2013-05-19T20:48:05-04:00 Stacy Torres http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=stacy-torres Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Stacy Torres Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.751970 2010-10-11T15:13:04-04:00 2011-05-25T17:55:20-04:00

Stacy Torres http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stacy-torres/ This piece originally appeared on Reuters.com.

Only a few years ago I learned of my father's work in Chile's nitrate mines. Like other working-class men who faced crippling unemployment in the late 1960s, he headed north in search of better paying but dangerous mining work in Chile's dusty desert region, El Norte Grande.

Until recently the dangers he described seemed a relic of Chile's distant past, removed from the present-day Chile of clean, modern cities and recent economic success.

Last month Chile celebrated 200 years of independence from Spain, but the saga of the 33 miners trapped 2,300 feet underground in the San Jose copper and gold mine loomed over the bicentennial. As the looting following February's earthquake served as an eye-opener to the country's social and economic inequalities, the plight of the trapped miners has again exposed the hardships Chile's poor face in a country where 14 percent of the population lives in poverty, according to the World Bank.

Despite efforts to develop other industries, Chile's economy rests on mining. Chile leads the world in copper production, accounting for 40 percent of its exports, and supplies nearly a third of the world's copper.

Like many of today's miners, my father had few options for decent paying work after losing his job as a police officer in his native Valparaíso. During his time in the mines he met many men like himself who chose to risk their lives in the Atacama Desert rather than settle for low-paying agricultural work.

It's still hard to picture my nattily dressed father, who worked as a doorman after coming to the United States, handling dynamite and hoisting buckets of dirt and rock from the dusty ground in search of mineral. He almost talked his way into a plumb job patrolling the mining company-built swimming pool. "It's lucky I didn't get that job," my father chuckles. "I would have stayed forever."

He didn't stay forever. He ended up spending four years in the salitreras, or nitrate towns, before the prospect of an early death from an accident or mining-related afflictions like silicosis convinced him to move on.

Perhaps because he left when he was twenty-seven, his stories still retain a whiff of youth and adventure. There was a lot of drinking, especially on weekends. Prostitutes passed through. Plenty of goofing off also occurred, sometimes with grave consequences. A rival palanquero (or brakeman) who boasted of his superior abilities on the job died after falling in front of a cargo car. Even my father didn't come away entirely unscathed. A permanent cloud of thick dust enveloped the town, visible from a mile away, and I still wonder if his later cancers originated in the desert.

With the development of cheaper synthetic nitrate, most of the nitrate fields like the one where my father toiled eventually shut down. The ruins of abandoned mining towns now dot the Atacama Desert and some have even taken on second lives as museums that draw thousands of tourists each year.

But the lessons of Chile's nitrate boom and bust, which helped spur worker rights movements, should not remain confined to the desert. The miners underground now have had to fight to maintain their sanity while waiting months for rescue. And yet they are the lucky ones. Though mining safety in Chile has improved in the last forty years since my father left, small privately owned mines have operated with little oversight. Another worker died in this same mine in 2007, and the region still has the highest worker mortality rate in the country, according to Chile's minister of health, Dr. Jamie Manalich.

At minimum the accident has demonstrated the urgent need for increased safety regulations to protect the workers who make Chile's prosperity possible. Despite reigning as Latin America's economic powerhouse for the past two decades, Chile continues to suffer from some of the highest levels of income inequality in the world. The struggle of the country's trapped miners has once again laid bare the human costs of such "progress."

This year's twin disasters, the earthquake and now the mine collapse, should persuade Chile to shore up the country's economic foundation through greater investments in education, for example, that will help reduce poverty and inequality in the long-term.

Chile cannot afford to look back on 2010 as the year of missed opportunities.
]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.626641 2010-06-28T16:53:01-04:00 2011-05-25T16:55:19-04:00

Stacy Torres http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stacy-torres/
It's been an exciting ride, and I'm not just talking about Chile's impressive performance during this World Cup, coming after a twelve-year absence. The years I've spent rooting for Chile with my father have taught me the joys and pains of supporting a perpetual underdog, not unlike cheering for South America's equivalent of the Mets, a team with loads of potential and fiercely loyal fans despite years of disappointment. Of course, it's a little different when that team also represents your DNA.

Soccer has always been a major part of my relationship with my father. While I'd thought of the sport as a way to understand a father who often seemed elusive, I've realized that it helped us both satisfy our craving to connect with Chile itself, a place I'd never visited and one he'd left 35 years ago.

With so few Chileans in the United States, feeling pride in my heritage required extra effort. Growing up in a Caribbean-dominated New York, many people didn't even know where Chile was. I persisted with patient explanations. "It's in South America, near Argentina?" I culled my knowledge of Chile from encyclopedias, a beat-up atlas, and my father's stories. My father's frustrations ran deeper. Life had made going back to Chile even for a visit impossible. There was never enough money, four daughters to provide for, a wife who died prematurely, and his own cancer diagnoses. Dad has now lived in the U.S. longer than his native country, but he'll be the first to tell you that, among other things, the Chile he remembers had the best food, wine, women, poets, cities, beaches, subways, and soccer players. His diligence in relaying news of all things Chilean -- factoids about Chilean media personalities, current events, history, food, and the triumphs of its soccer players -- revealed a hunger for Chile's recognition that sometimes bordered on desperation.

Soccer became a reliable source of pride, and over the years my father followed Chilean soccer players like Iván Zamorano, Marcelo Salas, and Humberto "Chupete" Suazo, and reported on their individual successes as they played on teams across Latin America and Europe. I noticed early on that my father's stresses melted away during a televised soccer game. Pure joy radiated from his face as he clapped, jumped, and screamed with excitement. I soon learned to take advantage of this opportunity and began watching games with my father while stories flowed about his difficult life growing up in Chile and his delight in kicking around a homemade soccer ball fashioned from pantyhose stuffed with cheap fabric, a brief but sweet escape from his alcoholic parents.

Our latest celebration of Chile's success was a subdued affair compared to the noisy revelry I witnessed after Brazil's victory over Ivory Coast guaranteed their advancement. Carloads of ecstatic Brazilians whizzed by with flags streaming from their windows, whooping, blowing whistles, and furiously honking their car horns. Instead my father donned a red shirt to represent his country's team colors, with the quiet understanding that you can take nothing for granted and must appreciate the things that can get lost in the final score if you're not careful, like your team's energy and attacking spirit, every swift pass and each gorgeous goal. In the round of 16 Chile faces the dreaded Brazil. But win or not, sharing the game with my father and his love of Chilean soccer has taught me patience, loyalty, and to always savor the beautiful moments in between. ]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.576507 2010-05-14T12:31:54-04:00 2011-05-25T16:30:24-04:00

Stacy Torres http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stacy-torres/ plan to close at least 50 senior centers by July 1, thousands of seniors will not have a place to eat Thanksgiving this year.

Some of my older neighbors, many of whom live alone, spent last Thanksgiving at our local senior center, where they can find a hot, nutritious meal and perhaps more importantly, company. While the city spared this center, it could still lose a third of its funding. A glance at their monthly calendar of activities, which includes movies, blood pressure screenings, AARP tax assistance, computer and tai-chi classes, gives you a hint of the lifeline centers like these offer to older New Yorkers.

The city has already announced the 50 senior centers slated to close, and an additional 25 could join the list of shuttered centers if Albany doesn't come through with funding. While the mayor blamed the cuts on "Albany's irresponsibility," dismantling infrastructure that has served the city's older adults for more than half a century is rash and irresponsible, especially given the growing numbers of older New Yorkers.

Two demographic trends--aging baby boomers (who will start turning 65 next year), and increasing longevity--will result in a grayer New York. Instead of preparing for this demographic reality, we now risk severing the very services that have allowed older people to live longer while remaining in their homes and communities, no easy feat when you consider that elderly New Yorkers are more likely to be poor, disabled, and to live alone, than their counterparts in the rest of the country.

Manhattan will lose the most centers, 16 total, with Harlem and the Lower East Side hit hardest. This comes at a time when city planning demographers have projected that Manhattan's population of people 65 and older will increase 58%, making up roughly 16% of the borough's population, by 2030. That's up from 12% in 2000. Brooklyn stands to lose another 11 centers, Queens 10, Bronx 9, and Staten Island 4.

Perhaps more distressing, these closings will disproportionately effect our city's poorest elders, who are the most vulnerable to social isolation. A recent study of city senior centers conducted by the Council of Senior Centers and Services of New York City found that your typical senior center regular is a woman, 70 years or older, widowed or living alone, with limited education and income. The makeup of senior center attendees is increasingly diverse and includes many first-generation immigrants and bilingual seniors who also face the threat of cultural and linguistic isolation. The United Neighborhood Houses of New York, a membership organization of New York City settlement houses and community centers, identified 12 community districts where seniors faced the highest risk of social isolation, based on the number of older people living alone and poverty levels. Central, East, and West Harlem ranked in the top three and will now lose 13 senior centers altogether.

Last month in The New York Times, the Commissioner of New York City's Department for the Aging (DFTA), Lilliam Barrios-Paoli tried to soften the devastation of these cuts, saying of the roughly 30,000 New Yorkers who visit senior centers each day, "I don't want to minimize the need, but they are mobile, and they have more of a support network." Yet, DFTA's own 2001 report on senior center use found that over 50% of people who used city senior centers went every day, and another 29% went 3-4 times a week, revealing the extent to which people rely on these institutions as their support network. And while the city took pity on homebound seniors and decided not to cut Meals on Wheels deliveries, the loss of these centers will end up punishing their slightly more able-bodied counterparts, who also face higher rates of depression, suicide, and social isolation due to their age. The elderly also tend to fall through the cracks when disaster strikes, as happened during the 1995 Chicago heat wave and Hurricane Katrina, where the old made up a disproportionate number of the dead. The social support many have now will largely evaporate when the centers close. What then?

Certainly, the closings will save the city money during uncertain economic times. But at what cost? When you consider the money senior centers save through preventative services, like nutrition and exercise programs that help reduce chronic illness and falls, for example, the $100,000 cost per year to operate one center seems like a bargain. Somehow we can find thirty million dollars for projects like the new 34th street pedestrian plaza, yet we can't preserve core city services that serve the most vulnerable New Yorkers. What does this say about the city's priorities?]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.565176 2010-05-05T17:40:53-04:00 2011-05-25T16:25:21-04:00

Stacy Torres http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stacy-torres/
Lance Orton and Duane Jackson's quick thinking should come as no surprise to city dwellers everywhere, especially not to New Yorkers. The scene could have come straight out of Jane Jacob's The Death and Life of American Cities, the classic book published in 1961 that has influenced how generations of urban planners think about city street life. Jacobs herself would have called these hero street vendors "public characters" who make streets safer because they have their "eyes upon the street."

But in recent weeks, with the proposal to limit vendors in parks--including sections of Central Park, and all of Union Square, Battery Park and the High Line--the city has once again cast vendors as public nuisances who block sidewalks, creating safety hazards for pedestrians, or as enemies of "the public's right to enjoy public space," as Edward Wallace, who helped write the 1982 law allowing artists to peddle First Amendment-protected "expressive material," recently wrote in The New York Times.

Vendors have long faced accusations of lowering the city's quality of life. Sociologist Mitchell Duneier's Sidewalk, a study of vendors who sold scavenged books and magazines on the streets of Greenwich Village during the Giuliani years, showed how men often painted as threatening and as potential perpetrators of crime and disorder actually helped keep order, despite the fact several were addicted to drugs and alcohol and some homeless or formerly homeless. His portrait of these street peddlers challenged the conventional wisdom of purging vendors from the streets in order to "improve" neighborhoods, a la the "broken windows" theory of community policing that ultimately led to Giuliani's crackdown on squeegee guys and issuing of tickets for jay walkers.

To be sure, the crush of vendors and throngs of people in high-foot traffic areas in the city can often make for a miserable pedestrian experience, one that leaves me dodging cars when I've given up on the sidewalk in favor of walking in the street. But this incident should help city officials reconsider the role that vendors play as eyes on the street and as our city's first line of defense when trouble strikes. Going forward, the NYPD and city officials would be smart to appreciate vendors as an untapped crime-fighting resource rather than see them as a problem. It could be the start of an innovative partnership.

Right now, the Bloomberg administration wants to reduce park art vendors by a whopping seventy-five percent. If the city follows through with its plan, only 18 vendors would be allowed in Union Square, for example, down from the 100 or so that set up shop now on busy weekends. While the proposed changes would result in more elbow room, the regulations would also mean eighty fewer pairs of eyes that can "say something" when they "see something" suspicious in a crowded park on a summer afternoon, an appealing soft target for people bent on inflicting the most mayhem with minimal effort. Think of your typical vendor as a living, breathing time-lapse camera, attuned to subtleties we don't stick around long enough to notice. Can we really afford to risk losing so many?]]>