No Poor Wanted in Peñalolén Eco-Community

By Gustavo González Reprint | | Print |

SANTIAGO, Jul 28 2003 (IPS) - An exclusive ecological community in Chile is protesting the relocation of poor residents to a nearby area. The matter is to be resolved in August. Residents of the exclusive Peñalolén Ecological Community, in the Andean foothills of the outskirts of the Chilean capital, are refusing to accept the relocation of poor families to nearby areas. Their rejection seems to indicate the emergence of a new class — the “eco-elite” — but is that really the case?

The Housing Ministry reached an agreement in early June with the leaders of the squatter settlement known as “Toma de Peñalolén” to relocate more than 1,500 families from the 22-hectare area where they have lived since 1999 to new homes in the foothills.

The plan is to settle the families from the Toma in at least four areas and to tear down their encampment of precariously built shacks of wood, cardboard and metal sheeting.

In the Chilean capital, home to nearly six million people, the municipality of Peñalolén, founded during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), has been constantly expanding towards the Andes Mountains.

In their new settlements, the “pobladores”, as impoverished urban residents are referred to in Chile, will receive government subsidies to help finance the construction of sturdy, permanent homes.

But when it was announced that one of the four relocation sites, to be home to 250 families, is next to the Peñalolén Ecological Community, many of the latter's residents reacted with resentment.

In the mid-1990s, a group of people — including artists and intellectuals — decided to flee the pollution of Santiago and bought land in the Andean foothills with the plan of living in greater harmony with nature.

In an environment of unpaved streets and abundant native vegetation, the community has set up a waste recycling system and produces food in self-sustaining gardens that are irrigated with water from the nearby Macul arroyo.

Living in rather unconventional homes in the eco-community are 25 to 50 people per hectare. Houses range from large constructions using modern applications of traditional adobe (mud and straw) techniques to a converted train car.

The settlement of families from the Toma would mean a density of 300 people per hectare and would violate the 1999 regulation that limits the population to no more than 50 per hectare, says Valericio Contreras, president of the eco-community. He denies that the property owners protesting the resettlement are acting in a discriminatory way.

“On five previous occasions we rejected the construction of luxury condominiums, because just as in this case, they would destroy the environment and a lifestyle that are unique in this country,” he said.

“People have the right to fight for their dignity, and this is a matter of decent housing,” says actor Héctor Noguera, a resident of the community who has not spoken out against the resettlement project.

“I hope they don't give them houses that fall down with the first rains. It would be great if they could live in the same ecological way as the people of this community. If the children could have parks and the families have space to live,” Noguera said in comments to Tierramérica.

Several actors who had taken a negative stance against the relocation of the Toma families have decided against making any further public statements due to the controversy created by their initial rejection of the measure. The matter is to be decided in August.

María Emilia Tijoux, sociologist at the University of Arts and Social Sciences (ARCIS), said the eco-community's opposition “expresses discrimination created around the stigma of delinquency. Poverty is being confused with delinquency, and delinquency with drug addiction, and it is all put in the same package.”

The first choice of the Toma de Peñalolén residents would be to build houses on the same sites where they live now, Alexis Parada, president of the Voice of the Homeless Commission, told Tierramérica.

But what is important is to find a housing solution, she said.