Capitalism is a system to accumulate capital. People are only a commodity in this system. The Coronavirus crisis has enabled the capitalists to pay less for the healthy laborers to make more profit. The rest are left to their own demise. 

-Massoud Nayeri, May 19, 2020

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Chile’s economic crisis unleashed by President Sebastian Piñera’s neoliberal policies and exacerbated by the pandemic revived images that had not been seen in Chile since the time of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990).

Thousands of people living in poor neighborhoods eat every day thanks to the “common pots”, a solidarity mechanism that allows families to access some food.

Over the last weeks, this form of social organization has proliferated in the periphery of Santiago city where thousands of families have been left without income because of the closure of shops and the suspension of construction works.

“The most immediate memory of the common pots dates back to the crisis that hit the country in 1982,” the University of Chile professor Nicolas Angelcos said.

After 38 years, in Puente Alto, one of Santiago’s poorest communes, social leader Susana Castillo prepares 250 servings of rice with chicken.​​​​​​​