdays are one of my help the artists days. As I made my way to the ascensor, I was distracted by quite the ruckus on just past Plaza Victoria. (sabes que ruckus= ruction+rumpus?look what you learned today.) A protest, but on a grand scale. An epic protest, not like the animal rights one. The street was packed solid, one side to another. I walked and walked to find the end, and after 8 blocks I found it, but I expect it grew in size from when I saw it. In total, it was estimated that 14,000 municipality workers of all sorts marched in the first of three days of protect, common before the presidential election. The current population of my hometown of Hamburg is 4,167. So picture 3 Hamburgs marching through the port of Valparaíso. Not just marching, it was way more than marching. It was at times so well-organized that it seemed like a happy parade. Groups had matching flags and shirts and costumes, matching signs, coordinated routines, and every sound-making device imaginable. At other times, people ran at random, chanting in unison or otherwise shouting lots of things I did not always understand. If you picture just the horns and flags, and the surrounding streets with haphazard colorful houses and winding stairwells, the result is a Dr. Seuss-like image. It was not like that at all. There was an urgency here, a desperation. Carabineros, police, watched silently. They were surprisingly few and far between, and very collected. They had seen this before. Lines of drummers passed, tons of them. Other instruments too. Leaders shouting into megaphones, people in costumes dancing. A parade. Then more workers, dressed up as what I perceived to be as zombies, pushing garbage cans in a well-choreographed routine down the street, stopping to reform, yelling, repeat. I was mesmerized by the trash can dance, and actually stood for a while watching only that. I wonder how much the government listens to 14,000 protesters, if anything changes. The article in the newspaper was not until page 6; that many people, and the article is not on the front page, just a preview picture. This happens before every presidential election; it is not as big of news as I think. I wonder what the workers that are still at their jobs think. Some are always left behind so no one seeking job happens upon the vacated vicinity like a gold mine.