Población La Victoria: 52 años de la lucha

Less than two years ago, one of Chile's most iconic poblaciones (the common term for poor neighborhoods or barrios) marked it's first half-century - 50 years since the very early morning of when a thousands of residents of the most destitute parts of southern Santiago moved to take an overgrown fairground that the government had slated for the construction of a wealthy housing community. The dawn of October 30, 1957, found over 3,000 people already setting up tents and organizing resources after having crept past the cordon of policemen charged with keeping these very pobladores from realizing this populist project, which had been brewing for over a year as the conditions in the city's poorest communities deteriorated rapidly.

Nearly 52 years later, the residents of the Población La Victoria - named for "la victoria contra la miseria" ["the victory over misery"] - still frame their history and their present identity in terms of "la lucha", or "the fight". There is an enormous pride that comes from living in this barrio, despite it's economic poverty - an enormous pride to being a "victoriano", which, besides signifying someone from La Victoria, translates roughly to "victor" - "one who is victorious". Murals plaster the walls of the población, documenting the community's vicious fight against the dictatorship of Pinochet and its militant leftist leanings, and the barrio is also home to South America's first community TV station, which runs a pirate signal with programs and documentaries about the history of La Victoria, the resistance during the dictatorship, and political events and movements today, in addition to running a small community communications night-school which focuses on training young victorianos how to tell the stories of their community and how to keep memories alive.

I've been lucky enough to spend almost all of the past week in this incredible community, observing and participating in the elementary school that the victorianos founded two years after the creation of La Victoria. Despite its nationalized curriculum and all of the red tape required by the state to run the school and receive the money for its operations, this school manages to retain the sense of being "victoriana": the kids are proud to be from this community, and moreover, the gate to the school is almost always open. Parents move freely throughout the school, kids run in and out of the director's office all day, and the community itself still takes enormous pride in what the school signifies for La Victoria and in the principles it was founded upon - the idea that education is in itself a part of the fight against the forces that drove the pobladores to organize and create this community 52 years ago - a fight that reached its peak under the dictatorship but which continues to be relevant in a country with one of the highest indices of economic inequality in the world.