Felipe Berríos: “In Chile, migrants are marginalized not because they are foreigners, but because they are poor” | Society

The Chilean Jesuit Felipe Berríos (Santiago de Chile, 1956) analyzes the humanitarian crisis in the north of his country involving thousands of South American migrants who arrive on Chilean lands through unauthorized border crossings and settle as best they can. in the public space of the cities, which generated tensions with the inhabitants. Last Saturday, in the city of Iquique, about 1,750 kilometers from the capital, a march against migrants ended with the burning of mattresses and toys of homeless Venezuelans, in one of the most inhuman scenes never seen on these lands lately. At the same time, hundreds of Haitians living in Chile are involved in an exodus and, crossing the entire continent, are trying to reach the United States.

For the priest, “immigration is not going to stop. Because Chile, no matter how much we criticize it, is the richest country with the best prospects in the region ”. Berríos describes this multidimensional problem: “The crisis of people entering through unauthorized steps, the government that does not issue papers and immigrants who are left in limbo and have to live in black, pay very high rents and earn money. low salaries. On the other hand, the Chileans with modest incomes who live with immigrants, who relieve themselves anywhere, who play music to all the pigs and occupy the few public spaces in low-income neighborhoods, are the most stressed, because the gentlemen who from the top of Santiago they say that they are in favor of the migrants, they do not have the problem above them ”.

The Jesuit does not speak from the comfort of the capital, but from a camp in the city of Antofagasta, about 1,370 kilometers north of Santiago de Chile, where he has lived for seven years. It is a group of girls or slums – as they are called in the rest of the region – that the Jesuit successfully tried to change its face thanks to a project he is carrying out with the Recrea Foundation and its executive director, Alejandra Stevenson: neighborhood transition. A capricious and uncomfortable voice in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, he remains arguably Chile’s most influential cleric due to his disruptive and provocative proposals, such as those listed in this interview. For the Jesuit, “certain measures in schools and congregations are not enough”, after the great crisis due to the abuses which affect the organization in the world and which in Chile led Pope Francis to a historic cleansing after the unfortunate visit to the country for early 2018. “What must change is the structure of the Church. Women must be incorporated and the hierarchy must be chosen by the people of God and be of service to the people of God. We must make a living from our work and celibacy must be voluntary, ”Berríos enumerates.

The Chimba, where the Jesuit lives, is located north of the mining town of Antofagasta, around the town’s dump. In this area, around four camps have been set up where at least 1,000 families live, mostly immigrants.

In the Luz Divina camp, where the religious himself has his home, there are 260 families: a third of Colombian origin, a third of Peruvian origin and a third of Bolivian origin. “We don’t call them immigrants, but new Chileans. These are people who came with small guagüitas [bebés] or small guagüitas were born here. For the national holidays, on September 18, the whole camp was barred with Chilean flags, ”he describes. The streets are dirt, the toilets are latrines and the water arrives there by tanker truck. Despite the precariousness, however, the transitional quarter has managed to restore dignity to the people: the streets have names, the houses have numbers, there is a revolving seat, and children have access to libraries and after-hours. So-called sheltered lunchtime, with activities so that you don’t stay home alone when your parents are working. When families find a formal home, they make room for new generations of needy people, which has happened six times. “They are ready to join the company,” says Berríos. And he illustrates: “When we opened the library four years ago, it received two to eight visits per month. Today, there are 700. There is a change in people’s attitude towards life ”.

He assures that a substantial element of the humanitarian crisis of immigrants in the north can be explained by centralism in Chile, “because what is not happening in Santiago does not exist”. And he points to the government of Sebastián Piñera, “which has been ineffective and indolent in this situation”.

Question. Do you mainly hold this government responsible?

Reply. Consecutive governments have mismanaged the migratory phenomenon, because we did not even have a law at different times, but one question is to mismanage a problem and another thing is what this government did, which is to create xenophobia. The executive in charge of immigration says that to come to Chile you have to get a visa and in most cities of Bolivia or Peru there is no consulate or mentality of that: for centuries it crossed borders without problems and there is no notion that it is wrong.

P. According to the organization The ceiling, which you founded, there are approximately 81,000 families living in camps in Chile …

R. The problem of the camps in Chile is very big. After the 2010 earthquake, NGOs, the Government and the State moved away from the outskirts of the camps and, as of the epidemic of October 2019, they disappeared. Some think that the solution is to build houses, but the problem is so big that it is not enough. We have thousands of Chileans who live without paying rent, water, electricity, without regulations and at the mercy of the mafias. The problem is so big that we are at a point of no return. If you have a family that has lived in informality for decades, how do you integrate these people? This has led many immigrants, in the end, to want to leave Chile. Basically, they live in the countryside, but they are not integrated into society.

Q. What is the link between homelessness and migration?

R. In Chile, the new poor are migrants. And they are marginalized not because they are foreigners, but because they are poor. If a Bolivian or a Venezuelan comes with money, like the first to arrive, they will be rejected. They reject them because they are poor. Before, Caucasian blue-eyed foreigners would come and there was no problem. But when Latin Americans start to arrive, with Native Americans, African Americans and also poor traits, the attitude changes and there is rejection. We are in a different era from humanity, from globalization, where capital and things can move freely around the world, but people cannot.

Q. Do you offer open borders?

R. I am not proposing open borders. First: we are in Latin America and these are issues that must be addressed on a continental basis. But to those who do manage to get in, he would give them a work visa for one year. Because that way you know who they are, you know them. If they have not worked for a year, a different attitude is adopted and expulsion is pronounced, for example. But the fight cannot be against immigration, but against the mafias who exploit undocumented migrants. These are the same mafias who transport them from one place to another, as if they were a herd. And the way to attack the mafias is to give one-year work visas to those who enter, because then they can no longer dominate them.

Q. How are the mafias operating in the camps?

R. They are like micro-enterprises that accept and make people work as street vendors, for example. This is why what the mayor of Santiago, Irací Hassler, did to issue a thousand work permits to informal traders in the center of the capital, is the worst thing she can do: well, she claims the mafias behind them. . In fact, what is happening in Chile is something Kafkaesque.

Q. Why something Kafkaesque?

R. For example, last week three entrepreneurs from different industries called me to ask if I knew any people because they need manpower. And it is repeating itself in the country: construction companies have no labor. But, at the same time, we are expelling people who come to work. What annoys – and this is what explains the explosion in Iquique – is the indifference of the central power. While we have people crowded into the plazas, living in tents, relieving themselves in the streets, the TV news kept us awake for a week that a rain was going to fall in Santiago which ultimately never fell.

Q. How do you explain what happened this weekend in Iquique?

R. It is a beautiful spa town in the north, in which its inhabitants gradually felt that they could not get to the squares, because they were occupied by tents of migrants. Their quality of life began to deteriorate due to the total indifference of the central authorities. There comes a time when people say, “No one is listening to us. And they are doing this march of about 5,000 people, where there was a very violent group that made the bonfire with the property of homeless Venezuelan families. But it was not everyone, because there were even people marching defending the immigrants. Therefore, the mobilization, in my opinion, did not have a racist connotation. It could have happened against a group of miners.

P. What happened in Iquique after the events of Saturday?

R. The feeling that the city had was that of absolute silence, that is, of shame, that this was not what they wanted to do. Then we saw a big wave of help. The immigrant is the visible face of the problem, but the biggest problem is the indolent authorities. I understand the indignation of the population at a problem that the authorities did not want to channel. The organization of the State of Chile is such that it brought all the respirators and more than necessary, he brought all the vaccines and more than necessary, he knew how to distribute the vaccines like few countries in the world and yet it has not taken an interest in tackling this problem.

Q. What do you think of the exodus of Haitians from Chile?

R. I wouldn’t say it’s a problem of racism, because people love Haitians. This cost the Haitians the language and the idiosyncrasy and the exodus is explained, in part, because Chile is a good springboard to go to the United States. I wouldn’t say they are leaving because we treated them badly. In Chile, the natives are angrier and the natives are much more despised.

Q. You who live among immigrants in northern Chile, how do you feel after what happened in Iquique?

R. There is also concern that there is something against them. Because in Chile we still have not seen the wealth of Latin American immigration. The number of immigrants arriving in Chile, which is large, is still small for the size of the country and the needs of the territory. But of course, when you concentrate that amount in certain cities and within those cities in certain neighborhoods, such as ghettos, a problem certainly arises.

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