Scenes From Melimoyu

Scene 1:
A gravel road. Thick green foliage to each side. Three children walk ahead of me, ages 6, 11, and 12. Each wields an article from the church. The youngest, Michaeala, is carrying a porcelain statue of the Mother Mary. “La virgin va primero!” she yells as she sprints ahead. I suppress my desire to tell her to be careful, she may drop the virgin. One has to choose their battles with Michaela; she’s a strong-willed spunkster whose creativity is endless and whose attention span is not.
Gonzalo, average in age and personality, cedes his place as leader to his younger classmate. He is holding a cutting-board sized crucifix in both arms, cradling the adult Jesus like the babe that he once was. He turns around and looks at me to see if I have noticed his funny gesture and I assure him that yes, Gonzalo, you are quite comic.

Behind Gonazalo is Javiera, a girl who appears and acts older than her years. She carries two “flowerpots,” instant coffee tins wrapped in tin foil. Each foil flowerpot is the home of a bouquet of lovely pink carnations. Pink paper petals, stems of plastic.
I bring up the rear, me and my two candles. I find myself wishing they were lit, a nice touch to the impromptu daytime ceremony. In this way we proceed, single file, heading from the school to the church to return the borrowed artifacts.
I have been teaching these children English for four days now. They constitute the elementary school of Melimoyu. Michaela, Gonzalo, and Javiera: the entire school. The roll call in the morning takes no time. Grading papers is a cinch. The children have no choice in the matter; the closest school is three hours away by boat.
“Thee Itsty Bisty Spider…” begins Javiera, and I join in. The other two forget their godly ornaments and try to keep up. “OUT duh duh SUN end duh duh do duh RAIN.” In fact the rain has recently stopped, the emerald forest that surrounds us is wetly glowing, and our march is bathed in its glory.

Scene 2:
Same gravel road. Same thick green foliage. I’m walking toward the teacher’s house where I’m staying for the week. Before it appears from behind the trees I catch a whiff of something distinctly unnatural and unpleasant. Something chemically. A few more steps and I see dark smoke, alive, rising over the trees. Three more steps and the house is visible along with the pile of burning trash directly in front of it. They had told me that there is no waste collection here, that the town’s 38 inhabitants have no way to dispose of their non-organic trash. But still this comes as a shock. The smell of burnt plastic lingers in the air until the following day.

Scene 3:
Same gravel road (it’s the artery of Melimoyu, the only road that exists), I’m with Cecilia, the teacher, and another community member, heading to visit Gonzalo’s mother, Margot. She greets us at the door holding a tiny baby. Through conversation I learn that Sofía, the baby, is the first child to be born in Melimoyu since Michaela, six years ago. I also learn that Margot, a tremendous woman with light skin and dark hair, was beginning to feel lonely since Gonzalo is getting older and her oldest son has moved out. Her husband works for a salmon company and is away all day on the water. But now she has Sofía, she explains, to keep her company so she doesn’t feel so lonely. I nod as if I understand this line of thinking, this rationalization for procreation.
Margot sets the table for onces, the Chilean “meal” typically consisting of bread and cheese that is conveniently inserted between lunch and dinner. As I sink my teeth into the fluffy homemade bread, Cecilia asks Margot if she’s “gotten out lately.” I take this to mean “out of Melimoyu,” since it’s complicated and time-consuming to leave this isolated town. I am therefore surprised when Margot replies, “Yeah… I guess the last time I got out was when I went to the school for the Independence Day festivities.” I nonchalantly look at my watch to check the date. It’s October 1st. Chile celebrates its independence on September 18.

Scene 4:
Cecilia’s house, upstairs. It’s a spacious area surrounded by four plywood walls. Heat rises from the wood burning stove downstairs, keeping the space relatively warm. There’s one large window with a spectacular view of Volcano Melimoyu, detectable less than half the time due to the thick clouds incessant in the area. Now it’s dark outside and the only thing visible through the glass is the reflection of the single naked light bulb protruding from the opposite wall like an angry tumor. For furniture there’s a couch, a van bench, and a TV.
This is our meeting place for the first session of adult English classes. We started at the medical clinic but it was too cold there. Two of the four people present I haven’t met before today. They are Héctor, the twenty-two year old paramedic, and Marcelo, a middle-aged self-proclaimed entrepreneur.
After the class Marcelo asks me about Patagonia Sur’s tourism intentions. I start on my spiel about the company’s plan to foment local economic development through tourism while promoting conservation of the region’s vast ecological resources.
“I’m really interested in tourism myself,” he explains. He looks around to make sure the others who have gone downstairs are out of earshot. He lowers his voice. “I’m sure you’ve realized by now that to speak poorly of the salmon industry is considered a crime in this town.” Another paranoid behind him. “But if I had to choose between conservation and the salmon companies, I’d choose conservation. An industry that exhausts and contaminates natural resources a mi no me sirve. It doesn’t work for me.” We hear someone coming up the stairs. In a normal volume Marcelo proceeds, “Would you like to come over tomorrow to have a coffee and we can talk some more?”
“Sure,” I tell him, utterly intrigued.

Scene 5:
The beach of Melimoyu. The kids from the school are participating in a clean-up with the salmon company, a clean-up that I suspect has coincided with my visit not by accident. Several male workers from AguaChile have already formed piles on the beach of trash: plastic feed bags, remnants from nets, nylon ropes, a shoe, plastic bottles, etc. The amount is staggering. A hundred feet from the shore, bushes lining the beach resemble Christmas trees, decorated by the wind with tinsel of plastic bags and strings. Red strings, yellow strings, blue strings, a plethora of colors represented in this one bush before me. For a second I consider it a great teachable moment; we could have an entire class on colors in English. I disentangle them, one at a time, and shove them into the large plastic feed bag.
But the job at hand is endless. Here the ocean’s tide is continually bestowing gifts of garbage to Melimoyu. Gifts associated not with Yuletide but with trashtide. One might argue politically incorrectly that the ocean is an “Indian giver,” that she is ungraciously “re-gifting.”
But from whom did she receive the waste?
That much is clear to even eleven and twelve year olds Gonzalo and Javiera. Both children’s parents work in the salmon industry. When asked who produces all the trash we were picking up they didn’t hesitate to respond, “Las salmoneras.”
Then why did Cecilia tell me that “the last thing the salmon farms do is empty garbage into the ocean”? Because her family and many others rely on the industry for income. Their houses are built with money earned from the industry. Their children’s mouths are fed with money earned from the industry. Their cars and plates and toothpaste and lamps and socks and satellite dishes and firewood are purchased with money from the industry. In fact, I was told that when the industry arrived in 2000 to Melimoyu, locals referred to it as San Salmonera: “Saint Salmon Company.” It saved them. And now they fear that a conservation-oriented NGO may wreck that salvation.