The resilience of Angélica Hidalgo (46) is stronger than fire, a flood or an earthquake, the three elements against which she learned to prepare as a risk prevention technique. That is the technical career that she obtained “at the CFT of Valparaíso”, promoted by her friend, mentor and colleague, María Tapia, president of the Villa La Pradera Neighborhood Committee, a sector of the devastated Manuel Bustos Camp in the hills of Viña from sea.
Martina, the youngest of her three children, was barely six months old. Angélica did not have the money to pay tuition, but she did have the desire to finish high school and pursue a career. “It’s just a technical degree,” she says, modestly, and thanks the president of the committee, María Tapia, of which today she is her secretary, for having given her the money for registration. Because this – and apparently most of the committees that make up the largest camp in Chile – is a female mutual aid society.
Angélica, María, Carolina, mothers, daughters, granddaughters today work tirelessly, collecting help for those who lost everything due to the megafire in this enormous settlement that was born precarious, but that in its nearly 23 years of life had been establishing itself. Consolidating.
They are lucky: none of them saw their house burn, although the flames brushed past them, and the committee headquarters is intact. Aid is collected there: diapers, water, food, toys, toiletries. They have taken over the second floor, the patio and almost every corner of this house, where the Hogar de Cristo Home Care Program for the Elderly operates. Eight of its participants are among the victims: they are elderly people who lost their homes, many of whom are worryingly depressed. For this reason, perhaps it is that no one cries, no one dramatizes, they all contribute with solutions and solidarity work.
–Many committees were left without headquarters; They were burned in the fire. So now we work for everyone: Las Estrellas, Luna Eterna, Las Américas, the Huillman Scale – explains Angélica and she laughs when we ask her where the men are, surprised with so much feminine presence, energy and work. “There is a pure leader here on the committee: we have Don Luis, the blessed among all women.”
The secretary of the committee is a bullet at reciting names and places within this extensive and now charred territory, which she came to colonize 23 years ago. Account:
–I was already married to Carlos and we had Mailin, our first daughter; she was baby. We lived with relatives where my parents were and there were many disagreements about how to educate the girl. One day we went up here to raise kites and we saw that there were people building their little houses. There I met grandmother Hada Vargas. She really was a fairy to us. Although she told me that they already had all the land for the takeover assigned, they would call me if anyone backed out. Mrs. María Tapia, who is always informed, knew that these were Serviu lands and that, therefore, it would be much easier for them to regularize us later.”
And her fairies called her. “I had applied for the subsidy many times without results, even when I was single. I did everything the normal way, but the situation of close friends did not allow for more and we had the opportunity to settle into the intake. We came to the shooting, as soon as they called me. We brought a camping tent that I had bought and a shovel. “It’s the same as now.”
The resilience
Carlos, Angélica’s husband, today works in construction and plumbing. Before, like her, he was a security guard at Home Center. “We met there,” he says. But now he works independently, for which he bought a truck with the 10 percent withdrawals from the AFP. “It’s from 2005. Old, but it works.”
And the afternoon of Friday, February 2, more than demonstrated its usefulness.
–We were all in the house and we saw smoke in the distance. There was a power outage and we were left incommunicado, because the internet went down. There is even fiber optics here, but on Friday everything was cut. Anyway, we thought the fire wouldn’t reach here. Suddenly I see that my husband started to wet the house, the little plants, because he told me that it wasn’t just smoke, that the wind was bringing burning embers. “If it went far, only the smoke would come,” he said. I looked out onto the street and saw many people on foot, down the slope. I followed them and ran into the flames.
He ran and only managed to say “let’s start.”
–Catch whatever there is, was my cry and we took dogs, cats and some things into the car. And we left in a caravan up the hill. I was leading the caravan in the car and my husband grabbed his truck. There we brought people we didn’t even know. To an elderly man who had knee surgery, for example.
Brave, powerful, with all her children safe, she only had one goal: to reach the sea. In the midst of the darkness, the heat and her fear, it reassured her that all of her children were with her. The two women and Carlos, the 19-year-old young man who studies gastronomy and today is in charge of the communal soup kitchen that delivers 200 lunches daily. And her eternal friends. And her husband in the truck full of people to the saga.
Finally, they reached the sea. To Los Marineros beach. “I parked and cried, cried, cried. Mrs. María, always with her witticisms, came down with a tent. And we set it up there, in the sand, so the children could sleep.”
To encourage themselves, they made carvings. They named the tent “the mobile headquarters.” “And when someone mentioned the word house, we laughed and said what a house, if you don’t have a house.”
Finally, they couldn’t hold out and, before dawn, the adults went up. As they climbed the hill the desolation was total. War zone, that’s not enough. But both her house and that of the president of the committee, her dear friend María, were there. Stops. Intact.
–Did I tell you that I studied risk prevention? Of the 43 of us who started the race, ten graduated. It is a technical study, but very useful. I believe that some of that knowledge helped us save these houses.
-Because you said so?
–I am going to remember a former priest, Marcelo Catril, today in charge of the Puente de Amor foundation. When he was still a priest we made a risk prevention plan with him here at the headquarters. We review the most likely catastrophes in the camp: fires, floods and earthquakes, and the importance of having an evacuation plan. Know how and where to start. And he made us see that before summer we had to weed the stream, clean the houses, take out the garbage. Take advantage of the system lick.
He explains to us that it consists of the municipality providing the trucks and the neighbors providing the labor, collecting and cleaning the land, separating, above all, “the large junk.”
He says that at the end of last year they began to move and with the help of Puentes de Amor and the contact that Marcelo Catril has with the Navy, of which he was chaplain during his time as a priest, they managed to get the cadets who are punished for bad behavior They came to clean the ravine. “The little guys worked well. They even rebuilt a ladder made of tires, which was very useful for older adults who have a hard time moving because of the steep terrain. Too bad the fire from the fire melted it. The scale was lost, but cleaning the ravine saved many houses. Furthermore, upon knowing that the Navy had come, the Muni arrived immediately and they also cleaned up.”
Angelica has no respite. We have held it for a long time and everyone requires it. They tell him to take off her apron to take photos of her. “Don’t be so rude,” her sister yells at her. And one cannot help but admire the marvelous feminine resilience of the leaders of Villa La Pradera.