The new local

One of my favourite bars in Santiago is Cafe Brazil, this cool rickety old place with walls plastered with posters of long-gone festivals and demonstrations, obligatory Chilean leftist iconography of Che Guevara, Victor Jara and Salvador Allende, and the scribblings of years of beatnik intellectual contemplation (to be honest I haven´t got round to reading the walls and it could just as well be Jose 4 Sonia or Diego woz 'ere although the bohemian vibe and sixties and seventies political slogans allows you to suspect such a thing). The bar is mellow, there´s live music most nights (bands, singers and spontaneous jams), cold and reasonably priced beer, healthy measures of pisco, and complimentary popcorn of the highest calibre! So, all in all, it´s a pretty swinging joint.

I guess Cafe Brazil is a bit of a local institution whose regulars have been going there for years. It started out as a smaller cafe in Plaza Brasil and became a venue for political meetings and discussion, as well as other themes, due to a lack of alternatives in the barrio. Over time the place started to get more popular with students, musicians, writers and artists, gradually developing into a centre of left-wing politics and alternative culture. It´s small size eventually became a problem and they moved around the corner to bigger premises in Avenida Cumming, in a building previously the headquarters of one-time presidential candidate for the Communist Party, Gladys Marin, and subsequently used by other affiliated political groups. It remains there today and is typical of the shabby but charming old buildings that make up this part of Santiago.

They put on a lot of decent music on most nights of the week, with Chilean folk and andina musicians very popular and welcome thanks to their intrinsic links with the left-wing political movement. There is also regular poetry, dance classes, theatre workshops and so on. It also maintains its political identity: outside in the street there is a display which documents the positive steps taken by the socialist administration of Allende to improve the lot of the people and the subsequent reversals implemented by the dictatorship. Then there´s this old boy, who I take to be the dueño (landlord), who wanders around the tables stern-faced and impeccably dressed. For me, this is what a bar should be: venue, meeting place, cultural and community centre and workshop.

There are a lot of nice bars and places to eat in this part of town but Cafe Brazil is pretty unique. It´s also my new local as I just moved in around the corner and expect I´ll be heading there regularly in the evenings. Last night there was this female group who mixed it up a bit with traditional andina songs and then some cumbia. I´m not sure what´s on this weekend but it doesn´t matter, you can just head over and pay a couple of luca on the door and there´s likely to be something interesting going on. The link to the website´s at the side of the page to the left. Definitely a good place.