New dawn.
On a July night, in the middle of winter of 2020 in the Cerrillos commune, on the outskirts of the capital, a group of people decided to leave their homes, and took over a vacant lot across the street. Each one took a couple of sticks to demarcate their space, each one made a fire, and they stayed awake all night while they took care of their new space, while they imagined their new home, while they took care of their future house.
Ines Fuentes heard the rumor that ran through the streets of her passage that night, she quickly went out and formed a rectangle with 4 sticks, took some sheets, tore them up and laid them on the floor of what would become her new home. She spent the night on a pallet and under a tent she could get.
There were 80 families who arrived the first night, after three days there were already 300 and after a month, there were close to 1,500 families in the place.
Under the traditional Chilean culture, one of the most desired wishes is to have a house of one's own, but this dream is increasingly difficult to achieve.
The Chile that does not have a house, the Chile that rents eternally, the Chile that takes land and turns it into camps, to be able, somehow, to get closer to that dream.
In a country with nearly 19 million inhabitants, more than 2 million people do not have access to decent housing.
In the Nuevo Amanecer land there are already about 10,000 people distributed over in 40 hectares, almost 80% of the inhabitants are migrants, making it the largest irregular settlement in the country.
Assignment for El País.