Chile is a very strange place. I say that with affection, but it’s true. Perhaps it’s just me, but it doesn’t quite seem to fit into the Latin America schema. Maybe because it’s just so far from everything else in the world, or maybe because my strongest point of reference is the two years I spent in Central America. As a country, a culture, and a people, it has continued to puzzle me since the day I arrived. Sometimes, just when I think I have it figured out and I can see how it fits into the bigger, South American picture, I’m totally thrown for a loop. At first it was the surface level language differences, like fruitilla instead of fresa, and palta instead of aguacate. I got used to those and as I did, the differences and contradictions seemed to become deeper and more complex. The most recent example would be my experience with la once.
La once is about as Chilean as it gets. It’s essentially tea time. Subtleties change from family to family, but the core of it is basically the same; a few times per week, families and/ or friends gather around the dinner table around 8 or 9 pm to drink tea, eat bread, and chat. It’s definitely not dinner, but there’s always food. It’s common to throw some avocado, sliced cheese, ham, butter, and marmalade on the table. It’s not really tea time in the european sense of the word, since some people drink wine, coffee or pisco. La once can last for hours, depending on the characters present, the day of the week, and the amount of alcohol involved.
The topic of conversation during la once varies greatly. It can range from politics and neighborhood gossip, to stories about how life was during the dictatorship (or more lightly put, the military regime, for the right-wingers at la once). One of my wife’s aunts jokingly refers to the conversation around la once as how Chileans, “arreglan el mundo,” or fix the world. I like that perspective. I’m not an active participant in la once conversations, though. I generally like to sit back, enjoy, and simply listen. This is because hoping into a conversation during la once with my Chilean family is like jumping into a river with category 4 rapids; disorienting and potentially dangerous. Okay maybe it’s not dangerous, but it’s definitely difficult to navigate given some of those language differences I mentioned earlier.
The question I have, though, is where did la once come from? Where did this strange custom originate? At first I assumed it had to be from English settlers in Chile, perhaps during the colonial period. There isn’t a substantial English population in Chile and there never has been. There are plenty of German, Polish, and Irish last names floating around, but not a ton of English names. From what I understand, at one point the English Navy had a sizable presence on the coast, but no one has told me that that may be the origin of la once. I asked some of my older Chilean family members and they explained to me that the custom is definitely European. Older, whiter, wealthier Chileans like to think that their ancestral roots and culture come exclusively from Europe, which many of them see as the center of the universe. This is a whole other issue which probably shouldn’t be touched in this blog post.
I asked some of my younger and more leftist co-workers at the University of Chile and they had a different take on la once. They explained to me that la once, meaning “11”, was actually a working class custom. After leaving the factories in the city, or the mines in the north, workers would go buy liquor and drink in a plaza, or find a bar. They would drink aguardiente, which has exactly eleven letters. Instead of saying, “hey let’s go get drunk!” they would casually suggest taking la once. No one can seem to explain how this custom was transferred to the middle and upper classes, but it’s an interesting theory, nonetheless.
I’ve enjoyed taking la once while here in Chile, and I’ll miss it. It’s a great time to catch up with family, eat good food, and take a break from the craziness of life. Unfortunately these are all things that we as North Americans are finding less and less time for. This is definitely one of the strange Chilean customs that I’ll miss the most.
***If anyone is interested, a Chilean friend of mine, who is also a film director, recently made a fantastic documentary called La Once. It follows several older women for over a decade as they meet with their friends for once and talk about life, Chile, friendship, and everything in between.
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