La Toma Peñalolen

I´ve recently been volunteering at the Toma Peñalolen - which is a shanty-town of sorts for lack of an indepth explanation at the moment. We entertain kids out of a small library right in the heart of the Toma.

The Toma, from the verb tomar - to take - is an area of land that was illegally seized and occupied (this particular one in 1999). At the core it was a group of radically leftist individuals. There still remain many political groups within the Toma, mainly because one requirement of living there is membership on multiple committees. There are many Tomas with a variety of structures, reasons for existence, etc. both in Santiago and Latin America.

The people are wonderful. Many are extremely poor, but they are amazingly welcoming. The land was split into a grid and each family has the same, tiny amount of space. Most houses are easily viewed from the small dirt roads because pallet-esque boarding is one of the main sidings materials. The summer is unbearably hot, and the winter cold.

The interesting thing about Toma Peñalolen is that it will be destroyed at the end of April. Destroyed in the sense that the government is coming through and bulldozing it. Residents have been offered housing vouchers to move to other areas of the city (most being much further from the center where the majority of them work). Tons of the nearly 2,000 families have already left and many others are in the process. It´s amazing to watch as a small truck can be used to transport all of an entire family´s possessions. However, there remains a contingency that plans to re-toma the spot, which could prove to be very interesting, especially because children have been used as the first line of defense against police in the past. We´ll see what happens.