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Charming was my neighborhood Fidias López Valenzuela LOM Editions, Atenea Collection, Luces para el Camino, Santiago, 2007, 70 pp.
María Ester Arancibia
* * * Fidias López Valenzuela, Geographer of Profession, as well as many other colleagues in labor development, are confronted to the concept of Neighborhood. Countless have been the attempts to reach a consensus on its definition, even seen by different professionals as Architects, Landscape Designers and Geographers, among others; but certainly, through this book, "Charming was my Neighborhood", it is achieved the essence of what the word Neighborhood means. The author makes a detailed description full of experiences and feelings on the Euclides District of the Commune of San Miguel. He begins the story with his birth, through the description of the house in which he lived with his family group, then he makes a panoramic observation of people who was neighbor in the sector, describing each of the houses, lessees, peddlers, warehouses, schools, church, theatre, cités, tenements, factories, sports clubs, trade unions, etc., always surrounding a central axis, Euclides street, showing this way of life in an urban space, in which there are generated varied interrelations that today we would call the Neighborhood Geographical Space. Regarding the development of their labor lives, the author, a man of effort, makes the description from school until university, explaining how he comes to study Geography at the University of Chile, pushed sometimes by the force of duty rather than of wish, demonstrating that with motivation and perseverance there are achieved great professional steps, which would have never been possible without his Ana Marías' unconditional support. The stories of love (mother/son, wife/husband, among others) are the central axis in this book, being clear that cities, beyond how they are classified: neighborhood, cites , tenements, among others, are inhabited by human beings, with feelings in common "people in my neighborhood was simple, modest, polite, friendly, helpful and very solidary. They helped each other in difficult moments, which were very frequent; they were all known, all greeted each other... ", today, people have lost these gestures." In Downtown Santiago, with the development of the badly named Urban Renewal, which is rather a redevelopment, neighborhoods have been destroyed, and it is practiced another life type, very opposed to that of neighborhood; people today only look to their house, its inhabitants forgot life in community, which –as accurately says Fidias López- it might be something inherited after September 11, 1973: "... life continued with all its flavors and hopes, the Neighborhood already could not remain being the same; nobody talked in the corners, on the street it was dangerous to do so when more than three people met...". It is hopeful then that with the pass of time, the new generations that inhabit these spaces may recognize the group coexistence, both in condominiums as in buildings' communities, and that they form a new concept of neighborhood where predominates the common good above the individual interest. |
