VivirLatino

It’s been quite a few years since I’ve lived in Chile, but thanks to my Chilean partner, my half Chilean children, and DirectTV, I keep up with Chilean culture which is why I was kind of pissed off by Newsweek‘s one dimensional interpretation of urban youth identity in Chile summed up by the Pokemones vs. the Pelolais.

According to the Newsweek article, Pokemones are all about looks, sex, and materialism and nothing of substance. They are, according to the article the new urban tribe taking advantage of a good Chilean economy with no political inclination at all.

Absent from the article, and corrected by one commenter, is the fact that the majority of Pokemones (so named, correct me if I’m wrong) not for the cartoon characters per se but because like the Pokemon characters, they are many. There is power in being part of a group and every group has an ideological enemy. In the case of the Pokemones, that enemy would be the pelolais.

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