(SANTIAGO, Chile) -- Signs of my adopted country’s insouciant delight in itself did not take long to appear when I touched down a few days ago. Despite the serious earthquake damage at the airport, the lines for immigration and customs moved quickly. My permanent resident’s visa had been renewed three times outside the country, and my Chilean identity card was expired, so I anticipated at least a minor mess in trying to convince the passport stamper not to charge me the $140 reciprocity fee that U.S. citizens have to pay to enter the country (equivalent to what Chileans pay for a visa to the U.S.) But I was surprised to be waved through without comment.

The first announcement on view in the tunnel-like approach to the exits was a gigantic billboard that read, “In Chile the people is very buena onda!” Someone paid a lot to create this paean to the locals’ capacity to welcome tourists—too bad no one thought to proofread the English.

In the waiting area I sat with my bags for a while fending off the hordes of taxi drivers who cluster around anyone looking like a potential fare. My friends were nowhere in sight, which was odd given the delays. It took a good 15 minutes for a passer-by to inform me that due to the structural damage, no one was permitted to enter the building and that all the people waiting for their relatives were huddled in a large tent in the parking lot. No signs, no announcements, no airport employees in uniforms directing you to the exits—just the “very typical” Chilean way of assuming that since they all know how the system works, you will too.

The February 27 quake hasn’t appeared on our TV screens as the major disaster that it clearly was, in part because Santiago, the capital of over 5 million inhabitants, was largely spared. All over the city residents have produced neat piles of rubble (also “very typical”) from cleaning up the collapsed walls and fallen roofs that the quake caused. But for most santiaguinos, the damages were relatively minor even if costly in many cases.

The reports from further south, however, are quite grim. Smaller cities like Curico, Talca and Santa Cruz, and the dozens of towns and villages in the area like Nancagua, Licanten, Peralillo, Curepto and other crossroads hardly found on the map are said to look like war zones, with hardly a building left standing. Signs for help are still up on the main roads saying things like “S.O.S. NO WATER”—this fully five weeks after the event itself. While officialdom projects an image of competence and modernity for the outside world, those affected are quickly losing patience with facile promises. A demonstration occurred yesterday in the beach town of Dichato nearly washed away in the tsunami where residents have yet to see the arrival of a single emergency mediagua, the slapped-together wooden lean-tos used by the poorest that all too often become permanent domiciles.

Autumn has arrived in the southern hemisphere, and the temperatures are just beginning to drop. When the rains begin in a few weeks, people will need to be settled for the crude Chilean winter, their kids back to school, and their minimum day-to-day survival needs resolved. Spartan but manageable conditions will probably be accepted grudgingly as long as there is clear hope for gradual improvements. Empty promises, however, are not going to satisfy much longer.