[No apologies for not posting in months]
I wanted to write a little bit about how people I know in Chile don´t allow things to go to waste. DIY has been picked up by middle class white people as a trend but it´s something that poor, resourceful, creative people of color have been doing for a long time. Here in Valparaíso, before the garbage workers come to pick up the bags that appear on the corners, the dogs rip them open and eat all of the food and people diligently sift through them to find things of value. After the market, when bruised or somewhat damaged produce is left behind on the street, people collect it, cut away the problematic parts, and use it. I have cooked and eaten many delicious recycled meals.
Although daily consumptions generates way too much paper and plastic (receipts for everything, including riding the bus or buying an egg), thrifty people (and people who can´t stand to see a ton of plastic being sent to landfills) collect plastic bags and bottles and make “bricks” out of them, like this. As is mentioned in the video, you can construct houses out of recycled things such as these, and out of all sorts of other re-purposed, found material.
My host family lives in one of the most privileged and beautified cerros in Valparaíso where it is common to hear more English and German than Spanish at certain times of day. Tourists come here to soak up the big colorful houses and eclectic street art, quirky alleyways and craft boutiques. This area has suffered from gentrification. After the city was named a World Heritage Site in 2003, a multimillion dollar beautification campaign was started to sweep away the “tragic elements” and less-salubrious parts of El Puerto. Unfortunately, this process drove up property values and many of the beautiful houses that are in Cerros Alegre and Concepción are not actually homes, but vacation spaces for wealthy people from the capital or museums, or completely abandoned, their previous inhabitants having been displaced. This reality is stark in light of the poverty in other parts of the city and the many people without real homes.
When a building is abandoned, people occupy it. There are whole squat neighborhoods. People learn how to access water and electricity and create homes out of stuff that they find. I spend much of my time at a house that used to be a squat. The current inhabitants are refurbishing it using mostly materials that we find and reappropriate. We salvaged four huge pieces of wood from an abandoned lot the other day (it was worth the splinters) and carried them on our backs down one hill and up another for the house. We´ve found cement, lots of wood, funiture, food, tools, paint. Re-appropriation of trash is celebrated and practiced by many, as it should be. I find that people here in general know how to work the things that they use much better, because often they have built them, or fixed them themselves. Creativity and ingenuity abound where resources lack and the result is beautiful patchwork things and homes, warmed by the fire of the people inside of them. These are the spaces that should be celebrated in Valparaíso instead of the clean streets, non-political art and safe, empty houses, but it´s just as well that the tourists don´t discover them.
😉