Heriberto Carrasco Arce (63) defines himself as “an old walker.”
If he lived within the system, he would still not be considered old, nor would he be able to retire, nor would he have been able to travel the roads of Chile as he did for 12 years, after leaving “la cana”, where 27 years of his life were consumed. He would probably be working, dating, maybe having children.
In 2018, he arrived in Punta Arenas, from Argentina, obviously walking, and he settled here, where the breadth of the landscape, the clarity of the air and the beauty of the sky, make him feel free, which is what he values most. A kind of compensation after having spent, as he puts it, “so many years on the dark side of the moon.”
The history teacher and head of territorial social operations at Hogar de Cristo in Magallanes, Álvaro Rondón, defines it this way:
–Heriberto is a patiperro who has traveled all over Chile. He is from San Bernardo, a kind of older adult hippie who, as often happens with people living on the streets, carries deep wounds from childhood. His path has been a free life and now he has the tranquility of a vast territory, like this one in Patagonia. Heriberto moves all day. He is very autonomous. He walks all over the city. People recognize it and love it.
His neighbor, a young juggler from the Biobío region, who was “front line” during the social outbreak of 2019, managed to win him over to such an extent that Heriberto has allowed him to build a ruco on the privileged land where he has his. It is a spectacular place; a vacant lot, in a river valley, in the middle of a high-class condominium.
-The old man is a crack. Macondo calls his house, which, as the song says, is on the flat and deep, and he named his dog Aureliana Marcela after Colonel Aureliano Buendía from “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” Pure Garciamarquian vibe –says the neighbor.
Pure wave.
In his ruco, considered 2.0 by all the social workers at Hogar de Cristo who know him, he combines his talent for recycling and manual labor with a well-managed Diogenes malady. The clutter of junk, but also of books, tools, useful objects, responds to an order and seems to be the work of a somewhat baroque decorator, but with a lot of aesthetic sense.
He has a hermetic room, his bedroom, the one he shares with Aureliana Marcela and an unnamed cat, where the tremendous Magellanic gusts do not sneak in, and there is a wood-burning stove. built a bathroom with toilet without drinking water, but with an ingenious rainwater harvesting system, which, through a system of pipes, flows into a stream that is in the deepest part of the site.
From “Macóndo”.
It has a gas stove without an oven door, where we caught him getting ready to prepare a casserole with beef bones. Later he will go out looking for potatoes and squash, he says. He has various vegetables and fruits hanging from a tree-furniture, very pretty. And, although outside there was a brief but intense downpour of rain, here, in this kitchen integrated into the living room, nobody gets wet. The roof is made of polycarbonate mixed with zinc cans on a wooden structure, all made with materials donated by Hogar de Cristo.
Together with Aurelina Marcela.
“In 1976, I already had a record”
–My name is Heriberto Carrasco Arce, I am 63 years old and I am from San Bernardo. It was actually, that was my starting point. Now I am from Punta Arenas, which may be the arrival. Who knows. I want you to know that I am an alcoholic and I smoke marijuana. I live with Aureliana Marcela, who has had about nineteen children and is a bullet to eliminate the damn rodents. She is a world class mouse hunter.
Heriberto is missing several teeth, is tall, skinny, wears dreadlocks, and wears military clothing. He considers that “this is the best for the cold, for the climate of Magallanes, especially military shoes.” He also has a bad stomach, which is why he hasn’t had any alcohol for a couple of days. He is completely sober. And so he tells us about his life and his philosophy:
–People throw away many useful things; there is little awareness of recycling. I, on the other hand, am good at gathering used and natural things to reuse them. With rainwater, I survive just fine. With her, I prepare food, bathe, wash things. I don’t have light or electricity, that’s why I would like you to help me with a good solar panel, so I could listen to my music, watch the news, have a kettle and a small electric saw to split the sticks, because I heat myself with firewood. That is my dream: the solar plate or panel, as they say.
He is very proud explaining the details of his ruco 2.0. “The strays live on the street. I built this house in six months, bringing objects and materials in a bus. That is my private vehicle; That’s where I take Aureliana Marcela for a walk sometimes. I put together this part of the house with the materials that Hogar de Cristo gave me ”, he thanks again.
In what could be his library, where there is a small desk, he takes out a bundle of printed sheets. It is the detail of his extensive record. He does not go into details, but the sum of sentences for more than a dozen crimes is impressive.
Social worker Yerka Novion is in charge of the Calle Program in Magallanes. The device serves 30 people in Punta Arenas and another 10 in Puerto Natales. Heriberto is part of those 40 men living on the streets in this extreme region. A very special one loved by the team. Yerka comments:
–There is a shooting attack in your past, among many other complex events. I understand that his father died because of it, but he is confused in those accounts. I do know that Heriberto experienced the 1973 coup with a lot of trauma, as a pre-adolescent.
He makes memories: “During the entire dictatorship, we lived at bus stop 39 on Gran Avenida. My dad was a carpenter, an old man with a hat, one of those with a single line. I, who am his only child, turned out quite the opposite. My mom was a seamstress. I got to the fourth grade and “see you later”. In 1974 I started smoking marijuana. Later we got an apartment in Puente Alto, but my mom didn’t like it and she exchanged it for a princess brick house in Villa Polaris. That’s how my mom was, carried away by her idea”.
His father died in 1993. “It was due to something serious to his stomach, which caused him so much forelock. The old man had a billy like that, an alcoholic nose. My mother left in October 2000. I made the old woman suffer a lot when I left smoking marijuana, which was the reason they arrested me the first time. Then I started committing crimes. I liked good shoes, good pants, and we had no money. I don’t like to lie, that’s why I don’t hide anything. In 1976, I already had a criminal record.”
Captain Boric and I
Heriberto, in his uncompromising honesty, comments that he has spent a total of 27 years serving various sentences. And that he also had a stint at the Santiago Psychiatric Hospital. “It was two months in total. I still have the token. He says that I am hyperkinetic ”.
What did you learn from your time in prison?
I learned a lot from my fellow politicians. I was imprisoned in Los Andes. There I got good at reading. That changes life, perception, understanding of things. Books for me are my children. (He says caressing several history books and some copies of the current constitution and the one that was not approved last year).
Heriberto assures that he no longer commits crimes, although he does not consider it a crime or a sin to take out a package of noodles from a large supermarket. He sometimes he does. “And if they catch me, I return it. There are no problems, ”he says. He assures that the street was reconciling him with life.
–When I went out into the street, I began to understand the world. To understand that you can live without a home and without a home, but not without a homeland. Once I was in a square and I saw how the lights were turning on inside the houses. I was out in the cold: stale, thirsty and hungry, but I had my precious freedom. It did not depend on paying a tax, nor on a woman, nor on a family, nor on a job. When checking all that, I started to get up. Punta Arenas has given me the freedom to live peacefully. Here I have the certainty that people are always helping me and that is valuable.
Why do you call the President Captain Boric?
–Because he is in charge –he answers and stands in front of the camera and speaks as if the President were listening to him. He says: Captain Boric, I wanted to talk to you. I’m not asking you for a piece of dirt, I’m asking you for just an inch of dirt. We are similar in our political convictions. The only difference between you and me is that you tennis power and I don’t, that’s why I appeal to you for that inch of land. Another thing: I think it’s okay not are you by armed means, but by constitutional means. I abide by the old constitution, which is what it is, even though it was written by only four roosters, but now we are going to have a new one and I hope it will help us, especially the poorest in Chile.
He ends his speech, full of bombastic gestures, by saying: “Those of us who are on the street are for different reasons and no one is free to get into this situation. Ours is not a bad cause, it’s just a bad situation. Sixty percent of us are old; the rest goats, almost always with family problems. We all use the bottle and marijuana, which is a much better resource, because it doesn’t throw you out, it doesn’t leave you out like alcohol, but here in Punta Arenas it’s very expensive. Synthetic drugs are the worst, you have to stay away from those.”
–Are you afraid of old age on the street, out in the open, in solitude, Heriberto?
I hope to die here. Here I have found what the north did not give me. I sold everything in Santiago and lost ten sticks in the sale of my house. Now I have nothing but myself and the respect of those who know me. In Punta Arenas people are cold on the outside, but warm on the inside. I like that and this landscape at the end of the world, although I don’t know Torres del Paine or Cerro Sombrero. I’m already sick, I have bad hips and knees. Death does not scare me, what scares me is loneliness. Not having anyone to wash my slit, when I do it alone because I can’t get to the bathroom, pardoning the expression. That worries me and scares me.
–Anything else to say?
“Just thank you all. I am grateful for what Hogar de Cristo has done for me, and for this reason I will never disappoint them. Long live Chile, long live the homeland!
