Chile's bicentennial year

Since 2007 we’ve been hearing about the Chilean bicentennial, waiting for 2010 to celebrate our national independence. So, since that date, publicity about the topic has been around us, telling to us in what country we are living. Television, radio, newspaper, and even the subway were a big important part of all the publicity. And then we start to become more close to this celebration, and we fell in some way kind of real patriots, but at the same time it’s a weird felling, in fact, we don’t know for sure what is a bicentennial, and what are we talking about.

Certainly, we’re celebrating our first step to the national independence in 1810. The TV shows our history, our most important heroes, transcendental facts of the twenty century and all the things that make us proud. In the streets, the walls talks about the celebration, about the big country that Chile is, and why is so big. Everybody, including journalist, publicist, business men, and the government too shows how this country is like top on everything as a country from the third world, with a brand new democracy and a nice economy that fits as a example for our neighbors of the continent. It’s all that true? It would be great, but looks like Chile is still far away from all that. There are so many people in this country that have nothing to celebrate and the most incredible thing is that they have been convinced to celebrate, to be in the party even when they are not even close to be top in anything. And probably this bicentennial celebration it’s about that, just about make people to believe in a country that doesn’t exist.

However, there are still persons that are not happy with this celebration, angry people from social movements who thinks that it’s enough of telling lies to the people, talking about a dream country, and talking about hope. These persons, these social movements just want to use their rage to make a change, a big social change for all the Chileans that are not part of this celebration, not cause they have been forgotten, but abused by a system that has nothing to do with the poor, with the ones that think in a different way, and all the persons from the minorities.