My Invented Country by Isabel Allende Read Free Book Online

pilgrims, venerate the millenary nature of our native-growth forests, the moonscape of the deserts ofthe north, the fecund Araucan rivers, or the blue glaciers where time is shattered into splinters.
    We’re talking about 1950. How long I’ve lived, my God! Getting old is a drawn-out and sneaky process. Every so often, I forget that time is passing because inside I’m still not thirty, but inevitably my grandchildren confront me with the harsh truth when they ask me if “in your day” we had electricity. These same grandchildren insist that there’s a country inside my head where the characters in my books live their lives. When I tell them stories about Chile, they think I’m referring to that invented place.

A MILLEFEUILLE PASTRY
    W ho are we, we Chileans? It’s difficult for me to define us in writing, but from fifty yards I can pick out a compatriot with one glance. I find them everywhere. In a sacred temple in Nepal, in the Amazon jungle, at Mardi Gras in New Orleans, on the brilliant ice of Iceland, there you will find some Chilean with his unmistakable way of walking or her singing accent. Although because of the length of our narrow country we are separated by thousands of kilometers, we are tenaciously alike; we talk the same tongue and share similar customs. The only exceptions are the upper class, which has descended with little distraction from Europeans, and the Indians—the Aymarasand a few Quechuas in the north and the Mapuches in the south—who fight to maintain their identities in a world where there is constantly less space for them.
    I grew up with the story that there are no problems of race in Chile. I can’t understand how we dare repeat such a falsehood. We don’t talk in terms of “racism” but, rather, of “the class system” (we love euphemisms), but there is little difference between them. Not only do racism and/ or class consciousness exist, they are as deeply rooted as molars. Whoever maintains that racism is a thing of the past is dead wrong, as I found out in my latest visit, when I learned that one of the most brilliant graduates in the law school was denied a place in a prestigious law firm because “he didn’t fit the corporate profile.” In other words, he was a mestizo, that is, he had mixed blood, and a Mapuche surname. The firm’s clients would never be confident of his ability to represent them; nor would they allow him to go out with one of their daughters. Just as in the rest of Latin America, the upper class of Chile is relatively white, and the farther one descends the steep social ladder the more Indian the characteristics become. Nevertheless, lacking other points of comparison, most of us consider ourselves white. It was a surprise for me to discover that in the United States I am a “person of color.” (Once, when I was filling out a form, I opened my blouse to show my skin color to an Afro-American INS officer who was intent on placing me in the last racial category on his list: “Other.” He didn’t seem to think it was funny.)
    Although few pure Indians remain—approximately tenpercent of the population—their blood runs through the veins of our mestizo people. Mapuches are rather short, and generally have short legs, a long torso, dark skin, dark hair and eyes, and prominent cheekbones. They have an atavistic—and justifiable—mistrust for all non-Indians, whom they call huincas, which doesn’t translate as “whites” but as “land robbers.” These Indians, who are divided into several tribes, contributed greatly to forming the national character, although there was a time when no one with any self-respect admitted the least association with them because of their reputation for drinking, laziness, and thieving. That was not, however, the opinion of Don Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga, a renowned Spanish soldier and writer who came to Chile