The groups of homeless teenagers who live under the bridges on the banks of the Mapocho River are known as caletas. The caletas have settled under the Loreto and Patronato bridges, in the vicinity of the Plaza Fundacional in Santiago and the city’s traditional food market, the Vega Central.
The caletas are places to stay that offer no kind of amenities. Indeed, we could say that the permanent shadow under the bridges is the only necessary form of shelter, a space hidden from prying eyes. The shadow is the veil that allows permanence.
We can make out the odd chair that has been dumped; a few buckets of clean water; sheets hung out to form a flimsy separation wall. The minimal elements needed to transform the shadow into a habitable artefact.
Mapocho River Spa is an urban intervention designed to construct a veiled visibility of the use of the Mapocho River by homeless teenagers. Temporary inhabitants of the river detached from all kinds of manipulation, who make a real and effective use of the river banks. In their precariousness, they indicate that the use of the Mapocho River as a public space for Santiago is an exercise in daily appropriation and not a major project disseminated by writers and in the press. The intervention consisted of bringing down and placing 20 beach loungers at the edge of the river between the Loreto and Patronato bridges.