Marta Apablaza Riquelme – DDRN

“With War, Climate Change and Poor Conditions, it is easy to Blame the Other”

Marta Apablaza Riquelme — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 08:03:31 +0000

What is your greatest fear? What is your greatest hope? These are the two questions that Copenhagen-based Danish artist Charlotte Haslund-Christensen asked women and men of different ages and occupations from seven countries: teachers, police officers, artists, religious leaders, among others. The questions are the basis of Hope & Fear, a video art exhibition that can be seen until April 20, 2025 at the Parque Forestal headquarters of the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Chile.

This is a proposal that is situated in the midst of the current global climate of fear and despair, but, in addition, it is the proposal of an artist with a preference for photography and video, in a contemporary world where the media and cameras have contributed to creating the current feeling of oppression.

– Could you tell me about your way of working? In particular, how do you approach the people you interview?

Before I started the project I knew that I would travel to big cities around the world symbolically representing the world today. I am very curious and interested in what it means to be a human being living in today’s world. I am also interested in the question of how can we live in peace with each other, because that is actually what we all want. In each country I worked with a local assistant, usually a woman, we would go out on the street and ask the two questions to people in different areas of the city. Then we would have a minute of silence together with all these people. I worked for a month in each place and did about 40 interviews each time. The idea was to try to get a representation with people of different gender, age and class.

– Could you tell me about your interest in working with audiovisual media?

The Hope and Fear project was created to be exhibited in public spaces and galleries, and is a continuation of my long-standing use of photography and video to challenge prejudices and stereotypes. The work provides a space for reflection on contemporary mainstream media, by offering the people depicted in the work and its viewers a moment to talk and listen to each other. One person at a time – teachers, police officers, artists, priests, shamans, children, teenagers, parents, etc. – fill each of the three screens, sharing their hopes and fears with the community. In their responses, people share common elements that cross continents, cultures, and language.

– Do you think there is a relationship between hegemonic media and the global sense of fear and lack of future?

Yes, I am sure. In a global climate of increasing fear and polarization, my work is motivated by the impulse to question cultural stereotypes and investigate the mechanisms for defining the self or the nation in opposition to the “other.” This includes questioning the role of the media in generating exclusion and stigmatization, in formulating and creating prejudices and minorities. I see Hope and Fear as a call for solidarity and the formation of a global community. By giving people the opportunity to have a voice, my personal hope is that we will all start talking and, more importantly, listening to each other.

– In a spiritual sense, do you think your exhibition could have a positive effect on the public?

I really hope that Hope and Fear has a positive effect on all of us. At this time in the world where there are so many challenges with war, climate change and bad conditions, it is easy to blame the “other”. I hope that all these amazing people we see in the videos, can show us our unity and our similarities. I would love to hear some reactions to the exhibition, so people are welcome to write to me at my email: mail@charlottehaslund.com

– Did you conduct any interviews in Santiago for your upcoming projects? Is there anything you noticed that caught your attention?

My next project is a photography project. In Santiago I spoke to people, but I didn’t interview them in the same way as in Hope and Fear, where I used sound. It’s my first time in Chile, so I’ve been traveling to Valparaiso, Los Vilos, and north of San Pedro to see some of their country and talk to the wonderful people here. Now I’ve crossed the border into Argentina and the province of Jujuy where I stayed with friends.

Marta Apablaza Riquelme is a freelance science journalist based in Santiago, Chile

4-min excerpt from the beginning of HOPE & FEAR

Charlotte Haslund-Christensen

Solar Thermal Project Provides Hot Water to Quilpué School

Marta Apablaza Riquelme — Thu, 23 Jan 2025 23:15:29 +0000

The Luis Cruz Martínez School in Quilpué, a school with a high level of vulnerability, installed a solar panel system to supply renewable energy to its library and other community areas on the campus. Then, its members went a step further and installed solar thermal panels in the bathrooms for pre-kindergarten and kindergarten children, generating a series of benefits that extended to the entire community.

Quilpué, the so-called “City of the Sun”, is located in the Valparaíso Region of central Chile. It is the third most populated municipality in the region, behind the communes of Valparaíso and Viña del Mar. In the summer, Quilpué enjoys long, hot, sunny days. This small municipality has a calm atmosphere and pace. In the Belloto Norte sector is the Luis Cruz Martínez School, a municipal facility with a high vulnerability index that for ten years has been seeking to incorporate environmental sustainability transversally into its routines and daily life.

Although this school is connected to the electrical grid, the school community decided in 2020 to implement solar panel solutions and solar thermal systems as a way to educate students, parents, guardians, teachers, and school officials about the benefits of this type of energy and, at the same time, solve its infrastructure problems at a lower cost. María José Sepúlveda and María Eugenia Cataldo, both teachers and members of the school’s Environmental Committee, explains that the initiative to take advantage of solar energy and apply it to the establishment began after being part of an energy efficiency contest: “We realized that we were consuming too much light. Our costs were very high. It was after that experience that we asked ourselves as a community, ‘what can we do?’ And just then the Government’s Environmental Protection Funds appeared and we applied to finance our solar panels.”

During 2021, the Luis Cruz Martínez School, through the “Encuentro Solar” project, installed a solar panel system to supply renewable energy to the library and other community places on campus. It should be noted that this establishment receives more than 600 students each year. “Currently, the library’s television, computers, and monitoring center (security cameras) receive solar energy, and we also made a connection to a garden,” explains Ana Hernández Duarte, a geography professor and thesis student of the Interdisciplinary Doctorate in Environmental Sciences at the University of Playa Ancha, who is part of the Environmental Committee of the establishment.

Likewise, during 2022, the community installed a solar thermal system that provides hot water to the sinks and showers in the bathrooms of the children who are in the preschool stage. This project called “Solar Encounter 2.0” was on the priority list of the school community. This is because, despite the fact that Quilpué is called “the city of the Sun”, it has a valley climate whose characteristics are extreme minimum and maximum temperatures. “During winter, it is very cold in the morning and very icy during the day,” says Professor Sepúlveda. “The kindergarten and pre-kindergarten teachers approached the school’s Environmental Committee to request hot water for the bathrooms in these classes. We, as the Environmental Committee, gathered this information and saw that providing warm or heated water through renewable energy was a priority,” explains Hernández.

The bathroom has an associated shower and the school has often lent this infrastructure to vulnerable families in the school community. “We call it a ‘social bathroom’ because there is a family with very few resources in the community that uses this bathroom,” explains Cataldo. In addition to contributing monetary and energy savings for the school and social help for those who need it in their community, the solar panels and the solar thermal system for bathrooms and showers allow for the development of environmental awareness among the members of their community.

In this context, Hernández mentions that despite the fact that the school is in an urban area connected to the electrical grid, as a school community they seek to refute the idea that solar energy is only viable in rural areas when the objective of the municipal establishment is to promote environmental education in the educational community (and other schools in the area) and reduce emissions in general.

“In recent years, the school has seen an increase in students, and it often happens in Latin American countries that the infrastructure of the establishments begin to age and that the electrical system is not always updated at the same time as other renovations. Although there is no specific limitation because we are not in an isolated territory where we do not have access to the electrical grid, we can be a model in education for sustainability and raise awareness among the entire educational community (other schools, parents and guardians) that this type of technology can be used and is accessible. This is because, in general, there is the conception that photovoltaic panels are only used in Germany. So we, as an educational community that works for sustainability, wanted to demystify that idea a little,” says Hernández.

Connections with the community

For the school community, the “Encuentro Solar” 1 and 2 projects not only included the installation of solar thermal panels but also training in renewable energy, environmental education, and adaptation and mitigation to climate change in their community, taught by professionals and academics from the Catholic University of Valparaíso. “There is a mother in the community who, when we taught about solar panels and dehydrators, replicated the system when she had financial problems and started her own business. Now she has a solar oven that she uses to cook and dehydrate fruit,” explains Sepúlveda.

The solar energy photovoltaic system installed by the “Encuentro Solar 1” project reserves energy to use in cases of power outages. “This backup is used to power the school’s security cameras and also one of the pre-school classrooms, which would be like our place in case no one anywhere in the school had electricity.” The next step for this community is to apply for a project with automated and efficient irrigation for the school garden, which will be connected to the electrical grid of the solar panels already installed.

An example for its community

According to local environmental authorities, the proactivity of the Quilpueíno establishment has an impact on the local school community that is generating more awareness, ties and sustainability, which is the result of collective work. The Luis Cruz Martínez School is part of a community with several levels, made up of students, parents, educational assistants, and teachers. Each child and person in the school has a family as well. “Their range of action is also quite wide, and we even link up in one of these projects with a Neighborhood Council. So, we try to create this network where the resources obtained from the project are utilized as efficiently as possible to maximize opportunities and how beneficial it can be,” says Hernández.

Currently, the school has links to the Catholic University of Valparaíso, the National Forestry Corporation (CONAF), and the Corporation of the Municipality of Quilpué. “We have a support network at this time that has been forged through habits. There are even other schools that ask us for advice and help. They come to visit us, to learn about the environmental facilities we have at the school,” adds Sepúlveda.

Through all of the above, they seek to demonstrate to their community that it is possible to find sustainable answers to their problems. “We are executing an energy transition. We are moving to be able to use renewable energy. This is because we seek to be an example for other establishments or communities. If you are in a more isolated territory, solar energy or solar panels are often the only solution to have energy, but when you are already in a context where a network is available, there is usually more resistance to sustainable solutions and, of course, we want to demystify ideas that sustainable solutions are far away or difficult,” says Hernández.

“We even held a workshop on the costs and benefits of having this type of infrastructure (solar panels) for the parents of the school, so that they can implement it in their homes. So, it is like putting the point up for discussion to generate that ecological transition.” However, Hernández says that as a community they are proud that the sustainable technical solutions for the school have been maintained over time. “Our first project was to reduce waste in 2017 and it is still operating. In addition, all of our infrastructure continues to be connected to each other and continues to improve or complement other needs or problems that we want to solve or improve. We continue with this great goal that we have set ourselves of being a model for an educational project that involves education for sustainability,” he adds.

In this context, the Luis Cruz Martínez School has made presentations and talks to other establishments in the area, to the municipal corporation to which the school belongs, and at COP26, disseminating the educational project of the establishment.

“We identified that the educational community understood renewable energy as distant. So, being able to have it in your school and seeing that it works in your library with solar panels, that you go to wash your hands in pre-primary and the water is warm, is something demonstrative and also raises awareness and is part of the children’s daily lives. This is transforming not only their perception and how they receive this type of technology or this type of practice, but also that they are already incorporating some behaviors and patterns with the change,” explains Hernández.

Maintenance: the limitations of the Solar Encounter project

Despite all the benefits and impacts of the “Solar Encounter 2.0” project for its community, this initiative also has its limitations. The installation of the “Solar Encounter 2.0”, for example, included four million pesos for financing (approximately 4,500 dollars). However, repairs and the cost of materials are not included in this budget. In addition, there have been problems with maintenance and coordination of visits. “The solar thermal panel had a leak. After a period of use, like any pipe, it began to leak water. And that is solved by a technician coming. The other thing is that sometimes it has to be regulated, there is a regulator in which the hot water and the cold water have to be balanced. Because if you open the tap, sometimes hot water comes out, and that is dangerous. So there has to be a balance between cold and hot water,” explains Cataldo.

The teacher explains that “at the beginning we had to introduce the team to both the solar panels and the solar thermal, we created a manual with instructions on what to do, how to maintain it, the minimum maintenance that must be done, and we tried to spread it to the assistants. But the same thing happened to us at the beginning when they turned off the hot water taps. Regarding maintenance, it is difficult for us to keep these technicians because they are not so constant over time. Sometimes the service is not on the schedule when one would like. We have to coordinate well in advance for the maintenance visit or any problem that one may have.”

“The dynamics of a school is complex because it is a municipal establishment with more than 600 students, so things have to be done well in advance and they have to be within the budget for the year. For example, now we are thinking about 2025, so we have those types of precautions or details in mind now,” adds Hernández. Despite the difficulties, Hernández, Sepúlveda and Cataldo highlight the importance of communication and community commitment for the success of these solar and solar thermal initiatives.

“What we are achieving is that the school is entirely sustainable,” says Sepúlveda. Cataldo says that “there is a complete change from how the children were before and now. They have more environmental awareness that they take home.” As for other potential uses, she adds that “I would put solar panels on all the lights here in the school. So that would be ideal. Do more things with this energy. This is a school with a high vulnerability index in which not all parents can pay for electricity. I know that there are many parents who are hanging from the electrical grids. If we had panels, more solar panels, and they knew how to use them, they would not need to be hanging from the electrical grids,” adds the teacher.

“We are motivated to develop environmental awareness in students. In the end, we are already experiencing climate change. Climate change is here. We are experiencing it, so it is very important that the children are aware that with small actions they can contribute to climate change not being so harmful,” concludes Cataldo.

*This article is part of the “Fair Energy Solutions” program by Climate Tracker and Open Society Foundation

Marta Apablaza Riquelme is a freelance science journalist based in Santiago, Chile

Pataguas Cerro and La Cebada: The History of the First Community Photovoltaic Plants in the O’Higgins Region

Marta Apablaza Riquelme — Thu, 23 Jan 2025 13:47:54 +0000

In the middle of fertile valleys that produce corn, wheat, potatoes, oranges, lemons, avocados, peaches and grapes, and with the Cachapoal River as their northern boundary, the inhabitants of the communes of Pichidegua and Las Cabras live 140 kilometers from Santiago and suffer — as is usual in rural Chilean localities — frequent power cuts and the difficulties of having low voltage. “In this area (Pichidegua and Las Cabras) the lack of electricity is a more frequent reality than one thinks. In winter there are power cuts due to storms, or due to falling trees and branches, among others,” explains Constanza López, environmental manager of the Las Cabras commune. López explains that these difficulties are compounded by the exponential growth of electricity consumption from the electrical grid as the communes are growing in population. “Our electrical grid is old and the transformers overheat,” she adds.

Since its invention, electricity and its access have emerged as a primary need for people and their quality of life. This is why, in areas where electricity is a scarce commodity, rural communities can benefit from small-scale renewable energy projects.This is according to Carla Douglas González, project coordinator of the NGO Energía Colectiva, whose objective is to promote citizen participation in the energy transition. “Renewable energy projects are scalable, therefore they represent a very good solution for the lack of electricity supply, especially where there is none or it is intermittent,” she says.

Community Photovoltaic Plants: Pataguas Cerro and La Cebada

In this context, the communities and institutions of Pichidegua and Las Cabras installed two community photovoltaic plants: the first, called “Pataguas Cerro”, was installed in Pichidegua in November 2021, and generates 54 kWp – which is a unit of measurement used to measure the performance of photovoltaic solar energy systems. The second is called “La Cebada” and is located in the commune of Las Cabras, and has a capacity of 35 kWp. Both photovoltaic plants allow the generation of clean energy and energy savings not only for the institution that installed them — the Cooperativa Campesina Intercomunal Peumo (Coopeumo) — but also for the three rural health posts; the Latin American High School, the Pataguas Cerro School in Pichidegua and the Santa Eugenia Rural School, and the headquarters of the neighborhood council in Las Cabras.

“This project seeks to improve the continuity of the electricity service for the satisfaction of the community. Today, energy is a commodity that is required every day,” explains Roberto Rodríguez, head of the environmental office of the Pichidegua commune, on the reasons for community photovoltaic parks.

The Step-by-Step Construction of the Pichidegua Photovoltaic Park

The idea of installing solar panels and sharing the surplus with the surrounding community was conceived by the Coopeumo Cooperative, which is dedicated to the sale of agricultural inputs, credits, provision of technical assistance, marketing and project development, among others. “The project began to take shape in 2020, when the Coopeumo Cooperative was contacted by RedGenera, a cooperative dedicated to providing comprehensive engineering and assembly solutions that incorporate the use of solar energy, efficient energy management and energy education. They contacted us because we met the requirements to apply for funds that were being launched by the Ministry of Energy’s energy sustainability agency, which financed half of a photovoltaic project of a certain characteristic and capacity. Together with the Municipality of Pichidegua, we applied for these funds and together with RedGenera – who are the technical advisors for renewable energy – we were granted this project, which has a capacity of 32 kilos of generation,” says Ignacio Mena, who in charge of technical projects for the Coopeumo Cooperative and also lives in Pichidegua with his family. Mena explains that, for the Coopeumo Cooperative, the main motivation for installing photovoltaic panels was, at first, monetary savings. “The photovoltaic panels were installed on the roof of the shed, where we store inputs for agricultural work,” he explains, and adds that the remaining energy is redistributed through the splices – which are the union of two or more cables of an electrical installation – to different educational and health establishments.

According to the person in charge of the Environment Office of the municipality of Pichidegua, in order to choose which institutions to benefit from the remaining electric energy, a follow-up was made of the electric consumption of health centres and schools. “The entire school community and health officials were summoned to inform them of the project. Then came the most meticulous work, which was to take, in this case, all the electricity bills and analyze the last six months to get an average. Then, to find out which institutions (schools and health centres) to support in order to lower the cost. In this way, we reached these five benefiting establishments: Patagua Cerro School, Latin American High School, San Roberto Rural Post Office, Patagua Cerro Rural Post Office and Larmahue Rural Post Office. The first stage worked extremely well, so we decided to apply for a second stage of expansion,” says Rodríguez.

In the Las Cabras commune, the process was different according to the neighbors. “Coopeumo approached us and included us in the project when they started and it seemed like a good idea. Here in the sector, the issue of electric light is that it’s not regular, the voltage is low and we have power cuts in the winter. In addition, there is overpopulation and more and more houses are connected to electric light. We, as the La Cebada neighborhood council, were willing to participate in the project at all times and supported it through a letter,” says Sandra Madrid, president of the neighborhood organization. In this sense, Madrid values the renewal of technologies, considering the social and environmental benefits that they can generate for the local population.

Víctor González Arriaza, director of the Pataguas Cerro School, tells how solar panels have been great allies for the school in economic and educational terms. “The sixth grade children visited the Coopeumo facilities where the solar panels are and received direct information from Ignacio Mena and the expert who was installing the project. They were told about the photovoltaic panels and they understood very clearly how they work and how this renewable energy system can be achieved,” he says. “The children’s impression was that it was very interesting. They didn’t know that the sun could be transformed into electrical energy and that it is transported through the cables they have to the interconnected system and reaches their homes. They were, in general, very happy, fascinated, and grateful for the presentation that was given,” he adds.

Regarding the discount on the electricity bill that the school receives, González Arriaza says that it is very useful because they are very dependent on electricity: “At the school we use a lot of lights. In the mornings, for example, we need to light up this room that we are using, in the offices we use computers and printers. Teachers use a lot of the ‘data’ [projectors] for their presentations of the subject. Energy is also used in heating and in electrical appliances for food such as kettles, microwaves and electric ovens.”

In this context, the economic savings become important — and according to data provided by Mena, the Coopeumo Cooperative has saved approximately 170 thousand pesos per month since the installation of the photovoltaic panels. Likewise, according to the organization, the average savings were 75 thousand pesos per month at the rural health centers and 30 thousand pesos at the schools. In the long term, the decrease in costs in the electricity bills also results in savings for public entities, in this case both municipalities, which can allow these resources to be allocated to other purposes. “Likewise, electrical engineers have explained to us that having a solar or electric generation plant close to a community improves their voltage tension,” says Mena, referring to other benefits that the neighbors have experienced since the installation of the photovoltaic park.

The Difficulties of Community Photovoltaic Parks

Despite all the benefits that photovoltaic panels have represented for the communities of Pichidegua and Las Cabras, there are still difficulties in the implementation of this type of project at a general and individual level; i.e., lack of training, dissemination and financing. Carla Douglas Gonzalez, project coordinator of the NGO Energía Colectiva, maintains that at a general level the main barrier to renewable energy projects is the monetary investment because “they are projects that are still expensive. On average, this technology costs 1,000 dollars for each kWp installed, and each family needs two.”

Douglas adds that another difficulty for this type of project is the lack of knowledge that rural communities and local authorities have to implement them: “Many communities do not have the tools because there has not been a dissemination campaign. We in the NGO Energía Colectiva have carried out training and people are motivated, but then it is difficult to continue without an organization that supports you in implementing or a state fund that helps you finance.” In the case of the Pichidegua commune, one of the main limitations was the size of the project, says Mena, referring to the number of panels that the first initiative had. “In total, there are 74 solar panels placed on the roof of a cooperative warehouse. It is difficult to have the technical infrastructure to support all the weight of that amount of equipment installed on the roof, and for it to be safe. There is a difficulty or an indication, so to speak, that you have to have a [solid] infrastructure to be able to set up a plant.”

“Likewise, we had bureaucratic problems for the CGE company to make the discounts on the electricity bills. They were unaware of the law and the treatment that had to be given to a plant of this type, where there were discounts for different connections, so that was a problem,” he adds. For López, from the Las Cabras municipality, the most difficult thing has been to show people that sustainable energy projects work and are beneficial for the community: “The truth is that people always have fears, especially in rural environments. Our commune is rural and access to information is difficult. So, through this we can try to educate people and the community to be able to show them that they [the plants] do work.”

“Like the La Cebada neighborhood association, we were willing at all times to collaborate on the project. I knew about the concept of solar panels, but I thought they were only used in homes; I had no idea that one could apply for headquarters,” adds the president of the Las Cabras neighborhood organization. “The ideal would be for this type of project to become better known. In other words, for the entire community of the region or the country to know about these projects that are being carried out, which are truly totally for their own benefit, so that they can continue to be replicated in other communes and in other sectors,” she concludes.

*This article is part of the “Fair Energy Solutions” program by Climate Tracker and Open Society Foundation Marta Apablaza Riquelme is a freelance science journalist based in Santiago, Chile

Smart Greenhouse: Efficiency and Ancestral Knowledge to Combat Climate Change

Marta Apablaza Riquelme — Fri, 29 Nov 2024 10:18:43 +0000

Technological innovation and indigenous tradition can go hand in hand and provide a better quality of life to children and adults in Mapuche communities —who live in rural areas— and at the same time strengthen their traditions. This is the objective of the “smart greenhouse” installed in the José Painecura Hueñalihuen community, with the support of scientific researchers from the University of Chile and the University of La Frontera.

Located 50 kilometers from the coast in the Araucanía region, in southern Chile, with the Pacific Ocean, fresh air and high hills as neighbors, the José Painecura Hueñalihuen Mapuche community is home to approximately 120 people (children, youth and adults) who identify themselves as “lafkenches”, which means, “people of the sea”. This community is mainly dedicated to tourism, collecting seaweed and shellfish and selling vegetables.

The symptoms of the climate crisis are not foreign to such southern places where nature is still preserved. In the case of the Araucanía or Wallmapu region, as the Mapuche call the territory they inhabit, desertification and land degradation are advancing rapidly due to the scarcity and decrease in rainfall caused by climate change.

“One of the consequences of desertification is water scarcity, which is further complicated in rural areas when water from a pit or underground aquifer is used, on which various families in a community depend on for their consumption, so the adequate management of the available water volume becomes imperative,” explains Daniela Lasso, an electrical civil engineer from the University of Chile, in her research.

And just as the climate changes little by little, the people who inhabit these territories also resent the “to live far away.” The latter is named several times as the most difficult thing about living in this rural community. Added to this obstacle is the fact that access to water for domestic use and agricultural work is expensive, since as Daniela Lasso points out in her research, water is extracted from wells by using electric pumps.

In this context, access to electricity for Mapuche families is intermittent, since the community spends “on average 35 days a year without electricity.” This is indicated by Doris Sáez Hueichapan, an academic from the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Chile, who adds: “The Internet, which represents connectivity for families, is also an intermittent service.”

Smart greenhouse: efficiency and ancestral knowledge

One of the traditional economic activities of the Mapuche people is the sale of vegetables. This is where the importance of having a smart greenhouse comes from, because they need a closed, covered and equipped area to grow fruits and vegetables for the community.

With the aim of supporting agricultural production and, in addition, carrying out scientific and technological research, academics and students from the University of Chile and the University of La Frontera, interested in interculturality, started a project where, together with the José Painecura Hueñalihuen community, and directors and teachers from nearby public schools, they have installed three greenhouses supplied by solar energy and monitored via the Internet.

The goal? To use energy and water more efficiently and to maintain the conditions of the plants in the greenhouses. Before the implementation of the smart greenhouses, the agricultural habits of the community were, in the case of Mr. Ermes García Huenchuñir (owner of one of the three greenhouses), to water every day for 10 minutes (throughout the year). This, without knowing the exact volume of water he used. In summer, when “Antü” (Sun in Mapudungun) beats down hard in the area, Mr. Ermes left the door and windows of the greenhouse open. On the contrary, in winter he left the doors and windows closed.

In this context, the researchers proposed to the community that having control over irrigation, temperature and humidity in the greenhouse would make the economic activity of several families more efficient. In the case of García Huenchuñir, he could grow tomatoes, lettuce, cabbage, Italian squash and cucumbers more efficiently, and thus sell and consume them with his wife and two daughters.

“Low-cost technology was installed to automate the greenhouse, install humidity sensors to know when to water and optimize the water issue as much as possible due to the water shortage present in the region. Energy, water and food have a very close relationship,” explains academic Sáez.

To achieve this, the smart greenhouse used a weather station and a central controller, which are powered by a solar panel and which together form an Internet of Things (IoT) system that can be monitored and controlled remotely. The implementation of this control system in the greenhouse is composed of an anemometer (a device used to measure wind speed), air and soil humidity sensors, as well as water controls for irrigation.

“The implementation of this system includes a software that can be controlled through a web page that allows viewing data and interacting with the solenoid valves and windows of the greenhouse,” explains Oscar Poblete, an electrical engineering student about to graduate, who along with his classmate Oscar Villagra are in charge of implementing the project.

“It should be noted that this project is made respecting the culture of the place and the relationship with nature, something that is very important for the Mapuche people,” explains Saéz. She states this because in some areas where the Mapuche people live in southern Chile, there is a long history of “technical solutions”, for example, hydroelectric plants that have caused discord and controversy between the communities, the government and the private companies.

“It is important to be able to implement this solution in the communities, precisely because there are private companies that have destroyed ecosystems or sacred places for the communities. In this context, we, for example, do not even try to manipulate the greenhouse, wich means, make holes in it or break it to install something. Every step is made with care,” adds Poblete.

Installation difficulties: a small solar panel

Despite all the benefits of a smart greenhouse powered by solar panels, its implementation has had difficulties and limitations. Months after its implementation and after using it to plant vegetables, the automated irrigation hoses in the greenhouse stopped working. “It seems that the solar panel is too small and does not have the capacity needed for the greenhouse… the solar panel needs a little more volume,” explains García Huenchuñir, the owner of the greenhouse. And he adds: “At the times when I want to use it, for example, and it is cloudy, the battery of the automatic irrigation system is low and is not enough to operate the irrigation.”

According to García Huenchuñir, the greenhouse has a certain organization: “We used to water the plants at certain hours in the afternoon – he points to the soil – so the plants would have better strength. And in that section, when it was installed, it worked really well. The automatic aspect of the technology worked really well. But later, as I was saying, the power started to go down and there was no strength to water the plants. And then we had to work manually, as I always did.”

Consulted about the possibility of expanding the benefits of this solution, Mr. Hermes responds that the solar panels could supply electricity to houses in the community, or the automation of the irrigation could be applied to potato or wheat crops. “That would be a very good projection for the future, if there was the opportunity for someone to advise us on that subject,” he indicates and adds: “Everything that one plants would give much better results.”

Smart greenhouses: educational incentive

Very close to the Mapuche community José Painecura Hueñalihuen, the public elementary school “Bajo Yupehue”, which means “Place of hedgehogs” in Mapuzugun, is located and serves the indigenous communities José Huenchuñir, Manuel Epullán and José Painecura.

During 2022, the school installed a smart greenhouse with the help of academics and students from the University of Chile and the University of La Frontera under the leadership of the director of the establishment, Jorge Henríquez Castillo, Professor Cristian Carrillo and traditional educator Miriam Llancapan. The objective is for children to be able to learn about technology, but also to strengthen their tradition and culture, as medicinal herbs will also be planted.

“I think the most important thing about this greenhouse is to encourage children because the school’s educational project is for students to continue studying. Being here in the countryside, sometimes it is difficult for them to visualize that there is another world that is technological, beyond social networks. But the fact that they manipulate things here and interact with them… This is the main objective of this smart greenhouse, because due to its resources it is difficult for them to see the installation of an irrigation system. But they can study it, right? Become professionals. That is the vision and it is in the mission of the school, that children continue studying. And in fact, they all go out to study,” explains Henríquez.

“The greenhouse is not only an example of how to better manage resources (water and electricity), but it is also an opportunity for seventh and eighth grade students at the schools to be educated in software, water and energy management, and meteorological concepts. The idea of the School’s teachers and the academics involved in the project is that the students and members of the community awaken their curiosity, encourage them to go to university, but also that they apply their knowledge in their territories of origin to support their communities,” says Sáez.

Although the project has had some limitations, such as the lack of energy capacity, it has meant saving time and money on energy for its beneficiaries. This is how García Huenchuñir expresses it: “Before they installed the solar panel, I paid between 70 and 80 thousand pesos (80 USD) in electricity to operate the water pump. Today we are saving much more (I pay around 10 thousand pesos(10 USD)). When they brought this project, it seemed good to me because it is something that was useful for me and an economy in terms of energy. In addition, it supplies me with water for the pump. Saving time and energy. As well as in terms of irrigation, in terms of bringing water to improve the greenhouse, the plants, for irrigation, all that.”

Both the Mapuche community and academics and researchers hope that in the future, smart greenhouses and solar panels with more energy capacity for the entire community can be implemented. This raises a question: How scalable are sustainable solutions?

Juan Ignacio Huircan Quilaqueo, an academic from the Universidad de La Frontera who collaborates on the project, says: “Sustainability is expensive because you have to pay for it and once it is financed, the benefits may not be immediate. It is a bit like eating healthy. However, by implementing a project that is sustainable, it means that, in some way and in the long term, the beneficiaries will have equal opportunities in relation to certain things.”

He also reflects on intercultural work: “One can come from the Western world to introduce technology into a place where the society of that place operates under other rules and variables that are not as tangible elements as engineering, numbers or equations.”

He adds: “One has to think about what is pressing on the community. What do you do when you arrive in a community? If you are not from the community, you can produce an invasive effect. Then you have to question the impact of your actions. For example, if I have planned, from a geographical point of view, to install a series of equipment in different places, because I saw it on the map. And they tell you: “No, well” you can’t go there because there is water or because there are trees. ’There is a cultural issue that you cannot arrive and enter a community and change things. Sometimes a certain world tries to absorb and override another world, and that, without thinking that the laws, the rules that govern the other world, are also perfectly valid. And sometimes I think that this way of life is also sustainable,” he concludes.

*This article is part of the “Fair Energy Solutions” program by Climate Tracker and Open Society Foundation

Marta Apablaza Riquelme is a freelance science journalist based in Santiago, Chile

Hernan Rivera Letelier: The Storyteller From the Chilean Atacama Desert

Marta Apablaza Riquelme — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 15:43:24 +0000

The Atacama desert is the main character of all the stories, poems, and novels written by Hernan Rivera Letelier (b. 1950), a Chilean writer who has been internationally acclaimed for his 22 novels, which have been translated into 23 languages. One of his most cherished stories is about María Margarita, a girl who lives in a small, lost, and impoverished town in the Atacama Desert in the North of Chile, in the late sixties. Her telling of movies to her family and neighbors was a talent but also a curse.

This story was embodied in a novel called The Movie Teller. On November 3rd, 2023, a movie based on the same book – directed by the Danish filmmaker Lone Scherfig – was released internationally [Premiere in Denmark: 2 May 2024].

The movie was filmed between March and May of 2022, in the North of Chile; a region that’s home to a big part of Chilean history. The Atacama desert is the landscape where miners used to extract nitrate or “Chilean Saltpeter”, the main mineral of Chilean export during the 19th and 20th century. Saltpeter was used as fertilizer and other chemical uses such as gunpowder and fireworks.

The exportation of nitrates to Europe and the USA have shaped the economy, culture, and history of this region of Chile, and Hernan Rivera Letelier is praised as a writer for depicting the stories, landscape, and people of this region. Although Rivera Letelier was born in the South of Chile, he lived as a child and has worked as an adult in the saltpeter mines in Antofagasta, in the North of Chile. His literary work has been devoted to – in his own words – “fill the desert with words”. In 2022, he won the “National Literary Prize” of the Chilean government for his work, and he is very cherished by his readers.

The Movie Teller is a result of an international collaboration, not only in the production and directing, but the cast is also composed by respected, international actors such as Bérénice Bejo (The Artist), Antonio de la Torre (The Kingdom), and the Spanish-German actor Daniel Brühl (Inglourious Basterds, Goodbye Lenin). The Chilean cast includes both young actors (Alondra Valenzuela, Sara Becker) and veteran actors (Mario Horton, Pablo Schwartz, Luis Dubo, etc.) who are loved by the Chilean public.

“We were all amazed by the fact that a Danish filmmaker wanted to come to the desert to direct the film. She was very enthusiastic about the story”, recalls Hernan Rivera Letelier while seated in a hotel lobby in Santiago, Chile. He still lives in the city of Antofagasta, where he writes all his stories, but in June of 2023 he came to Santiago to do a conference and book signing of his latest novel, Hombres que llegan a un pueblo (or Men Come to a Town in the English translation). Rivera Letelier has always been a warm, witty and adventurous man, although now, at 73 years old, he has Parkinson’s disease, which makes him move and speak slowly.

Why do you think Lone Scherfig, a Danish filmmaker, was interested in directing this movie and telling this story?

“I think it is a universal topic. Being a girl, the love for movies is a universal experience. This is why people like this story so much.”

How many days did it take to write The Movie Teller?

“La Reina Isabel cantaba rancheras (Queen Elizabeth Sang Mexican Folk Song), my first book [and the one that made him famous, ed.] took me four days of writing. The novel The Movie Teller came out in three months and I didn’t correct anything because it came out perfectly. It was a Eureka moment that I experienced.”

Fifteen years ago, in 2008, Hernan Rivera Letelier was writing his tenth book, The Art of the Resurrection, when – like everything in his life, he tells – by chance or destiny, he went to a coffee shop in the city center of Antofagasta and met a friend who he hadn’t seen for a while. They were chatting and suddenly his friend dropped a very good story.

“He starts telling me an anecdote of his cousin from when he was twelve or thirteen years old. This boy used to live in the North of Chile, in a town next to the saltpeter mine. He lived in a neighborhood where there used to be only one cinema. He said that his cousin had the gift of telling stories and was very good at imitation and voices. In his family, they were really poor, so when a good movie came out, the family would buy one ticket and give it to him. After the movie, he would arrive home and tell the movie to the rest of the family.

I was very impressed and asked my friend: ‘Can you give me this story?’ He answered me ‘Yeah, sure’. I arrived at my house feeling like I was walking on clouds. Very inspired. The story immediately came to my mind. I put aside The Art of the Resurrection and started to write this story.

I was going to title the book “El Contador de Películas” [“The Movie Teller” with a male pronoun, “he”, in Spanish, ed.], but I thought: ‘No, the hero has to be a girl’. That was my intuition speaking. Then I decided that the set of this story was going to be ‘la pampa’ [Spanish slang for the word “desert”, ed.] in order to share the magical things that I experienced in the movie theaters of ‘la pampa’, and I started writing the novel. In three months, the book was ready.”

However, Letelier remembers that while writing the novel was relatively easy, deciding to send it off to the publisher was difficult.

“Sometimes I would wake up at night, go and check out the book, look at it and say: ‘This is shit. It’s worth nothing.’ Then another night, I would wake up, look at the script and say: ‘This book is great.’ So one day I was done and sent it to my agent. I told him: ‘Look, I was writing a novel about a Jesus Christ figure here in Chile, but in between I got inspired and wrote this small story that doesn’t have more than one hundred pages and sometimes I find it good, sometimes I find it bad. Tell me what can be done with the script. And the guy answered me the next day and told me: ‘It’s the most beautiful story you’ve ever written in your life.’ I was shocked. He sent it to my publisher, Alfaguara, and they published it right away.

Did you participate in the filming of the movie?

“I did not participate in the filming. But I participated in the writing process of the script. They sent me the script to review and to check if there were any incorrect details. I reviewed it and corrected some things but the script was very good. It was great. From the very beginning that I wrote this story, I said that if this book was adapted to the cinema, it would win an Oscar. And now that they filmed the movie, I saw a few scenes and I can confirm that it will win an Oscar. It’s pure intuition.”

What is the role of intuition in your life?

“It’s fundamental. I write by intuition. I live by intuition. And everything I do in this life is by intuition. Right now, I’m starting to write a novel and if you ask me how I do it, I don’t have a f***ing idea. I intuitively know that the chapter ends here. I also titled my novels driven by intuition. Why? I have no clue, but I pay close attention to intuition.

Rivera Letelier remembers that he began writing poems when he was a teenager. “I am always writing. During the pandemic I wrote four novels, and I published three in my last book, Men Come to a Town.”

What role does the Atacama desert play in the stories that you narrate?

“The desert is the main character in all my stories. If I hadn’t been raised in the desert I wouldn’t be writing. The desert is what made me write. In the desert, I learned to be with myself. In the desert, I learned to know myself. I always say that on this planet, there are three landscapes in which one finds oneself: the mountains, the sea, and the desert. Of the three, the most famous is the desert, of course, because even Jesus went to the desert for forty days and forty nights.

He said: ‘I am going to meet my father’, and this is the same as meeting God or meeting oneself. Ever since I was a child, I was strange. I used to get away from the crowds to go to the hill, to feel the loneliness and desolation of the planet.

The silence of the desert is a silence so pure and so intense that you can hear it in your ears. It seems counterintuitive, but the sound of the silent desert feels like a high-tension cable.”

Then, the desert told you all of your stories…

“Look, the first time Queen Elizabeth Sang Mexican Folk Song was published, the critics began to write some shit. They said that my novel had a lot of verbs, too many adjectives. I struck back and defended myself by saying: ‘I am writing a novel about the desert where there is nothing. I have to fill the landscape with words.’

If the desert should be described, you could say that there is a land where there is nothing, not even grass. Above the horizon, there is nothing. Not even a little cloud. In the middle, divided by an imaginary line that is the horizon, below that line, there lies a brown land with nothing on it. That is the desert. I wrote a novel about the desert, about that ‘nothingness’. How do you fill that nothingness? With words. It was the only way…”

The desert is powerful…

“It is powerful, it has an incredible attraction. In my life, I saw several people from the South of Chile [well known for its green lands, ed.] who came to the North to work, and when they saw the landscape they started to cry. The children, the women, the men were crying. They used to make a commitment and promised to themselves: ‘Yeah, we’re going to work for one more year and we’ll go back to the South.’ The years passed and they stayed…stayed…stayed. [He starts to stutter, ed.] And when they had to leave they would cry again because they were leaving. The desert is very magnetic, one can feel that magnetism in the air.”

Despite his long career as a writer, Hernan Rivera Letelier’s contributions and ability to portray and value the imaginary and the identity of Northern Chile, and being awarded for his books in Spain and France, Rivera Letelier only received the Chilean National Prize of Literature (Premio Nacional de Literatura) in 2022. This award aroused a lot of controversy between Chilean writers and critics.

How did you feel when you received the Chilean National Prize of Literature?

“It seemed like I was stepping on air… that feeling lasted a week. I was very pleased.

Look, I don’t write for prizes, now if the prize comes, let it come, but you don’t have to write for prizes. An award doesn’t make you a better or worse writer, but whoever says they’re not interested in awards is a liar. Whoever says that he doesn’t care about the Chilean National Prize of Literature is a liar because it is a recognition of your trajectory as a writer. I think that my prize is, more than an award for my talent, a prize for my endurance and perseverance.

I have persevered these 40 years of writing without stopping and I have enjoyed it.”

You are a self-taught writer, you never received formal education about literature – how did you start to write?

“It is my authors of the Latin American Boom who taught me to write, because I learned to write by reading books.

I never did a workshop, and I never went to university. I was taught by García Marquez, Cortazar, Borges, Rulfo and Leopoldo Marechal. Lastly, a writer who wrote a book that changed my vision of literature is Adán Buenosayres.”

What would you like to tell the Danish audience about the book and film The Movie Teller?

“It’s a story they are going to love. In some way, I am sure they lived this story as children. I am almost sure that someone told them about a movie and mimicked the story like it happened in ‘la pampa’. For example, because I was the son of an evangelical family, I couldn’t go to the movies because movies were something of the devil. So, the children would tell me the movie plots as we played in the streets, and I would react with my jaw dropped when listening to them. I couldn’t imagine how a movie could be and the children would tell me and I would be stunned. And when I entered a cinema for the first time, it was like discovering a dream in real life.”

***

In the book The Movie Teller, Margarita, the heroine of the story, reflects: “I once read a sentence – probably from a famous author who said something like life is made of the same material as dreams. I say that life can perfectly well be made of the same stuff as movies. Telling a movie is like telling a dream. Telling a life is like telling a dream or a movie.” The Danish public will feel the same way when they read this book.

Marta Apablaza Riquelme is a freelance science journalist based in Santiago, Chile

Lone Scherfig: “I Wish And Hope That The People Who Have Lived This Life Feel That This Was The Best Film You Could Make Out Of This Book.”

Marta Apablaza Riquelme — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 15:42:11 +0000

A young girl goes to the movies every sunday in an impoverished Chilean saltpeter mining town in the Atacama Desert of the 1960s. Her love for movies and her ability to share them in a really enchanted and expressive way to her family and neighbors changed her life forever. This is the plot of The Movie Teller, the latest film of the danish filmmaker Lone Scherfig, that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2023 and opened the 68th Valladolid International Film Week (Seminci) on October 21st.

The Movie Teller is based on the worldwide bestselling book by the Chilean author Hernan Rivera Letelier. The international cast includes Argentinian-born, Oscar nominated Bérenice Bejo (The Artist); German star Daniel Brühl (Rush, All Quiet on the Western Front) and Antonio De La Torre, a Goya-winning, Spanish star, as well as of course chilean actors and actresses, including the two who interpret the main character of the movie, María Margarita (played by Sara Becker and Alondra Valenzuela).

The movie was filmed in the old saltpeter mining town of Pedro de Valdivia, located in the Atacama Desert, Chile, between March and May of 2022. The Movie Teller not only tells the story of María Margarita but also the story of a world that was disappearing: the world of Chilean saltpeter miners.

Almost a year after this adventure, the Danish filmmaker agrees to this interview where she shares her experience filming, why she was so drawn to film the story of María Margarita, the subtle nuances between movies and literature, and how this project changed how she sees life and movies (Spanish version).

What did you think about the book when you read it?

I was very interested in where the book takes place (i.e. the mining towns of the Atacama Desert) . I also read another book written by Hernan Rivera Letelier, which also takes place in the Atacama. I was interested in the characters and the whole idea of the book. It’s quite short but very dense, and when I read it I wanted to stay in that world and go there.

Why did you want to stay in this world?

I’m the same age as María Margarita, and I have done a lot of films in the 60s in England, the United States, and Denmark. So as a person and filmmaker I know the period quite well, except I did not know it in Chile. So it feels like the book is also a memory of this place. And I thought it made complete sense to turn it into film because there’s so much love for cinema in the book.

How was the process of transforming the book into a script?

I read a couple of versions of the script, Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries) had written one, then there was a different one where Isabel Coixet (My Life Without Me) had worked on it and a third one where Rafa Russo (Nada que perder) had worked on it, and it was with Rafa that I continued working on the script to make it more production friendly and to make it fit to the location of Pedro de Valdivia, which was not complicated because Rivera Letelier (the book’s author) has lived there. So it felt very natural to shoot it there.

How was shooting this script in a real location?

I think from when I got the job and even way into the shoot, we just constantly kept seeing if there was something we could do to make the script better, to make the production better, because there were also things we had to change during production. So it was a very organic process, which you have to do when you’re working in a real location and not a studio. You have to change the script constantly and work with the reality that you are filming in. And because of that, the film feels more authentic and natural.

This was of course fantastic for the actors, because they could go around in the actual rooms that people in the mining towns used. They could sit in the same school, classroom, the real tables and chairs. I think this has given the film something that is very unique and I also hope I stayed loyal to the book and to the world that once was.

The book and the movie is a coming of age story of a girl in a very distant land, like the Atacama Desert in Chile. Do you think this is a feminist story?

There is a scene where María Margarita promises to her mother to live a life of her own and that promise is a turning point in the film and it is definitely something that really stands out. That promise has influenced the story and also the way I have tried to understand her mother, María Magnolia, and try to make a very nuanced portrait of this woman. When you see her, which you do in the film (but don’t do in the book), you have to explain the mystery about her character a little more.

A film, in that sense, is very different from literature because you bring a character alive in a different way than you do in the book. I think the movie is an interpretation of the book and as a viewer you get a little more under the skin of the main character, María Margarita. In the book, the reader gets inside a bigger world because Rivera Letelier has not had any limitations as a writer.

Do you know if he saw the film?

I got the impression he liked the film very much. I am happy because I felt a real obligation to be loyal to the book and was very aware that I’m not Chilean.

Shooting in the desert

As an experienced filmmaker, Scherfig has shot in several countries before. “The only thing I can do is to try and learn as much as possible, but also try to ensure that the film can cross borders”, she states. In the case of The Movie Teller, she explains that she had to make sure that people who are not Chilean will understand what is going on in the background of the story because a big part of the movie happens during the regime of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. “In my part of the world, especially young people will not know what happened, unfortunately”, she explains.

What was the most fun during the process of shooting?

I had a lot of fun with the children, and I was incredibly grateful to all the people who helped restore the locations in the mining town Pedro de Valdivia, where we shot. Nobody lives there now, but it’s a place full of memories for many people.

During almost all of the 20th century, the old mining towns were located very close to the centers of saltpeter exploitation. Given the isolation and arid nature of the area, in the heart of the Atacama Desert – the driest place on the planet – the owners of the mines created almost self-sufficient enclaves in which the administration of the mining center, workers’ homes, sales centers, churches, schools, and leisure and entertainment centers were all in the same place. These towns, called “oficinas salitreras”, were home to thousands of workers from Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Europe, and the United States. But with the decline in the sale of nitrate during the 1930s, most of the nitrate offices were evicted (producing a mass exodus of workers) and dismantled. The story of María Margarita takes place when the world built around the saltpeter mines was slowly ending.

“People who inhabited that place come back every year to have a summer party, and some of them are in the film”, explains Scherfig. “So going into this time machine and being in that real world is something that means a lot to me and has changed my view of the world a lot. And I didn’t know that I was going to miss the desert so much when I left. When I sat on the plane and looked down at the Andes, it wasn’t easy to say goodbye to the Andes and the desert. It’s so strange, because I grew up close to the sea, as anyone in Scandinavia. And I can understand now that the desert somehow does some of the same to you”.

She adds: “I have the best memories. I think one of my favorites is probably the children that participated in the movie. I think that you treat your children very well in Chile, that’s what I understand. And because of that, the children are nicer, they’re very affectionate, they’re very loving. And then you love them more, and then they become more loving. It was really sad. I was really sad to say goodbye to them”.

What was the most challenging part of the shooting?

Everyday production challenges. For example, now I am working in a studio where you know everything that’s going to happen tomorrow. I think Chile is a more dramatic society in terms of the weather: There is heat, cold, earthquakes, and wind. That kind of unpredictable world that you live in is very wonderful, but it’s not as easy to shoot in, because the logistics are really tricky out in the desert. But it also gives something to the film. Actually, I would not like an American studio version of this film.

I think Chile itself has influenced the film, and then we would just try and make reality work for us. When we see the film now – and I was talking about this to the producer after our premiere – we see so many memories of things that as a crew we changed at the very last minute, because nature wanted something different, or because a car wouldn’t start, you know, a lot of small things. And now all those details, they’re all sitting there in the movie. But now it feels like that is part of the film. Like it’s something authentic. Reality had a lot of influence on the film, and that is okay

How was working with different actors and actresses and crews from different countries and backgrounds?

I’m used to working with actors who have a different background. And these actors, Antonio de la Torre is a real method actor. Bérenice Bejo is more technical. Daniel Brühl is more intellectual and works with his mind. And so they have very different access to acting. And in a way, so did the children. But the children were quite inspired by Antonio de la Torre, because they saw that his embodying Medardo (María Margarita´s father), and the way he was completely absorbed in the part, made them become more absorbed.

How was working with Chilean children?

I worked with Moira Miller, who was working closely with me and the children, she would help them and coach them. So her participation in helping the kids understand what was going on and learning the lines with them was very, very helpful for me, because my Spanish is hopeless. And sometimes I would wear a mask (because of COVID-19 sanitary restrictions), which was also tricky. I think the children are wonderful. I just don’t know. I think their acting is really, really good. And Max Salgado, also some of the adult Chilean actors. I don’t want to mention anyone because I’ll forget someone. But I mean, it feels like I’ve seen a lot of Chilean actors on the casting tapes and the standard is really high.

The Movie Teller premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. How was the experience? What were your impressions about how the movie was received?

Well, it for certain meant something to me that the film was released exactly 50 years after September 11th of 1973. That week there was so much information in the newspapers about the coup d’etat. And there were a lot of local Chilean people who live in Canada that came to see the film, which was really great.

Toronto has a very loud audience. People are really laughing and crying. That’s the tradition in Toronto. So it was wonderful for the actors to sit in the screening room and hear all these people laughing everywhere. The Toronto audience really is excellent. And one of the theaters is really big and really old and that was wonderful because the film has a lot of clips from old movies.

So I was very happy. And the reception has been good. So we are super happy and relieved. I think the next big exam is if people will like the film in Chile. Hopefully, Chilean audiences could feel that it’s their film and that it does justice to Hernan Rivera Letelier´s book and to the Atacama Desert. So there’s a lot of responsibility.

As a person, did you feel, in a way, represented by this story, by this girl who loves movies?

I also went to the cinema with my father on Sundays, and we also got dressed and put on nice clothes. And of course, the clips that we see in the film are movies that I have enjoyed in my youth. I chose films that I really love. Also, some of the family dynamics is a little bit something I recognize. But I never make films about myself. I’m much more interested in seeing something that I love and then sharing it with somebody else. In that sense, I’m more of an interpreter. I don’t want the audience to know about me. And I don’t think it’s relevant here because María Margarita’s story is much, much more dramatic than my life. So that’s one of the reasons why I prefer to work outside of Denmark, that I have this distance to what I’m making films about.

When I interviewed Hernan Rivera Letelier, he told me that the Atacama Desert was the main character of all his stories. What role does the desert play in this movie?

I think the desert is there in the background constantly, and this wall of dust that is outside in a lot of mining towns, that will eventually eat up the town. In the movie we had a “remolino” (swirl). The book does not have a remolino in the beginning but we started the film with a scene of a remolino as if the story is something the wind brought to you.

Literature is more abstract than film. So for me, it’s María Margarita who is the main character. It’s not the desert. We started and ended the movie with the desert as if you get this feeling there was a desert and in this desert there were these people, and then in the end you leave them and the camera flies away. And you feel it a lot when you’re there. The heat, the night, and especially the night sky is just unforgettable. And the most beautiful sky on the planet.

Do you have any final thoughts or commentary that you want to share?

I just wish and hope that the people who have lived this life – and all the children from Atacama who are in the film, even the writer´s granddaughter – get to see the movie and feel that this was the best film you could make out of this book. I hope the same for the people who have read all of Hernan Rivera Letelier´s books or those who want to read them. They’re wonderful.

A film is always the result of a lot of different people’s work, but when I think back I feel very grateful especially to the people who worked to restore the old mining town Pedro de Valdivia, which was a hard and tough job. I want to thank the people who put so much work into making this film and to the people who worked right next to me: My personal assistant Francisca Ponce and Moira Miller.

Marta Apablaza Riquelme is a freelance science journalist based in Santiago, Chile

A Love Story: How Chileans Try to Protect Their Coast and Ocean From Climate Crisis

Marta Apablaza Riquelme — Tue, 12 Sep 2023 20:05:57 +0000

Humans have a deep love and longing for the ocean. For centuries, we have written poems, composed songs, created paintings, and made sculptures to express this deep love and devotion. At first, this love was mixed with fear because of the depths and mysterious creatures that live under the sea that were, many times, threatening to human beings. But now, centuries later and in the context of the climate crisis, this deep love is also mixed with the fear of losing and damaging what you once loved the most.

These mixed feelings are rooted in the knowledge that oceans give life to humans and a lot of ecosystems on the planet. It is well known that oceans are not only a viable source of food, but they are also intimately linked to the health of our planet. Just to mention an example: 70% of the oxygen we breathe comes from the oceans. Also, oceans regulate the temperature of the planet. This happens because during the day, the sea absorbs sunlight and retains energy, maintaining a cool climate, and gradually releases it at night to maintain temperature balance.

If we consider that 71% of the planet’s surface is covered by oceans, it is easy to understand how the health of the oceans has a global impact.

A country between mountains and the sea

A healthy ocean is especially relevant in Chile, a Latin American country that has a 6,435 km long coastline that bathes in the Pacific Ocean, the largest and deepest of earth’s five oceanic divisions.

With a very long coastline, Chile has a variety of different beaches and ecosystems. You can find clear water and white sand in the north of the country or you can find and enjoy big waves, windy skies, and black sand in the south of the country. This is due to the Humboldt Current, a cold, low-salinity ocean current that flows along the western coast of South America. Humboldt sea surface temperatures are around 16 °C, a very uncommon temperature for waters from other regions. Usually their temperature is above 25 °C.

The cold water feature brings a very different seascape. It provides nutrients to the surface, favoring the reproduction of phytoplankton, which results in more vertebrate and invertebrate marine species living in the Pacific Ocean.

The Humboldt Current, the key to Pacific Ocean biodiversity

Right in the middle of Chile, 140 kilometers north of Santiago, there is a small coastal town called Los Molles. If you arrive on a sunny day during summer you will find happy people enjoying the small waves, the fresh air, boats, small food shops and diving schools.

Due to the Humboldt Current, Los Molles is well known as a place of biodiversity where divers, fishermen and locals can find unique species of fish, marine mammals and other cetaceans. On a good day, you can spot dolphins or seals swimming near the beach. Also, the deep waters of Los Molles is the only place you can find the small shark called pintarroja or a special fish called borachilla.

“Chile´s ecosystems mimic the ones from an island because we live between the Atacama Desert, the Andes Mountains, the Antarctic, and the Humboldt Current. All these geographical facts together provide the conditions for the existence of so many endemic species and marine biodiversity hotspots. Somes species only live here”, explains Adela Opazo, a young university student who is doing her internship in the Nomade diving school of Los Molles.

“And in order to preserve this unique and delicate ecosystem we have to protect the environment from threats like overfishing, mining, salmon farming and plastic and noise pollution”, she adds.

Opazo’s bachelor’s degree is in marine biology and she has always been an ocean lover: “Humans always were looking at the moon but never wanted to dive in the sea”, she states about her passion for the sea.

Diving in Los Molles

When you swim in the Pacific Ocean you can feel the cold water aching your bones. If you happen to dive in Los Molles, you can still feel the ache in your body when you enter the water, however the eagerness to discover what creatures you can find under the sea is bigger.

The water is cold, but the vision is clear. The deep blue of the ocean feels like a web that nestles you. Under the water you cannot speak, and you can only hear your own breath. As you go deeper and go with the flow you can discover rocks, kelp forests, sea stars and little fish that shine bright like a diamond.

Steven is from Colombia and has lived in Chile since 2019. He settled in Los Molles and currently works as an instructor at the Nomade diving school.

“What we saw on our dive is very minimal. A few meters further you can see bigger fish, walls like the top of a mountain where you can find sea sponges, sea lions and giant jellyfish. It’s a very beautiful marine geography,” he says.

“What I like most about diving in the sea is that you can feel: silence, bubbles, meditation, depth. I have not been to other diving spots in Chile, but the marine geography of Los Molles is very beautiful,” he explains.

Threats to the Pacific Ocean

Ivan Hinojosa, a researcher and academic at the Catholic University of the Most Holy Conception, is investigating the different types of pollution that affect the Chilean sea, one of which is noise. “Formerly it was thought that the sea was a place of silence. Through research we have been learning that under the seawater there are a lot of vocalizations from marine mammals, fish and invertebrates”, he explains.

The researcher explains that noises can interfere with the normal development of underwater ecological processes. “We are generating some research on anthropogenic noise in the sea with master’s and doctoral students. With other colleagues we are investigating how boat noise could also be interfering with communication in whales and larger mammals.”

Hinojosa is also investigating how warm water coming from the North Pole – due to the climate crisis – is changing the distribution patterns of species and the places they inhabit. “This is a story that could be very relevant to knowing how to mitigate the effects of climate change,” he says.

“Many species are going to have to change their distribution ranges and the places they inhabit. We are doing some studies and comparing species distribution patterns. Our first findings state that some species that live further south are living a little further north”.

Public policies to protect the ocean

During his first year in the office, the newly elected Chilean president Gabriel Boric and his government have worked to create protected marine areas where human beings cannot do any activity. In early 2023, he announced the creation of the marine protected area called Mar de Pisagua in the north of the country, an area of 73,460 hectares that seeks to preserve this marine ecosystem.

Located from Sierra Gorda to Mejillones Norte, the Mar de Pisagua area is home to species of great importance for conservation such as the Humboldt penguin, the green turtle, the southern seal, the “chungungo” and kelp forests.

21% of the Chilean surface is protected territory, and 43% of marine areas are Exclusive Economic Zones, with specific regulations to protect the biodiversity of those coasts.

“It has been shown in other parts of the world that marine park areas work very well for conservation of the species”, explains Hinojosa.

“In Chile we have these parks, but two things are missing; The first is their administration: Who is going to oversee these parks? What can or cannot be done in these parks?”, he states.

The researcher explains that along with these protected areas comes the challenge of integrating the continental coast. “A lot of the marine conservation areas are in remote places like Easter Island or the Juan Fernández Islands. There is little human activity there. What I am saying is that there is more activity than on the Chilean coast where we also have unique species and ecosystems”, he adds.

Protecting the sea: to care about life itself

According to Hinojosa, the Humboldt current allows the area to produce 40% of the marine protein consumed in the world. “It does not only feed humans but this protein, which comes from fish and cuttlefish, is used in the pellets that are going to feed dogs, cats, cows and pigs all over the world”.

“If we do not take care and worry about maintaining this area in a sustainable way, we are putting our own survival at risk,” concludes Hinojosa.

Ricardo Bosshard, the director of World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Chile, affirmed a year ago, on the celebration of the “world ocean day” in Valparaíso, Chile, that “it is necessary to protect the oceans and work to strengthen them in different areas, one of which is to survey and promote the creation of marine protected areas, which can have a great impact not only for the environment, but also for the communities in which they develop, giving their inhabitants the opportunity to maintain their cultural heritage and biodiversity. To achieve this, it is necessary to have greater representation, effective management, and instances such as the environmental fund and pilot for seabed“.

This need was partly addressed at the beginning of March of 2023, when the UN delegates reached an historic agreement on protecting marine biodiversity in international waters. The UN member countries signed a document to ensure the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction, calling it a “breakthrough” after nearly two decades of talking.

But for people who live near the sea, it is about protecting what they love and life itself: “The sea remains a mystery and protecting it is one of the ways we can protect our survival in this climate crisis. We can generate effective mitigation by taking care of the sea. Although we cannot live in the sea, we are very dependent on it. For me, protecting the sea is about protecting what nurtures me and makes me happy. Whenever I dive, I am amazed and happy even though I had the most difficult day”, concludes Adela Opazo.

Marta Apablaza Riquelme is a freelance science journalist based in Santiago, Chile

The Role of Women in Reducing Organic Waste in Chile

Marta Apablaza Riquelme — Mon, 07 Aug 2023 12:35:55 +0000

Climate change is one of the main challenges that humanity faces around the world today. And women being half of the world’s population have been taking this crisis really seriously, especially in Chile, one of the countries that generates the most garbage per person in the South American region.

According to data from the Ministry of the Environment (MMA) of Chile, every Chilean produces 1.26 kilos of waste per day. This metric means that 8.1 million tons per year are discarded in Chilean landfills. “The relationship that we have with the environment has been not only one of use, but also one of abuse”, states Claudio Cerda, an academic at the University of Chile, whose specialty is urban anthropology. He explains that Chilean modern society’s way of consumption involves “magically” getting rid of our waste. “Over the years and with the development of cities, we have become accustomed -particularly in certain more privileged areas- to a kind of consumption behaviour where what we consume, we throw it away assuming that this waste will magically disappear.”

Cerda continues: “Most of the people of Chilean society have developed this type of behaviour. We have not generated a reflection on our relationship with waste. Therefore, everyone that tries to build a different perspective on these habits collides with these big walls of cultural tradition”.

The role of women in the circular economy in Chile

Women in Chile have been experiencing this backlash because, despite our consumption behaviour, there is a “circular economy” ecosystem growing in the last decade mostly composed of women.

“They get involved through practice because they apply their projects and actions in their own local territories. Their actions are directly related to care work and the sustainability of life”, explains Daniela Frias, urban planner and geographer who has worked on the implementation of public policies in this area. “In this scenario, it must be understood that in the current context of the climate crisis, women are the first victims of the damage caused to the environment. So of course women have a perspective on how to act at the moment of some catastrophe or some risk in this climate crisis”, adds Frias.

Something similar thought Pamela Bravo, when years ago she read an article about permaculture. She was fascinated but also concerned about climate change. “As soon as the opportunity arose, I decided to make recycling organic matter the basis of my business,” she remembers. “At that time, I used to live in an old apartment in downtown Santiago, so on a small balcony I began to recycle organic matter”.

Her concern became a service and since 2009, the main mission of Compostera.cl (her business) has been to deliver tools and knowledge to people in order to reduce their carbon footprint. In these fourteen years, Pamela Bravo has created two podcasts (8 seasons), an Instagram account with 19.4 thousand followers, and YouTube channel with a platform where she teaches 4 online courses at affordable prices.

Adding to this labour, she makes talks and consultancies. She also published a book titled “Yo Sustentable”. In this book ”Plá” an 11-year-old girl shows the reader different ways to take care of the planet and lead a more sustainable life. To this year 9,000 copies of this book have been printed and later this year the adventures of “Pla” will arrive in Korea.

“The need for environmental education is so big that it is almost impossible to cover it. I hope everyone can be educated to be sustainable in different areas. When you engage with certain groups especially in sustainable culture you might start to think that there are a lot of people interested in taking care of the planet, but in reality, there are a lot of people that must be educated on these issues”, Pamela points out.

Regarding the role that women play in the circular economy cycle, Pamela states that in her experience, women play an important one: “I have participated in several organisations, volunteering, and I realize that more or less 90% of the sustainability ventures or micro-enterprises belong to women”.

“There can be many reasons,” she explains. “From the connection with the earth and the care of the planet to the fact that women assume a maternal role. For example, I am currently participating in the “Fundación Basura” where at least 80% of the participants are women. I am a volunteer in an urban garden and sometimes one or two men appear, but the majority are women”.

For Macarena Gajardo, Executive director of Fundación Basura – an NGO aimed at protecting the health of the planet, reducing waste, and mentoring policymakers, women have been historically in charge of care work. “Therefore, we have great power in our hands. From taking care of our own home, keeping it clean, deciding what things we buy, and taking charge of the culture of caring for our family. This also applies on a macro level”, explains.

“There are also ecofeminist movements that link the relationship and empathy that women feel to the “Mother Earth”. So the role of women today is fundamental but step by step, this role is being extended to people in general, since everyone can contribute”, adds Gajardo.

Pamela Bravo from “La Compostera”, also highlights that even though the participation of women is bigger in this area, their efforts are not as visible when it comes to being in the spotlight. “Women recycle organics and produce organic food, but when men get involved, they are ´entrepreneurs and ´CEO´ in the world of recycling”, she criticizes.

Chiloé, the road to a greener island

In the south of Chile, there is a large island called Chiloé known for its green mountains, wetlands and forests. In Chiloé, “the magic island”, it rains the majority of the year, and lots of Chileans visit during the summertime to enjoy the beautiful landscape and unique culture but in 2019, people from Chiloé demonstrated against the poor management of the waste in the island. Since then, a lot of women are working to have a greener island and transform the way they consume and live their everyday lives.

Lorena Bórquez is an example. She lives in Castro, the main city of Chiloé, and she turns cooking oil into soap. She began her business because of her own concern to protect nature and was inspired by the tradition that her mother and grandmother started: “I associate making soap with my childhood because my mother also made soap when I was a child, but with animal fat, as did my grandmother, who learned to make soap in Punta Arenas, the Chilean Patagonia.”

At first, when she first started making soap, Lorena, an agricultural engineer, was going through a career crisis after her maternity leave. This action transformed her life. Years ago, she was watching videos on the internet to make soap. Nowadays she trains and holds free workshops in various indigenous communities in southern Chile.

“I am happy to be able to train and teach people to make soap. I started doing this because as a professional I felt stuck. I wanted to work and feel useful. It’s true, I was at home with my family and all that, but as a professional, you want to be in your business. And this project allowed me to fill myself up and have that contact with people that is fascinating and also protect the environment. I am happy, this craft fills my soul”, she states.

Lorena also has a perspective on the role of women in building a more sustainable culture and her commitment to projects related to recycling. “In my case, I faced a domestic problem, and I didn’t know how to solve it and I think that many women are faced with similar conditions. In addition, we as women are always trying to save money. Somehow, we always end up moving to the domestic sphere no matter how educated or many degrees you have. You are the one who sees yourself facing the decision of what is thrown away in the house, what is useless. You always find yourself figuring out how certain objects can be repaired, among other issues. As a woman, you face these situations every day. It is a cultural thing, good or bad, I don’t know, but this definitely influences why we are more present in the circular economy ecosystem”, she states.

As a feminist and professional who works in the field, Daniela Frias states that in terms of public policies, a key issue to fight the climate crisis is to put care and life at the centre of our actions. “We must understand that care is not only about human beings but also about nature and local territories. This is a fundamental issue in order to build a social and ecological transformation, where women and nature are not relegated”.

She states that all the actions -regarding the climate crisis- that women carry out in their local territories, in their private or public life constitute an emancipatory praxis. She concludes: “Women build freedom and alternative paths to the capitalist system and that must be highlighted. We need to make these actions visible and invite all people: men, women, and people out of the system to get involved in caring for life because ultimately, women do have a leading role in this area but that means a greater burden for them. So a more harmonious relationship with nature as to take place not only in our family or communities but also in our local territories”.

The Chilean poet and Nobel Prize in Literature Gabriela Mistral wrote a beautiful poem named “The Pleasure of Serving” where she reminds us that serving others is not only a duty but also a source of immense happiness.

Through this poem, she encourages people to take on tasks that others may avoid and to find joy in small acts of service. Lots of women in Chile are taking actions that a lot of people avoid in order to promote a circular economy and reduce organic waste through various initiatives and businesses. This is their service. By doing so, they are not only helping to protect the environment but also creating economic opportunities and promoting social justice. Overall, women’s involvement in waste reduction and circular economy initiatives is crucial for achieving a more sustainable and equitable future in Chile. And as in the poem of Mistral, these actions, and the role they play in the circular economy left us wondering as Chilean society if we render our service today. “To whom? To a tree, to your friend, to your mother?”.

Marta Apablaza Riquelme is a freelance science journalist based in Santiago, Chile

Dealing With a Water-Hungry Enterprise: How Science is Looking for a Water-Less Copper Industry in Chile

Marta Apablaza Riquelme — Mon, 08 May 2023 11:11:17 +0000

Chile has its massive copper mining industry to thank for a sizable portion of its gross national production, but the country can also point to this same sector as the culprit in a major drought that has affected this region for many years. What is the nature of this water shortage? How could it be addressed?

Empty and dusty basins. Satellite images of dry reservoirs. Goats, horses and sheeps looking for water. Men and women carrying buckets to get themselves drinking water. Trees falling dry. Local administrations are asking the central government to declare a state of emergency due to the alarming drought. These difficult images do not come from a specific place but belong to different parts of the world. Spain, Italy, Mexico, France, Chile are some of the countries that are going through an emergency due to water scarcity in their territories. According to data provided by the UN, by 2025 half of the world’s population will live in areas of water scarcity.

Chile – a country that is composed of deserts, valleys, seas and mountains in a single territory – has been going through a mega-drought for more than a decade. This phenomenon mainly affects the central zone of the country and implies a pluviometric deficit of an average of between 20 and 40 percent of annual precipitation compared to the historical record.

In this scenario, copper mining, a productive activity that has been one of the main economic activities in Chile for the last 50 years, becomes important. It contributes 10% of Chilean GDP and represents more than 55% of all Chilean exports. However, despite their economic contribution, mining operations use between 3% and 4% of the total national water available resources. This situation is paradoxical, since the freshwater sources available are diminishing along with the drought. This situation puts mining in a very awkward position in front of environmental groups of Chilean society because water is not only needed for human consumption but also pollutes and destroys valuable ecosystems.

“The copper will still require many liters of water to continue to be processed,” explains Andreina García, academic from the Department of Mining Engineering of the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences of the Universidad de Chile.

Currently, mining operations obtain water from rivers, aquifers, underground water sources and the sea. Using less and less water in mining operations is a challenge because the copper is very deep and in order to get it, more rock is needed to be processed, which needs more water.

So, how does the mining industry work in a water scarcity environment and what technical solutions are being developed to deal with the lack of water?

Water in big mining operations

The National Copper Corporation of Chile, better known as “Codelco”, is a Chilean state company dedicated to copper mining, an area in which it is known for being one of the largest companies on the planet.

Until the 1990s, most of the mining operations in Chile were carried out by Codelco. However, since those years –and as part of a process of liberalization of the Chilean economy after the end of the dictatorship–, the mining industry began to open up and international mining companies started to settle in the country beginning a cycle where private mining is the main character of this productive activity.

The academic from the Universidad de Chile and AMTC researcher, Christian Ihle, explains the context of this installation: “International private mining companies formulated their copper extraction projects in a different water context, since in those years water an abund resource and the rivers, afluents and other water sources were near of the mining operations,” Ihle explains.

“Many of these operations were located in the Atacama region, one of the driest deserts in the world at 2,000, 4,000, 5,000 meters above sea level. Most of these operations involve transporting and moving water for 200 or 300 kilometers. These are operations with a considerable energy and infrastructure cost”, indicates the academic.

“After a few years, water began to become a critical, scarce and expensive resource. Scarce because there was no longer plenty of water near the mining operations and it was also expensive. Also because in some cases when desalination technology infrastructure was implemented to bring water from the sea”, indicates the academic.

Given this scenario, the government of President Gabriel Boric announced in June 2022, in its first public account, an investment of 86 million dollars for Coldeco. “We believe in a mining activity that is responsible and that improves its socio-environmental standards. That is why CODELCO has established, by 2026 a commitment to reduce their gas emissions by 64%, also reduce in 42% its fresh water consumption and to recycle 55% of industrial waste”, indicated the president.

Science, research, technology: an approach to solutions

But how do public and private mining companies try to reduce their water consumption? And how can innovation, science and technology play a role in this challenge?

A group of researchers gathered under the name “Water, Environment and Sustainability” led by Andreina García, an academic from the Department of Mining Engineering of the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences of the Universidad de Chile, seek to develop technological solutions as a strategy to address the water scarcity in the mining industry.

The research group has three lines: The first aims to improve the seawater desalination process. The second seeks to reuse mining liquids used in operations. The third line of research treat natural and groundwater enriched with elements that are highly toxic for human consumption.

Desalination membranes, bioreactors and water treatment

According to García, the desalination of seawater is the main strategy that mining has to supply itself with water in the future. “It is expected that between now and 2030, 50% of the water used by mining will come from seawater and mainly desalinated seawater,” says the academic.

And she adds: “The process currently installed in desalination plants in Chile is a process known as reverse osmosis, which has limitations in its operation. One of these limitations is the useful life of the desalination filters. What we do in the laboratory is produce new and improved membranes to optimize the desalination process”, she explains.

“We are developing desalination membranes with copper that prevent microorganisms present in seawater from plugging, dirtying and collapsing the system. We are also looking to extend the useful life of the material.”

The second research project that seeks to reduce water consumption in large-scale mining has to do with the recovery of water from any residue from mining operations through bioreactors or microorganisms that seek to make the water suitable for agricultural irrigation.

Researchers are currently working with the Tranque Ovejería, located in the Til Til commune, and the Tranque Talabre, located northeast of Calama, a city located in the north of the country.

“Depending on the water, there are different treatments because the water from the dams in the central zone of Chile is chemically very different from that from the dams in the northern zone,” explains Yasna Tapia Fernandez, AMTC researcher in charge of this project.

“We have the chemical challenge of being able to treat that water so that it meets the regulations and reduce the concentration of metals in the water through biological treatment through bioreactors,” she adds.

Finally, in the third line of research is the Solar Senic project, a system for removing arsenic from surface water or groundwater whose implementation is already underway. In northern Chile, surface waters can be highly contaminated with arsenic, a chemical element that is highly toxic and carcinogenic. Through the use of nanomaterials and sunlight, the researchers developed a technology that manages to remove arsenic from the water, converting the water into potable water for later use by indigenous communities in the Atacama.

“It is a challenge to be able to find partners and acceptance by the industry. Nowadays, these research, development and technology programs force you to look for that associated entity that not only believes in the project or initiative, but is also willing to make financial contributions so that it can be executed correctly”, explains García.

And Yasna Tapia adds that the industry must look for other solutions to produce copper without water in a future scenario. “In a scenario where we are facing the consequences of climate change, we have to think about more sustainable technologies than buying these desalination plants that are very large and very expensive,” she finalized.

Marta Apablaza Riquelme is a freelance science journalist based in Santiago, Chile

Gabriel Abarca-Brown: Rescuing Transcultural Psychiatry

Marta Apablaza Riquelme — Sat, 11 Feb 2023 16:23:09 +0000

The intersections of psychotechnologies, global mental health, subjectivity, and everyday life, highlighting historical, cross-cultural, intersectional, and decolonial aspects. This is the line of research of Gabriel Abarca-Brown, who works as a researcher at the University of Copenhagen, in the research project ‘Decolonizing Madness’, where a group of researchers is redefining the relationship between culture, race, and collective and individual psyche after the end of World War II.

“Mental health as a social construct where two societies meet, face each other, alchemize and bifurcate.” This was the subject of doctoral research of Dr. Gabriel Abarca-Brown who currently works as a researcher at the University of Copenhagen in the ERC-project ‘Decolonizing Madness’.

Despite his young age, Abarca-Brown has several years of experience. He has worked as a teacher and researcher in Chile, the United Kingdom and Brazil. He first studied psychology at the Universidad de Santiago de Chile, then did a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology at Universidad de Chile to finally make the transition from psychology to social sciences with the start of his doctorate in anthropology at King’s College London in England.

The seed of his doctoral research was planted in his early days as a psychologist in the Chilean public health system where he treated migrants. This exchange led him to study international evidence that stated that in migrant communities, especially in the second and third generations, the prevalence of mental illness increased compared to first generation migrants. “International research and other studies made in Chile argued that the second-generation of migrant communities had a very similar prevalence of mental disorders compared to the Chilean population. This situation opens a question of a sociological and anthropological nature,” says Abarca-Brown.

In his doctoral research titled ‘Becoming a (neuro)migrant: Culture, race, class and gender in Santiago, Chile’, he asks what it means to be a migrant and challenges the traditional concept. “Not because you get to live in another country, you become a migrant. You become one when the other excludes you, or makes you feel that you are not part of the country or society that receives you. For example: You can have a co-worker who is from abroad and they may state: ‘I am not a migrant because I am not like those people who do not have nothing to eat.’ However, there comes a time when this person understands that they may be a migrant due to a situation of exclusion, racialization or another,” Dr. Gabriel Abarca-Brown explains. “By naming my doctoral research ‘Becoming a (neuro)migrant: Culture, race, class and gender in Santiago, Chile’, I established that there are multiple ways of becoming a migrant and which allow us to understand the trajectories of migrants’ lives.”

To complete his PhD, he researched the relationship between the Chilean public health system and the communities of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. He also studied their respective health systems, such as Haitian-Creole medicine and Voodoo. His question was: What happens when certain technologies from the world of psychiatry, such as psychotherapy and modern pharmaceuticals, meet communities in Haiti or the Dominican Republic? What happens when the practices of traditional Haitian medicine meet with the practices of the Chilean health system? And how do they meet?

It should be noted that although the culture of Haiti and the Dominican Republic have traditional health systems to treat certain afflictions, in the case of Haiti, there are few professionals available for pharmacological treatment of certain mental illnesses. Likewise, in the Dominican Republic, the first mental health reform was only carried out in 2015. They upgraded the existing mental health hospital and developed mental health services in primary health care. “In Chile, the reality is different. After the end of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in 1990, three mental health plans have been implemented. Currently the Chilean health system has psychologists, psychiatrists, and neurologists at different levels. People have appropriated a psychiatric way to express their affliction and know categories, diagnoses and names of psychotropic drugs. What is the social impact of this way of conceiving your own psyche? How do these technologies shape Chilean citizens and migrants?” He continues: “People started to represent themselves and think about their illness and health in a different way.”

Dr. Gabriel Abarca-Brown conducted a 14-months long ethnographic fieldwork in which he not only visited the very Chilean public health services that several migrant communities from Haiti and the Dominican Republic attend, but also visited traditional cultural spaces where this migrant community goes to heal afflictions, such as evangelical churches. Likewise, he interviewed public policy makers, health professionals, pastors, and voodoo healers.

“My objective was to learn how psychiatric technologies – psychotherapy and psychotropics, among others – and the global mental health agenda impact and shape the subjectivity and daily life of migrant communities. What I concluded is that the majority of migrants reject the efforts of Chilean public health service to treat their mental illness,” he explains.

Abarca-Brown adds: “When a person from the community in Haiti or the Dominican Republic is told that they have to go to a consultation with a psychologist, in their first consultation they tell the intercultural facilitator ‘I don’t know what a psychologist is’, or ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here’. A series of frictions and conflicts are generated in the clinical relationship, because voodoo and Haitian-Creole medicine have different ways of representing the body, health, and mental illness.”

“My research is called ‘Becoming a neuro migrant…’, because it turns out that these patients and their families start to modify the idea and way in which they talk about themselves and how they understand their afflictions as they are more exposed to the ways in which mental health is understood in Chile.”

At the end of his doctoral research, Abarca-Brown was able to identify three groups: The first one is the group of people who do not go or attend mental health sessions at all. The second is the neuro migrant, who effectively gradually modifies the way in which they represent and name their afflictions and their causes. Finally, the third group are the children of migrants who begin to integrate the Chilean mental health interventions in different spaces of their daily lives, for example in schools.

“This third group gets involved with all this psychological infrastructure and technology available in Chile as they begin to live in a social context and to study within Chilean institutions. For example, children and adolescents begin to talk about bullying, suicide, taking care of your brain, and preventing mental illness in schools,” he explains.

He also argues that this is why it is important to have a decolonizing view of mental health. “In this way, we do not neglect the practices and knowledge of different societies; what is more, we value it and question the psychiatric imperative,” Abarca-Brown says.

Chile and a Liberalizing View of Mental Health

Dr. Gabriel Abarca-Brown is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen. He joined the project ‘Decolonizing madness’ financed by the European Research Council and led by academic Ana Antic. This project addresses the debate on the concept of mental health and illness, offering a transdisciplinary and transcultural psychiatry perspective as well as the concept of ‘the global psyche’ to address research topics.

Specifically, Abarca-Brown is studying the history of cross-cultural psychiatry in Chile, whose first signs date back to the middle of the 20th century. He explains that in Chile, there has been a process of liberalization in the understanding of mental health. “Thirty years ago many people did not know what a psychologist was. But now, we find a world where social life has changed. The problems and afflictions of people begin to be explained psychologically or neurologically. For example, many people come to the clinic saying: ‘I have a panic disorder and I think I need fluoxetine and alprazolam’. Patients come to the consultation with a knowledge and a language that did not exist 30 years ago.”

“When problems are individualized in a neoliberal logic, they tend to be experienced and resolved individually. We no longer solve problems collectively, at the neighborhood council, at the community club, at the bar. People’s problems are now being solved at the psychologist, psychoanalyst, or psychiatrist. There are also people who take on another type of approach to cope with their mental help, and purchase self-help books or self-medicate and buy clonazepam or alprazolam at flea markets.”

It should be noted that various studies confirm that the mental health of the Chilean population is deteriorating. The results of the third version of the Mental Health Thermometer in Chile ACHS-UC establish that during 2021, 46.7% of the people surveyed have some degree of depression, and many people attend psychological and psychiatric consultations.

This reality was very different decades ago. Abarca-Brown is researching the efforts of different people, organizations, institutions, and even social movements for mental health in the 1960s and 1970s. “Most of the time, the history of psychiatry is the history of mental health reforms. The role of multiple local actors, agents, and international institutions such as the WHO, are not considered. I believe that one can write a history of transcultural psychiatry from its limits or points of contact with other actors and knowledge. For example from anthropology, social work, or humanitarian work from different organizations,” he explains.

According to the researcher, there are studies of interculturality in Chilean mental health service founded in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. “During that time studies were carried out with the Mapuche and Aymara world and mental health began to be considered together with internal alterity, with those who are different in our country. In this case, not migrants, but with the indigenous world.”

Likewise, according to the researcher, in those years there were several research projects that associated economic inequality and socio-cultural aspects with alcoholism and other mental illnesses. Juan Marconi, a prominent Chilean psychiatrist, was very interested in investigating the psychosocial and cultural factors of alcoholism, for which he developed an intra-community work program in the south of Santiago, Chile’s main city.

“He is one of those who began to think about transcultural psychiatry and who was a pioneer in the world in his epidemiological studies. The first studies with direct methodologies in alcoholism, for example, were made in Chile and were a reference for the world. All this was cut short by the dictatorship. There was little investment in public health, and almost none in mental health, ”he says.

Why is a decolonial perspective important in the study of psychiatry?

“It is important because, with a decolonial perspective, we don’t neglect the practices, the knowledge or the ways of dealing with human afflictions of different societies. In the field of mental health, there are many ways of representing the world and acting to solve problems. In our ‘Decolonizing Madness’ project, we are raising a decolonial perspective while at the same time, we value the beliefs and practices that societies use to face their afflictions and problems. We reflect on these psychiatric, psychological, or psychosocial practices from specific local contexts.”

Chile 2019: There Is No Mental Health Without Social Justice

During the social, economic, and political crisis Chile experienced during October 2019, the streets of the country were filled with slogans and messages that tried to explain the strain that Chileans were experiencing. On a lot of walls you could read: “It was not depression, it was capitalism”, “There is no mental health without social justice”, among other slogans making explicit reference to the mental health crisis that Chileans navigate. Lack of time for leisure and enjoyment, territorial segregation, few spaces to build community, little social mobility, and a false promise of meritocracy are some of the circumstances that Chileans were experiencing that affect their mental health.

“There is a tendency to think that in Chile, the mental health problem of the population can be solved with more and better psychiatrists and psychologists, but this is not the case. The mental health of a country depends on economic policies, participation in society, gender, health, housing, transportation. This is because countries with a higher level of equity and with social security systems have a higher degree of well-being than countries that do not. There is no mental health without social justice. As Chileans, we need a system that is fair on different levels. One of the difficulties that we have had in Chile in the last 50 years is that there is a tendency to think that mental health problems are going to be solved with better psychologists and psychiatrists. We can design a great mental health service, inject the resources and implement it, but these efforts are in vain if we have an unequal country, which does not have gender equality and has very low quality of public transportation. In Denmark, compared to Chile, there is a universal social protection system that is tremendously equitable and transparent, with cities that are friendly in terms of architecture, construction, transportation, and green areas,” states Dr. Gabriel Abarco-Brown.

He is interested in investigating how we conceive of differences as a society. “Chile is a country that is changing fast. Globalization has made us lose our geographically isolated condition. And in addition to that, we have received foreigners mainly from Latin American and Caribbean countries in recent years. How can Chilean or Latin American multiculturalism be built? What does multiculturalism mean for Chileans? These are questions that go to the foundations of our society; that we are asking ourselves and which are worth investigating,” he concludes.

Marta Apablaza Riquelme is a freelance science journalist based in Santiago, Chile