An encounter with the other half.

While most of the group is working at AccionEmprendadora, Laura Hart and Jonathan Salzman are working at another NGO, called La Comunidad de Organizaciones Solidarias that represents over 90 other community-based organizations that work all over Chile. Their projects include promotion and web-site design for two of the represented organizations.

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On Thursday, around noon, Maria Jose, one of Laura and my direct bosses, took me and Laura to one of the organizations for which we will have to make a web page and video for promotion. It is in La Legua, one of the comunas of Santiago. These Comunas are independent municipalities that take care of their own affairs while giving up a small amount of tax revenue to disperse among all of Greater Santiago.

La Legua, however, it is the poorest and most feared part of the city, being the site of the most newsworthy events in the city especially drug trade and gang warfare. Where Laura and I live, Las Condes (which is Spanish for the royal title of count), the population has not even visited La Legua. My ‘adoptive mother’ (Marcela, whom I will refer to as madre, even though its not my real madre ) reminds me over and over again how dangerous it is and how I should remove all personal items like my watch and any branded clothes to avoid attention. Of course I ask her if something bad had happened to her there, she tells me that she’s never been.

Las Condes, at sunset

Maria Jose, Magdalena, Laura and I piled into a car and made the 20 minute drive to La Legua. The area there was obviously different than Las Condes. La Lagua was originally developed to house the workers for the countries burgeoning potassium nitrate industry. These nitrates were heavily mined earlier in Chile's history. Since the development of cheaper synthetic nitrates, and the exploitation of Chile’s massive copper reserves, the nitrate industry flopped or moved elsewhere, leaving the lower-working class people of La Legua without work. Over the years of Chile’s systemic class-ist disposition and the fact that each comuna is an autonomous municipality that operates independent of those around it, La Legua fell to the wayside and is now a notorious den of crime, drugs, and poverty. If you live in Las Condes, La Legua is a world away. But after 20 minutes in a car, we were parking in the most dangerous part of the city.

We parked outside the organization Cristo Especial, run by an aged but benevolent Anita, who originally came from Belgium. The organization offers care for mentally and physically handicapped people in the local community. Anita, who is a lively and lighthearted woman, tells us that were it not for her organization and the work done there, most of these individuals, who have concerns that range from autism to Downs syndrome and physical deformity, would be left in the house for days at a time without care or company while their parents, provided they did not abandon their child on neighbors and family first, and provided they are still alive, and provided they are even known, are attending to their own concerns. Maria Jose used to volunteer there for years before getting involved with La Comunidad. She now serves on the directors board for Cristo Especial; it would become apparent why later that day.

Anita toured us around the facility for 30 minutes while I took pictures of the brightly colored walls and the smiling beneficiaries of Anita’s work. When we first entered, there were two older women, clearly with mental disabilities were playing on a stationary bike. Anita walked us right into the atrium where they were, and introduced us to them. I think the pictures below relate Anita’s tenderness to these people better than my words do.

We entered into the other part of the building, which is one of two that Cristo Especial operates, to meet the rest of the people there. As I had my camera out, many of the ‘students’ or beneficiaries there wanted me to take pictures of them. I gladly did; and have put some of the photos below (thank you, mom and dad–this camera is incredible).

The ‘students’ were about to sit down for lunch, so Anita escorted us outside and into the streets which my madre had inculcated me to fear. She told us how some of the beneficiaries of Cristo Especial couldn’t go home at night, so they used to use the social and work spaces as bed spaces at night. and the ‘students’ would sleep on the floor. She has since obtained a house across the street which now operates as a dormitory. We walked past that building and many beautifully painted murals on the street.

On the next street, we passed through a market that was going on, we bought some grapes, and obviously they were very cheap. We passed through swaths of people to a small church where we saw a mural done that was very indicative of Chile, with images of mothers who wore pictures of their missing children around their necks. Their children, like so many during the military dictator ship in Chile, were abducted and disappeared. Outside were some women going through donated and used clothes, they smiled eagerly for the camera.

After that we got into a van with Anita while Josa (Maria Josefa’s nickname) and Magdalena drove behind us. We drove down one street that was particularly dilapidated, Anita told us this was called La Emergencia (lit. “emergency” in Spanish), the most notorious section of La Legua known for being the center of drug trafficking and gun warfare. We entered a small house, that had a gated front to it. It had an exposed but covered outside section where some foodstuffs laid around a stove. In side there was one single room, about the size of my bedroom, that we separated by a curtain. On the far side of the curtain lay an old woman, very old with shriveled features and emaciated, thin legs that clearly hadn’t been used in many months. Attending to her was an old woman, with darker skin who was administering an inhaler (with a spacer!). However, she gave the old woman, with all the good intention in the world and in a meek and quiet manner, 10 puffs of the inhaler, mistaking the doctor’s order for 1 puff being held in for 10 seconds. In this room of dilapidated metal and ragged blankets, the inhaler seemed out of place among the woman’s relics. Anita later explained to us that these houses, on the street that would later become La Emergencia, was built to be temporary housing during a crisis. However, like Duke’s Central Campus, the construction that was intended to be temporary became permanent. After that Anita escorted us to a gas station where we left La Legua. It struck me as strange that we, a group of 5 didn’t take one car from the organization head quarters. It turned out that Josa couldn’t leave her reasonably nice car outside the office without it being in danger of being stolen. However, the more striking is that Anita escorted us in her obvious-looking van around the neighborhood because she, as a conspicuous worker for good, wouldn’t be shot at by the people on the street, all of whom carry a gun. We, in the car following it closely, would fall under the auspices of Anita’s exemption from violence.

It was a truly wild experience, but, to me, the difference from the life I lead didn’t set in until later that night.

In the car ride home, Josa asked me if I would tutor her son in English since he had a test the next day. I told her of course, and she picked me up at a grocery store near my house after Laura and I had returned from work. A woman who works at an NGO and drove a little VW Golf picked me up in a Volvo XC90, the exact same car my mother used to drive. In a country where gas costs $8 a gallon, anything bigger than a Corolla is striking, let alone a mid-size SUV, and that is her car too (she uses the other as an easier car to navigate Santiago). I should have clued into where we were going by the car she drove, but I was surprised to drive up the hill more and more, further away from Santiago Centro (downtown) and wind our way up a hill that feels increasingly like Beverly Hills. Josa explained to me that she lives in Los Dominicos Antiguos, a village in Las Condes where the president lives. We pull up to a beautiful gate of stucco and stained wood with a little sheltered bench at the head of what turned out to be a winding driveway that went down and down towards a house that looked like it had been pulled off a Mediterranean coast somewhere. Sweeping views of the city of Santiago were seen through massive sheet-glass windows, arranged in arches made of wood. The hardwood floors adorned rooms that were as big as any house I know. The house itself wasn’t massive by my standard, but it was considerably bigger than anything I had seen in Chile, by a lot. She introduced me to two fo the her kids, Alfonso, 14, whom I would be tutoring, and the younger son who was 12. There was a third, that I didnt get to meet, who Josa told me has Downs syndrome. The tutoring was fun, and Maria Jose paid for a cab to take me home. He kids were nice and seemed just like the kids on my street. But the stiking difference between La Legua and Los Dominicos Antiguos made me consider the great disparity in class structure in Chile a little bit more.

Enjoy the pictures.