Monday, March 01, 2004

Class Struggle

In Chile, there really aren´t many problems with race relations- here it is all about class relations- who is rich, who is poor, the ¨good¨ neighborhoods vs. the ¨bad¨ ones, etc. And everyone talks about everyone else who is ¨cuico¨(I don´t know if that is how it is spelled, but it means ¨snobby¨), but no one thinks that they themselves are.

For instance, Rene (Adrien´s roomate) talks about how my host family is cuico because they live in Las Condes, an nice, safe area but with high prices and people that tend to vote very conservatively. I would consider it middle class. But then middle-class people talk about others that live on the outskirts of town with larger houses and more property as being cuico. And last night, I went to dinner/mid-night snack (since it was mid-night when I was picked up) at a friend of a friend´s house who lived in Providencia, which is closer to the centro of Santiago but with more tall buildings and right night to El Golf, another ¨cuico¨area (or so I have been told).

Their house wasn´t a house, it was a whole floor of the building. The elevator literally left you at there entryway. It was beautiful. But during the dinner of take-out sushi, one of the friend´s of this friend was talking about a cuico wedding that she went to at Club Hipico, the horse race track here, and how cuico everyone was.

I wonder who the most cuico person is in Chile and if they call themselves or anyone else cuico?

posted by Rebecca @ 3/01/2004 12:29:00 PM