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BOLIVIA: Getting Off the Streets on the Cold Winter Nights

Franz Chávez

LA PAZ, Jul 20 2005 (IPS) - Cold nights can spell death for homeless people on the streets of La Paz in the southern hemisphere winter. But a new municipal programme in this city located 3600 metres above sea level is now offering emergency shelter and two square meals during the coldest months of the year.

In the first half of June, the police reported that two people froze to death on the streets in La Paz and the neighbouring working class city of El Alto, where temperatures can drop to five degrees below zero in the wintertime (June-September).

Bolivia is the poorest country in South America, with 1.7 million people – 36 percent of the total population of 8.5 million – living in extreme poverty in 2002, according to the latest census by the National Institute of Statistics (INE).

At nightfall, homeless men, women and children huddle in the doorways of public buildings, city squares or even phone booths to pass the night.

Some of them are alone; others seek human warmth in groups of two or three. Many are joined by stray dogs, and together they fall into a deep sleep from which some never awaken. In the city morgue, they are registered as “NN”, the Spanish equivalent of “Jane” or “John Doe”.

But this year, the city government’s human development office opened five shelters for the homeless.

One of them is run by Lilian Torrico, who opens the door to a municipal government building at 20:00 every night.

Torrico, accompanied by a police officer, hands a blanket and thin mattress to each of the homeless children, adolescents and adults who come to the emergency shelter.

“We get street kids, many of whom sniff glue, as well as adults,” Torrico told IPS at around midnight on Saturday.

As the homeless visitors enter the shelter, the police guard searches their belongings. In his care they leave their work equipment, like the wooden boxes, brushes, rags and shoe polish of the shoeshine kids.

“We hope they are not drunk or ‘high’ on drugs when they come,” said Torrico.

Outside, the cold wind sweeps the dark streets. Inside, the visitors find some warmth in the large room where they will be given shelter at night until the emergency programme comes to an end in August.

The arrival of this IPS reporter does not go unnoticed by the first 10 men in the shelter, only one of whom is sleeping. “He’s dead drunk,” comments the guard.

On the next mattress, a polite young man with short cropped hair says the shelter is a good thing because it has given him hope that he might be able to find a job and rent a room after the municipal programme ends in August.

His words slightly slurred due to the effects of alcohol, he says “Brother, I was a chef, but because of family problems and a debt that my family refused to pay, they threw me out on the street. I was sleeping near the cemetery till I started coming here.”

After making a thumbs up sign, he crosses himself and repeatedly kisses his fingers in a gesture of gratitude towards the people running the shelter.

All of the guests were sleeping rough before the shelter opened last month.

“We used to sleep on cardboard in Tumusla,” says 25-year-old Dany, who describes how he and his friends fished milk cartons out of the garbage, pulled them apart and flattened them to form a sort of crude mattress.

Dany shines shoes for a living. But when night falls he drinks medicinal alcohol mixed with water or a soft drink. His friends call him “Balucito”, the diminutive of Baloo, the bear from the Jungle Book. His drinking habit makes him easily lose the thread of conversation, and has even changed his physical appearance.

He ends the chat with a plea: “You wouldn’t be able to offer me a little job, would you, please?”

Tired after a long day shining shoes, Freddy, 18, says that on the coldest nights, he and some friends would lay cardboard down on the street and sleep close together to try to stay warm.

Gradually trickling in, the night’s visitors eventually total 50. The larder is full thanks to donations, and dinner is served – a typical dish based on rice with potatoes. On other nights the menu includes rice topped with “chorrellana”, a spicy mixture of tomato and onion.

In the morning, after the visitors clean up the room where they slept, they are given breakfast – rice pudding or oatmeal, bread with butter, and chocolate milk.

Other municipal governments in South America have undertaken similar initiatives. The leftist Broad Front government in Montevideo, the Uruguayan capital, launched its winter emergency shelter plan in 2000, offering a shower, dinner, bed and breakfast to hundreds of homeless people.

The United Nations estimates that nearly one billion people live in slums worldwide, including 128 million in Latin America. One of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is to bring about a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slumdwellers by 2020.

But the MDGs do not mention those who do not even have a precarious roof over their heads.

The people who run the shelters in La Paz work hard to bring in the largest possible number of people, but some of the homeless prefer to sleep on the streets, for fear of being institutionalised and losing their freedom.

Wrapped in plastic bags or blankets, and with an improvised pillow consisting of some of their belongings, many continue to defy the cold nights.

That includes poor indigenous campesinos or peasant farmers from the province of Potosí in southern Bolivia, who gather every night near the bus station.

Coming from a culture that is wary of outsiders, they prefer the streets to the shelters, but they do accept the hot dinner and beverage offered by the people in charge of the shelters.