Until August 2022, Mr. Dominguez was a user of the Homeless Shelter Center from Hogar de Cristo-Iquique, where he got a haven and felt welcomed. Most of us wouldn’t have known about his story without his interview with Hogar de Cristo.

 

He studied solar panel maintenance and installation in Colombia and planned to apply his technical expertise in Chile. After two months of an arduous journey, he entered Colchane village in the Andean Altiplano (Tarapacá). He immediately went to the police (Carabineros) to self-denounce his presence, so this way to try normalizing its status soon.

 

Mr. Dominguez got harmful fungus in a health center in Iquique that turned bad and gangrenated his right toes, which were amputated, and sadly later, his right leg above the knee. He said, “I went to the Hospital, and they did not attend to me because I did not have an ID.” Nevertheless, some ladies from the Chilean Red Cross arranged to get me a temporary ID.”. Mr. Dominguez had admirable resilience. He just “dreamed of getting a prosthesis and standing on two legs again to continue working on his project about solar panels.”

 

All the above portrays the brutal reality of facing extreme poverty and social exclusion, being undocumented, and risking life to pursue better opportunities but living in unacceptable conditions. It’s a matter of fundamental rights not yet fulfilled to be accomplished through public policies about the homelessness problem.

 

Full interview carried out in Chile, available at bit.ly/3BX4y2C