officially chilena...?

I interrupt this long drawn out saga of my trip to Bolivia with the quick story of how I became Chilean. Otherwise known as being assaulted--it's pretty normal here...kinda like in St. Louis. Hah. But really. Okay, let me set the scene for you.

Characters:
Me--looking particularly gringa with my cute jacket, scarf, and chalas (flip-flops).
José Miguel--skinny and wearing plaid...slightly hipster aka not threatening at all.

Scene: On a park bench in a large median downtown that separates two main streets of Central Santiago which is like a long park complete with trees, statues, and said park bench. This median is located in-between the metro stops Los Heroes (the stop for my University) and La Moneda (the Chilean White House). I had my purse with my cell phone, my new camera, and my wallet which had my credit card, my fresh-off-the-press pase escolar (a pass that lets me ride the metro for 1/4th of the cost), $4, and lunch tickets (worth $5 each...i had a months worth).

José Miguel and I had been sitting in the park for a few hours and failed to take into account the fact that all of the people had cleared out and it had gotten rather dark as it was now about 11:00pm.

Enter 4 tipos (unknown guys).

It seemed like they came out of nowhere. They surrounded us and in lowered voices ordered us forcefully to give them our cell phones. José Miguel began by trying to calmly talk them out of it. Yeah, that was a fail. Two guys started feeling up José Miguel and two were focused on me. One of them was standing directly in front of me and the other had sat down on the bench beside me. It was like the typical good cop, bad cop thing. Only this time, they were delinquents. After I handed over my phone, the guy in front of me grabbed my purse, leaving it hanging around my neck, and started feeling it.

"She has more money, she has more money," he spit angrily.

I was just super worried that they would find my camera that I'd had for a total of two weeks. You know, or that they'd pull out a knife.

Good cop saved the day, though, by insisting that I could show them on my own if I had any more money. He then turned to me and tried to calm me down, as i was obviously a bit nervous--shaking and blubbering whatever i could remember in spanish.

"Calmly, calmly. We don't want any problems. Just show us what you have. Calm down."

I took out my wallet and as I did so my keys fell out of my purse. I begged them not to take my keys and they gave them back to me. I then immediately handed over the 2 mil ($4) that i had in my wallet. Bad cop was still not happy. (That's what you get for robbing poor people, saco e weas.) So i showed them everything in my wallet. All of the cards that I have in there and even shook it to show that there weren't any coins inside. When i did that, an argentinian coin fell out, so to show them i meant business, i offered them the coin as well. They didn't want it.

After essentially giving José Miguel a rub down, they finally found his cell phone in his pocket and were satisfied that they had found everything of value that we had. They then ran across the park, crossed the street, and hopped on the bus. I was left stunned and we sat for a few seconds in silence. I was literally shaking still and my heart was pounding. Then José Miguel hopped up and told me to follow him. Evidently we were going to try and catch them...

We ran to the group of taxi drivers that were hanging out in the park and asked if one of them would help us try and catch the bus full of robbers that had just left. Surprisingly, one of them told us to hop in and we took off. Once inside the car, we realized that we didn't have a cell phone to call the police anyway so it wouldn't matter. I was over it and wanted to go home, but I think José Miguel's macho pride was hurting a bit. So...we kept following the bus until we saw a police car going the opposite way. José Miguel ran over to them and when he came back he said that they were going to turn around and come help us. We thanked the taxista profusely to make up for our lack of money and then we waited. On the side of the street. In the place where we were just robbed. The policemen never came and I was sooooo ready to go home, but I was not about to leave José Miguel. Admittedly, he hadn't been much help, but I still felt more safe walking with him than alone.

We saw another police car and walked over to it. And then I felt ridiculous. There was a guy laying on the ground bleeding from his mouth. That's what happens when you don't hand over whatever they ask you for. We got lucky.

We were robbed by probably the worst robbers ever--they didn't get the most expensive thing on me (my camera) and most of them were about as nervous as I was, which makes them even scarier because you never know what they will do. Before this incident, I had always thought about how I would handle myself in this kind of a situation. Weirdly, I was always a lot more put together and tough in my daydreams.

I have never been particularly scared of going out around the city by myself or anywhere for that matter. I think that if you avoid doing things because you are scared, you are not living, so I live and figure that if something happens, at least i enjoyed my time here. (had to tell myself this a few times on buses in bolivia) Unfortunately, after being robbed by these men, I am completely changed. I am markedly more nervous when going out at night and always consider getting robbed a real possibility. I don't let this stop me from going out, but I notice the difference in myself and it saddens me. For the first week after getting robbed I was even more careful during the day--I looked at the people around me as potential robbers, only left the house with what I absolutely needed, and kept my pase escolar and any money i had hidden in my back pocket. Now, three weeks later, I feel much more comfortable, but I do get nervous when in a bad part of town which wouldn't have happened before the robbery.

But at least now I can call myself chilean...because you aren't chilean until you've gotten asaulted in santiago.