Yahoo Autos Chile's Celestial Phone Booths
I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I’d just landed in Calama, Chile, in the Atacama Desert, and barely seven miles down Route 23 from the airport was this, this... structure. It was a triptych made of concrete blocks, trimmed in fluorescent orange paint, and festooned with garish fake flowers. In front of this edifice sat a small blue hatchback atop a plinth. A portrait of a young man wearing a gray hoodie was displayed on one wall. A few leggy saplings sprouted nearby.
This story originally appeared in Volume 17 of Road & Track.
I might have been less surprised to see Matt Damon tromping around in a spacesuit than to spot a tree here—even a small, frail one. The area receives only five millimeters of rainfall annually. Somebody waters those saplings.
Like the white bicycles or memorial crosses one might find roadside in the U.S., this monument marks the location of a death. But it’s more than a dropped pin to honor the perished, and it’s more than just a shrine. It’s a home.
Many thousands of these uniquely Chilean structures exist. Called animitas, they are the product of a distinct faith. When a person’s soul and body are ripped apart at death, it is believed that their soul lingers on. Family and friends of the deceased build an animita as a shelter for the soul. It’s no wonder so many animitas look like tiny houses.
Further, animitas act as celestial phone booths for their builders. At these locations, family and friends of the deceased might pray to their lost loved one to intercede with God for them. It is not unlike the Catholic practice of intercession, in which a believer calls upon a saint to offer up a prayer on their behalf.
Lest there be any doubt about the expected function of animitas, one about 50 miles from the desert town of San Pedro de Atacama makes it plain. The animita, dedicated to “Victor,” includes a piece of art depicting a huge satellite dish. In place of the dish’s feed horn is a Christian cross.
Perhaps predictably, animitas that deify crash victims are sanctioned by neither the Catholic Church nor the government. But there they sit across the country, tidied often and replenished with offerings. Ground made sacred through tragedy and hope.
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