“With this city, there is no in-between. You either love it or you hate it,” said Chilean local Diego. “You can’t appreciate Valparaíso in a tour van, just taking pictures. You won’t see all the little details.”
Valparaíso is a port town on the coast of Chile, about a two-hour journey from Santiago and well worth the excursion on a bus. It’s solicited as a day trip from Santiago, but our one day stop over quickly morphed into a nine-day extension. It was a combination of the artistic imprint and the unique hostel atmosphere that held us captive.
There are two very different experiences to be had in Valparaíso, and similar to the differences between being a tourist and a traveler, they both depend on how much one invests in the culture. The city’s rough exterior can be intimidating, so tourists stick to the UNESCO neighborhoods and often head to the adjacent town of Viña del Mar for entertainment —a city groomed with high-rise buildings, casinos and a McDonalds that failed to succeed in Valparaíso. But with the right level of immersion, walking the hills of Valparaíso exposes an undeniably raw beauty.
Structurally, Valparaíso is a peculiar place. It’s a stretch of 42 hills that make up the town—all connected in the most incoherent way possible. It’s an assortment of secret stairwells, narrow roads, and unpredictable intersections all created in attempts to bridge the construction of the past with the overflow of the urban future.
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The story goes that the city was never truly founded, meaning that there wasn’t a city plan— no designated city center, mapped out roads, or appropriate sewer systems— the port was never intended to be a settlement. Originally, Valparaíso gained its wealth in being the last stop for sailors making their trade routes around the continent of South America. As business thrived, the port expanded from the ocean front and up the hills without much consideration for the future.
Valparaíso was booming until the Panama Canal was built in 1914 which connected the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The new trade route through the canal saved businesses time and money, but it robbed Valparaíso of the centrality it once possessed in the world of trade. The port is still active today, but not to the extremity that it was in the early twentieth-century. Now, Valparaísoo is heavily dependent on tourism. The city is a UNESCO World Heritage site which has aided in the lure of tourists and secured the city a place in tour guides around the world. It's five neighborhoods that make up the historic quarter and the UNESCO area. They buildings are preserved as vibrant structures, neatly painted beacons of a city that were long ago free of graffiti and full of trade.
On immediate arrival, the city is a rush of extremity— smells from the markets, colorful buildings, lots of locals, and steep hills. Even getting around the city is an extreme task. You can either rendezvous on foot, take one of the city's trolleys from the ‘60s, or you can take one of the signature funiculars. The funicular system was envisioned as a way to keep the city and its people of the hills connected. It might have also been an attempt to bring about a little order to the city’s rampant urbanization. But just like most everything in Valparaíso, the vision was quickly limited by mother nature's persistent earthquakes, the city's unpredictable layout, and the anti-government angst from the locals. Only five out of the original 30 funiculars work (October 2016). They are more of a tourist attraction than a common means of transportation. They operate on a pulley system which allows for a slow and beautiful unveiling of the coastline as you head to the top for only a few thousand Chilean pesos.
We first took a tour with Tours For Tips, a sightseeing walking tour, and then a graffiti tour with Valpo Street Art Tours. Our first tour guide, Sebastian, was an energetic and optimistic voice to an otherwise edgy city. He was quiet with curly black hair and wide-rimmed glasses. His appearance provided him a welcoming and safe persona for the hundreds of tourists flooding to Valparaíso in the beginning of high- season. Sebastian discussed some of the oddities in the city’s layout, like having smooth steep concrete slabs as make-shift washing machines or showing us examples of how houses are built according to the streets and not the other way around. We observed the chaotic electrical system with intricate webs of loose telephone wires, but we learned that putting out a fire in Valparaíso can only be done from the air, yet again a subtle sabotage due to the chaotic city layout. Sebastian really focused on keeping our image of Valparaíso positive. We navigated to different viewpoints in the touristy part of town and visited all the foreign monuments that were given to Valparaíso over the years. The foreign imprint here is undeniably for such a small place. Valparaíso grew at the hands of immigrants and so every statue we passed seemed to be a gift to Valparaiso from these immigrant countries like Germany, France, and the UK. They all want to leave their mark. But because Chile's past is so violently against the hands of government, these statues don't have much meaning to the locals. They're there for the tourists not for the Chileans.
Chileans, among many things, seem to be passionate about two specific orders of life: food and politics. The country is heavily divided in matters of politics, understandably considering their recent decades of political upheaval. Citizens seem to stand on two sides of a great divide. One of which supports the ideas and work of former president Salvador Allende, who was killed in the coup d’état of 1973 for implementing socialist practices. The other supports the two decades of Pinochet and his militant rule put in place after Allende. The decades of political upheaval has given Chile plenty to be expressive about, especially as artistic freedom was regulated and censored during the Pinochet dictatorship (many Chileans refuse to label Pinochet's reign as a dictatorship, but by definition and by permission of those we talked to we will refer to it as a dictatorship in this post).
Getting to Valparaíso from Santiago is easy with our 48 hour guide.
This sensitive background may be the reason for the anti-gentrification ideas, and art in town. There is frustration against the growing tourism in Valparaíso, and it's understandable that the people are annoyed by the influx of prices and the invasion of their daily life— a necessary evil to boost their economy. Some of this aggression is inflicted outwards. Tourists are highly likely to get robbed here and that is just a matter of fact. But there are far more compassionate and proud locals striving to provide a voice to the city in a healthier way than there are robbing it. What does remain native and undeniably Chilean in this city, is the beautiful and abundant artistry.
“To have a clean wall in this city is impossible. Forget about the clean walls,” said Diego our hip, Chilean, graffiti tour guide. “You will be painting all your life”
Since the emergence of street art, birthed in Brooklyn in the mid-sixties, cities have often struggled in “dealing” with the graffiti problem. Vandalism is frowned upon around the world and often highly illegal, and the constraints of the law mean that street art is confined to areas of less security and less money. In the States, graffiti is an indication of a bad neighborhood. In Chile, however, the people have taken a marginally different approach. Their embrace of street art has lead to a greater respect forged between the two sides.
“It’s not a segregation (of class) in Valparaíso. This (Conception Hill) is the tourist part of town, the safe part of town,” ”
Conception Hill
Having a say in the art that covers their buildings is better than the “throw up” work crews would do otherwise. The messy tags and aggressive covering of rival crews are the kinds of art that home owners are trying to prevent by allowing artists legal spaces to create. This movement towards legal painting has created a clear separation between what is formidably identified as graffiti and what is allowed as street art. Diego consistently reiterated the differences between the two camps of graffiti and street art. He expressed that graffiti would never be legal and that getting caught by the authorities while attempting to tag resulted in a 400,000CLP fine ($600 USD). Street art, however, is encouraged and often commissioned giving the underground celebrities a safe public presence.
Diego was a respectful voice for both sides of the line. His strong physical presence, with colorful tattoos, beard, and a man bun, combated by his gentle demeanor, exemplified the unexpected nature of this thriving artistic battle. Walking through the city, Diego deconstructed the many levels of street art detailing the crews (PLUS, 056, Leos), the types of lettering ranging from Brooklyn bubble letters to Brazil’s la PICHAÇÃO, and unraveling the signature styles of famous artists. With each passing piece, we quickly learned to identify the different artists.
Claro and Pure Evil mural of Pablo Neruda and skyline
Nearing the end of the tour Diego made a point to stop at one of the more controversial murals in town. Not controversial because of its message, but because it's a foreign artist attempting to sum up the native story. Supposedly when the mayor noticed the shift in accepting street art, he wanted to have a mural in Valparaíso that represented the people and their town. His mistake was in commissioning the mural to be done by a street artist from London named Pure Evil. The artist agreed to a costly commission and drew from all that he knew about Valparaíso. His answer was a poorly drawn portrait of Chile's beloved poet Pablo Neruda. Luckily the mural was a collaboration with a local artist known as Claro, who created the only respectable part of the mural- Valparaíso's colorful sky line. It was not just the horrible representation of Pablo Neruda that aggravated local artists, but it was the disrespect of Pure Evil who accepted the money and then disappeared subsequently after— leaving Chile without having experienced its people, its culture, or its art.
Diego explained to us that most murals are left untagged as a sign of respect for good work and good artists. Most crews would rather cover a whole wall for better street credit, rather than tag only part of another crew's work. Pure Evil's mural, however, has been left and continually defaced with anti-capitalist stencils: a bleeding heart and a dollar sign. Most street artists pay for their hobby out of pocket, contributing hundreds of dollars to their individual cause and Pure Evil's work was a direct insult to their way of life. Diego told us that local artists would have done a better job for free if they had been given the chance. It was an aggressive and foolish mistake by the mayor to try and brand Valparaíso through a foreign lens.
In places like Valparaíso, locals are collaborating with one another in order to give life to the hills. And as it has been done over the course of human existence, passionate and proud artists are providing a voice to their people, to their home. They are ever changing in their art and continually writing the story of the Chilean people.
Valparaiso Artists We Found Fascinating
@Inti is famous around the world and paints incorporating trinkets of the Indigenous Chilean people
Kolor Distinto locals of Valparaiso, a couple that always paint duality in their murals; a male figure drawn by Sami with an instrument and a female figure, drawn by Cynthia with a clock
Charquipunk always incorporates birds, specifically humming birds
A collaboration of Cuellimangui, who starts by spraying colors and then detailing different creatures, and another unknown artist
Collaboration with Kolor Distinto and an unknown artist. Mural represents how street art should incorporate everything- drain pipes, windows, etc.
Itching To Go To Valparaiso?
Check out our City guide for Valparaiso.
Our extensive Valpo city guide covers the must see sites, local food recommendations, where to stay, how much the city will cost, an example itinerary, and how to get around the city - including how to get to and from the airport.
