Skateboarding Takes Over Chile | GREETINGS FROM SANTIAGO

South America is skateboarding’s great untapped wellspring.

The first to make their mark internationally were the Brazilians, of course, but in their wake almost every country in Latin America has made its own contribution to skateboarding on the world stage from Argentina’s Diego Bucchieri and later Milton Martinez to Peru’s Angelo Caro, Colombia’s Jhancarlos Gonzalez, Chile’s Matthias Torres and so on.

One of the reasons for this emerging phenomenon is that skateboarding, with its relatively low requirements in terms of terrain on which to learn and cost impediment to beginning, is almost tailor-made for South America’s youthful gusto for life.

It is often pointed out that skateboarding is massive in Brazil (indeed, the country has its own hermetically-sealed skate industry), but skateboarding is a gigantic movement in several South American nations today - Mike Vallely’s one-man demo in Mexico City in 2008 drew in excess of 100,000 devotees, by way of example.

Of those largely unknown skate nations, Chile is the sleeping giant with its capital city Santiago being called home by an estimated 20,000 skateboarders.
Skateboarding was effectively imported into Santiago in the late 1970’s when, as legend has it, a group of kids visited the USA and brought a grip of boards back- and, in effect, started a shockwave that brings us to the present day.

When, in 1989, Chile’s military dictatorship gave way to democracy, the economic flourish which followed saw an effective rebuilding of Santiago’s downtown area but it was not until the emergence of Go Skateboarding Day in 2004- and the staggering numbers of skateboarders involved in Chile’s annual edition ever since- woke the city council up to the demand for skateparks within the municipality that the city began to become a destination not only for skateboarders throughout Chile but throughout Latin America.

This episode of Greetings From Santiago hears that remarkable story as told by the skateboarders who made it all happen.

Just wait until you see how many skaters hit the streets of Santiago every year to wild out!

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