By Tien Vo
When I arrived in Santiago, Chile early this summer, I was a little nervous and very excited about what was awaiting me in a new city, a new country. Through my four years at UT, I explored a wide range of topics in politics, ranging from the productive political conversations taking place on social media platforms to affective polarization. And this research has always been U.S.-focused. But I had never thought about participating in an internship about constitutional reforms in a different country. Yet there I was applying for an internship on democratic assistance programs in Latin America, working with International IDEA.
Santiago, Chile was decided as my location because the country is currently going through the process of rewriting the constitution. Was there any place better to learn about the constitutional process than a place where it is actively taking place?
The first day started with an introduction to the office in Monedad. Ricardo Mena, the main supervisor of the International IDEA office in Chile, was very welcoming while showing us, the interns, around the office and where we’d be working. We had a meeting about the general work of the organization and what our tasks would be.
As someone with a background in math, I was tasked with researching two topics—artificial intelligence (AI) and social media—and their influence on democracy, elections, and politics. These are not the topics I expected, especially AI in politics, as it is such a new topic and a very controversial issue that is being discussed at the moment by different countries to set the standard of regulation of artificial intelligence. I was very excited to get started with the work.
There are several aspects of each topic that we are researching: current national strategies of each country on these topics, especially in Latin America; courses offered by universities that relate these topics to elections, democracy, and politics; and current experts on these topics. My supervisor sent me articles each week about the current news and research articles, and I’ve learned so much from the process!
On the side, I got to attend seminars about the current constitutional process in Chile, as a new constitution is being drafted. Different faculties were invited to provide critique and feedback on the current draft of the constitution. It was an amazing experience to witness the ongoing process of writing a new constitution and understand the concerns of the people who live in the country. And so while my task in this internship doesn’t directly relate to Chile, there are still opportunities to learn about the constitutionalism of the country, which is something that I was looking forward to experiencing in the internship.
Life in Santiago also extends to outside the office. After working hours, the other interns and I typically wander around the city then take the metro home. By coincidence, another intern Alejandra and I found the same host family online and decided to live there together. The family consists of a Chilean couple, and they are the sweetest people I’ve ever met! Occasionally, their daughters and family come and visit, and we have a big feast with Chilean food and bbq. They always ask about our days and make sure that we’re comfortable in our room. Occasionally, we make some Chilean food, like cazuela, which is a traditional soup with meat and different kinds of vegetables, or drinks like pisco sour, which has egg white!
A couple of times a week, Alejandra and I walk around to try different food and explore the city. We found one of our favorite restaurants in the city, which is called Sushi Matsu, a Japanese restaurant. It is only an 8-minute walk from our house and has great Japanese food, like katsu, udon, and sushi. It’s a very small place with only three seats! But the food is delicious and the owner is very sweet.
Recently, Matt, who had been interning at the Panama office for three weeks, came to Chile for his last few weeks of the internship. Guillermo, who is another intern at the Chile office and who is from Chile, invited us all to Viña del Mar to stay with his family and explore the coast of Chile. We stayed there for a weekend, saw the sunset at the beach, went to a Chilean party, ate the famous seafood of Chile, and visited Valparaiso, a nearby coastal city. Guillermo’s family was amazing and welcoming! It is one of the best weekend trips I’ve taken.
This experience has been more than what I expected. At work, I’ve learned a lot about the different aspects of constitutional reforms, politics, and democracy. I have also learned a lot about Chilean culture by being in the capital and living some aspects of Chilean life.