Wilson, who works as a farmer, keeps five horses in the pasture behind his Habitat house.

Family Affair, National Tradition
Habitat homes build a future — and help preserve a treasured past

By Shala Carlson

In a largely rural area of Chile known as Los Andes, Habitat Chile is beginning to build red-brick houses in a small town known as Calle Larga, or “long street” — so named, the locals say, because it’s basically a long street and little else. Trees line each side of the long street, their branches mingling to create a canopy that stretches over the quiet lane. There are vineyards here, too, and fertile farmlands, good for growing fruit. It’s a sleepy town, with buses, horses and carts sharing the same roads.

Out from the center of town just a bit, brother and sister Wilson Trivino and Patricia Trivino Pereira live in side-by-side Habitat houses, some of the first built in Calle Larga. They were built simultaneously, situated on land given to the siblings by their parents and constructed with the help of visiting Global Village volunteers.

Patricia Trivino Pereira, her copper-mining husband Edwardo and their four children used to live with Patricia’s parents. “It is hard to have your own house in Chile,” Patricia says, sitting in the cool shadow of her Habitat house, her 8-month-old son Elias wriggling on her lap. Today, lacy curtains let in the sunlight to a place of her own, a place she wasn’t sure she’d ever have. “But it’s my own,” she says. “A solid house. I can trust in the construction.”

Trusting the construction is very important to Patricia, who deems the high level of the house’s foundation her favorite part because it means they don’t have to worry about the winter thaws that flood the area and create little lakes all around.

As Patricia sits with Elias and her daughters Grace and Valentina, Edwardo is hard at work preparing to add an addition to the Habitat house, an extension that will mean a slightly larger kitchen and an extra bedroom for the growing family.

In the pasture that lies behind their two houses, Patricia’s brother and next-door-neighbor Wilson rides one of the five horses that he keeps. Wilson works as a farmer, but his real passion is traditional Chilean rodeo and the folklore of the Chilean cowboy, an affinity that shows in the red sash he ties around his waist and the wide, flat-brimmed hat he pushes down onto his head.

A rodeo participant since he was a child, Wilson says that Chile’s horse culture is changing, disappearing, and this is his way of keeping it going. He’s hoping to open a business, a place where tourists could come and ride his horses into the hills to catch a glimpse of the Chile he still sees. From his own Habitat house, Wilson feels as though perhaps he has a better foundation to pursue his dream, now that he no longer shares space with his parents and siblings, now that he has become a homeowner.