Teleton: The event of the season

Chile is not a philanthropic society. I witnessed one aspect of this directly when I began my efforts to put together a volunteer-based event listing and cultural portal with the aim of facilitating tourism in Valparaiso. Several months later, I am still moving forward only inches at a time. The main reason? Finding chilenos who will even consider volunteering. The concept of working for things other than money--for experience, for a greater good--is just not as common here as it is in the United States. People tend to be very excited about my project, right up until they find out that I'm not trying to turn a profit.

This is an understandable result of the very active class divide in Chile. Long amongst the top ten most inequal countries in the world, it's only within the last few years that the gap between rich and poor has improved to the point of making us the fourteenth worst country in the world for wealth distribution. The current minimum wage is 144 thousand pesos a month--less than $300. As you may recall if you've been reading this blog recently, this is a 10% increase from the previous rate that was achieved only through strikes by government workers. It wasn't until the papers stopped being pushed and the trash stopped being collected that this modest hike was able to pass.

It is stated statistically that 10% of the Chilean workforce works for minimum wage. In reality, many more work for even less. The minimum wage, after all, only includes those who are paid a salary. Many people in this country are paid on different schemes. For instance, many construction workers and the omnipresent housekeepers or nanas are paid per job or sometimes per diem. Both groups are horrifically underpaid, generally making 10 thousand pesos or less for a day of work. Garment workers are another hard-hit group, as they are paid per item produced and often face stiff quotas. This leads to a complete disregard for working hours limitations. The same problem causes agricultural workers to log 60 hours a week in the picking fields during harvest time, and 10 to 16 hour days in the packing plants. All of these groups of workers survive on a feast-or-famine income, and have almost no rights. Meanwhile, a group of under fifteen families control nearly all of the country's wealth.

There is a billboard between Valpo and Vina del Mar that is very telling. It reads, (rough translation): I study engineering, but I'm angry that we're not building a more equal Chile. So much is contained in that 'but.' The class gap in Chile goes back to the days where a scarce group of patrons (the ancestors of today's power families) ran large plantations, and the rest of the country worked on them. The resulting mindset places a stiff barrier between SES groups. People simply don't feel obliged to help those less fortunate, because that lack of resources is seen as the result of some inherant inadequacy on the part of the lower class. Wait, you study a prestigious career at a university.....but you want to do something about poor people?! Unthinkable!

It is all of this background that makes the yearly Teleton, and the accompanying national excitement, a truly bizarre event.

Teleton is an organization that provides physical therapy and other aid to disabled children throughout Chile. It is financed by a two day--you guessed it--annual telethon. This is nothing akin to the PBS telethons that I recall from childhood weekends. Teleton is a full fledged extravaganza, and it sweeps the country like a tidal wave.

The actual telethon is a sort of variety show, hosted by the irrepressible Don Francisco. This man holds an odd position in the Chilean pantheon. He is the visionary behind Sabado Gigante, the long running variety show that has dominated latin television since its inception in 1962. The show began in Chile, the native country of Don Francisco (whose actual name is Mario Kreutzberger). It was incredibly popular both here and throughout the Spanish speaking world, and in 1986 the big man took advantage of his success and decamped to Miami, Florida, where he has worked ever since with Univision. This desertion leads many chilenos to claim antipathy towards the demigod of daytime television, but in reality he is treated with the mixture of awe and reverential respect that is given to all chilenos who estabilsh themselves on an international level. He can be found gracing billboards across the country, endorsing any number of products, and of course, he returns every year for the Teleton.

Allie and I decided to do Teleton Chilean style, so we headed to our friend Carla's house to watch the first night with her and her friends. All across the country, friends and families were doing the same: sharing beer marked with the Teleton logo, we sat and watched the program. Nearby, on Muelle Baron, Valparaiso's Teleton party was underway under flashing lights and booming reggaeton. In the studio audience in Santiago, the camera scanned the crowd, revealing an obviously high society mix with President Bachelet in the front row.

The show cycles through various types of presentations. First, a dramatic story about someone whose life has been changed by Teleton, told with all the requisite tearful interviews, violin music, and upbeat visions of life today. A coworker of mine at Duoc was the first story to be featured, and later we also met a small girl in a near-vegetative state and a young man with severely limited use of his arms. In between these segments, Don Francisco and other celebrities put on comedy sketches that I generally failed to follow. Then the screen would cut to a city's Teleton party, where a local host would interview community group leaders about the donations they would raised. Many of these people would launch into a long speech, leading everyone in the living room and many of those on TV to shout "Cuanto! Cuanto!" until the number was divulged. The directors of several large chain stores appeared on the show as well, making the somewhat half-decent promise to donate large sums of money--if a certain number of sales were made the following day.

The next day, the morning news devoted 16 pages to Teleton recap so that all of it could be relived.

In the end, the 2008 Teleton--the 30th event of its kind--raised an incredible 16,589,850,127 pesos. At current exchange rates, that's 24,641,989 US dollars. This is a program that does wonderful rehabilitation work, and it is hope-inspiring to see it receiving such an outpouring of support.

Nonetheless, I found myself looking at the whole thing with somewhat skeptical eyes. "We have incredible solidarity as a nation," one Chilean told me. I'm inclined to disagree. Two days of charity a year is simply not enough in a country with an economic situation like Chile's.

"Teleton has fundamentally changed our society," another told me. I do believe this, and I also hope that in time it can produce even more change. Teleton, with its campy extravaganza, evening dresses, and giant parties, introduced the concept of charity to Chile in a way that had not been done before. I hope that perhaps this phenomenon can spread, so that some day in Chile helping the unfortunate will be a social responsibility, not a weekend of festivities.