Mario and Machismo

Concepción, Chile

Concepción was halfway between Pucón and Santiago and seemed like a reasonable spot for a layover betwewen bus rides. It was a big city with no tourism, so I booked an apartment off of AirBnB.

My first night there was chill. I played Super Mario Bros Super Nintendo and watched basketball. It was a nice break after the tourist madness of Pucón.

The AirBnB had been listed as an "entire apartment," but the second morning I woke up to a woman in the kitchen. She turned out to be the mother of my host.

Then later in the day two women came back from a vacation and joined me. They were sharing the larger room while I stayed in the small one. They smoked cigarettes in the apartment and drank fancy beers.

All of this came as quite a surprise to me, but I really liked the ladies, so I just rolled with it. I drank some of their beer and chatted them up.

They told me about a nascent feminist movement in Concepción that had begun two years earlier and focused on domestic violence.

Violence against women is a huge problem all across Latin America, where machismo is the norm. In Chile there had been some recent high profile cases and the issue was front and center in popular consciousness.

I saw feminist graffiti wandering around Concepción. I also saw a park with fake dinosaurs. Mostly though I just played Mario and watched sports.