The Governor of the Metropolitan Region, Claudio Orrego, together with local authorities and residents of Santiago, in the announcement of the plaza for women. Santiago Metropolitan Regional Government
A street in the center of Santiago is known for a rich offer of books, both in open-air stalls and in stores.
The oldest booksellers on Via Diego de Almagro nostalgically remember the quiet past and the joyful bohemia of the neighborhood.
They make it clear that they keep their customers, but they lament how crime has turned the boulevard into an unsafe place after six in the evening.
The Metropolitan Government, together with the Metro company, have chosen that street to build the first square designed for women.
The space, which as planned will open next May, will have open and closed lactation places, security guards and entrepreneurial posts, among other services.
The 28 degrees of temperature suffer at the intersection of Diego de Almagro with Alonso Ovalle street, near Alameda, the main avenue in Santiago.
The little shade does not come from the languid trees, but from the residential towers.
A fence prevents the passage to the space ceded by Metro to build the plaza in which some 125,000 dollars will be invested.
The bare concrete walls that surround it are decorated with graffiti, except for one half-painted white, from Sunday, when the start of the works was announced.
Maria Olga Zapata, 44, treasurer of the Parque Almagro neighborhood association, acknowledges that she thinks well at night before walking down this street.
Between the lack of lighting and the number of men loitering and making inappropriate comments, she doesn't feel safe.
“One wonders where to go if something happens”,
The Metropolitan Government, one of the institutions behind this initiative, has said that this plaza will have a gender focus.
But although Justice, international relations and education may have this perspective, among other disciplines, what exactly would a place with a gender focus look like, the first of its kind in Chile?
There are some key facts.
86.5% of women have suffered physical harassment in public spaces, according to the Mobility & City survey carried out by the Observatory against Harassment Chile (OCAC), the Inter-American Development Bank and the FIA Foundation, commissioned by the Regional Government.
Governor Claudio Orrego assured at the start of the works that the first of the four squares with a gender focus that he has committed to building has a central objective: to recover currently abandoned public spaces, promote entrepreneurship and the economic development of Chilean women and advance in an inclusive city, “especially of those who have been discriminated against and abused like women”.
The project is part of the so-called
pocket squares
, an initiative that began in the second government of President Michelle Bachelet (2014-2018), which consists of occupying disused spaces for public use and converting them temporarily until a resolution is reached. definitive solution for that terrain.
The 1,000 square meters ceded by Metro in a four-year loan agreement will transform the vacant lot into a plaza with food carts from companies led by women with tables to set up, urban gardens, bathrooms with diaper-changing and breastfeeding tables, and stalls for entrepreneurs, as well as a children's area.
The land has a circular Metro line vent that occupies about a third of the space.
There it is intended to raise a chromatic floor mural.
Lidia Gil, 64, has worked for more than four decades on the street of booksellers.
Her mother obtained the patent in Salvador Allende's Popular Unity, at the beginning of the seventies.
She agrees with the opening of a new market, as long as the entrepreneurs they bring in do not compete with her business.
Soledad Bravo, an older woman who prefers to omit her age, is the tenant of a stall that also belonged to her mother decades ago.
“Before he was calmer, more enjoyable for everyone, but now he is like all of Santiago.
We try to take care of and keep the clientele safe from crime, ”she points out.
The transformation of the abandoned land, where people threw garbage and scratched the walls, can open the eyes of the community to recover other deteriorated sectors of the street, such as the cement square on the corner, says the treasurer of the Parque neighborhood association Almagro.
“This project allows us to visualize other spaces that we did not see as habitable and work with the community to beautify them,” she says.
The
pocket square
is on the western sidewalk, which belongs to the neighborhood council of their neighborhood, where some 60,000 people live, but the eastern sidewalk belongs to another sector, so both will have to maintain it.
"That helps to build a social fabric, which was totally lost," adds the neighborhood leader.
The future plaza is the result of a public-private effort between Metro, the Regional Government, the Regional Council, the Municipality of Santiago, Ciudad de Bolsillo and Vértice Urbano.
It is contemplated that a mural inspired by the founders of the newspaper Aurora Feminista
, inaugurated in 1904 , be painted on one of those gray and striped walls that surround it.
From that revolutionary and extinct publication designed to defend the rights of women, particularly women workers, comes the name of the new public space: Aurora.
This is the name of the first Chilean plaza designed for women that will also allow the entry of men.
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