Chilifornia is a way for people in the United States to think about Chile in ways similar to California: geography, agriculture, social innovation, political experimentation, earthquakes, fires, floods, ocean, desert, mountains, and so many other ways to compare the two. And as California has often served as the vanguard state of the United States, so Chile is often the vanguard nation of Latin America.

The short essays of this blog will address random issues and experiences that I have experienced in my many visits and stays in Chile. Presently I in Santiago, Chile, as a Fulbright Fellow teaching a doctoral seminar on "Religion, Culture, and Politics in Contemporary United States" at the Instituto de Estudios Avanzados of the Universidad de Chile. As well, I am director of Georgetown University's Community-Based Learning Summer Program at Universidad Alberto Hurtado in Santiago. "Chilifornia" is the name of my present research focused on why Chile has created a distinctive political culture to sustain democracy over the next generations-- Chilifornia: Chile, Vanguard Nation of Latin America.