Bridge Spans Centuries of Isolation
CURACO DE VELEZ, Chile — On the island of sea monsters and ghost ships, the thing some people fear most is a gravity-defying creation of modern man -- a 1 1/2 -mile-long bridge across the water to the mainland.
For centuries, the Pacific Ocean has sheltered Chiloe Island from change. Long after Chile had established its republican government, warlocks still ruled the island. The people built quaint churches where wood took the place of marble and brick. Even today, the priests dip their hands into baptismal fonts carved from logs.
"When I first came here, I felt I had stepped into a time machine," said Rolando Quirland, a former city dweller who moved to a settlement on the remote western coast of the island 15 years ago. Residents chilled wine and milk in the icy streams. They had no electricity. No phones. No television.
Chilean island -- In a map with an article in Sunday's Section A about a planned bridge linking Chiloe Island to mainland Chile, the distance scale should have been labeled 50 miles, not 500.
But the island has fast-forwarded, acquiring all those modern conveniences in less than a decade, an echo of the economic boom gripping the rest of Chile.
Now the bridge may be coming too, a $524-million project that will link sleepy Chiloe to the bustling mainland city of Puerto Montt and the Pan-American Highway.
The 1.6-mile suspension bridge would be the longest in Latin America. Part of an ambitious set of public works planned to commemorate Chile's bicentennial in 2010, the project is becoming a symbol of this country's push to graduate from the Third World.
"The Pan-American Highway will not end in Puerto Montt; it will reach south to Quellon," on the southern end of Chiloe, said Sen. Sergio Paez, a leading supporter of the project. "And 10 years from now, Chiloe will be a totally different place than it is now. It will be developed and industrialized."
But in Chiloe, as elsewhere in this country, there are those who ask: Is Chile embracing modernity at the cost of its soul?
"Everything changes, everything moves more quickly," said Luis Munoz, a fisherman and lifelong resident here in Curaco de Velez who opposes the bridge. "You try to keep your traditional culture. That's why people come here. If you change that, Chiloe will be just another part of Chile."
Munoz and his son still squeeze out a living from the ocean the same way people have for centuries: by going out to sea in search of trout, and by stretching nets along the muddy tidal flats that begin a hundred yards from the vegetable garden and picket fence of their home.
