Arte Callejero in Valparaíso

Saturday in Valparaíso, or "Valpo" as the locals call it. A good day to wander the city aimlessly. I walked down the hill to the Plan, stopped in a café on the Plaza Victoria for coffee, then relaxed in the plaza for a while, watching the city go by. I then went for a ride on the Metro, a train that runs along the waterfront all the way to Viña del Mar. This neighboring city is the complete opposite of Valpo; sleek, modern, wealthy, with a long row of highrise apartment buildings along the beach. I took the Metro to El Salto, then walked about a kilometer to the Jardin Botánica Nacional (National Botanical Garden), which was a bit of a disappointment. I returned to Valpo and continued my wanderings, this time on a hunt for the most beautiful arte callejero.

After a short time in Valparaíso, the cultural importance of arte callejero becomes very apparent. The city is a veritable museum of graffiti, murals, and random compositions in the most improbable places. The artwork grew out of political activism in the 1960s and early 70s, when leftist youths formed the Ramona Parra Brigades to graphically express support for workers, farmers, miners, and indigenous groups. Their artwork became an important component in Salvador Allende's campaign for president in 1970.

There is a section of Valparaíso known as the Museo al Cielo Abierto, although it is very different from the place of the same name in the Santiago barrio of San Miguel. This collection of murals started in 1994 as a project undertaken by the Mural Painting Workshop of painter Francisco Méndez, a professor at the Universidad Católica of Valparaíso. Murals have since spread to all corners of Valparaíso, so the whole city seems like an open air museum. The murals are striking, with brilliant colors that seem to reveal human emotion in all its contradictions.

I finished my wanderings around the hills of Valparaíso at La Sebastiana, one of three residences that Pablo Neruda had in Chile. La Sebastiana is a five-story collection of the poet's eccentricities, located on Cerro Florida, just a few blocks from my cabaña. Neruda wanted a home in Valparaíso for the times when he needed to get away from the hectic pace of Santiago, a place where he could feel the inspiration and creativity of this coastal city. He sent out a request to some friends to help him find the right place:

Neruda found the house in 1959, in a state of partial construction. The Spanish architect Sebastián Collado began building it in 1949, but construction was halted when he died shortly thereafter. Neruda brought in workers to complete the construction and began to move into the house two years later. He named it La Sebastiana in honor of the architect and filled it up with his collections of antique maps, paintings, and marine memorabilia.

I explored La Sebastiana for a while, taking the audio tour of the house and slowly making my way through the five floors of poetry in architecture. I had a late lunch at a small café nearby, then went back to my cabaña to enjoy my last night in Valparaíso.

Late Saturday afternoon and the Valparaíso orchestra is out in full force. The usual barking dogs, honking horns, screeching seagulls, car alarms, and shrieking children are all accompanied by a pounding disco beat. The music is coming from the balcony of a house over on the next cerro, where an all night party is just commencing. Now the church bells begin to ring out as the sun approaches the horizon, signalling the end of another day in the Valley of Paradise.