Profile
San Juan de la Costa: Ruthy's Greenhouse
On a hill, one woman grows food and medicine.
Jaunuary 26th, 2025
Simone Endress
Ruthy Reyes’s smile seldom wanes over her small and weathered face. When I park in her driveway in August, she shuffles down the hill from her house. “¡Hooola mi hijitaaa!” she calls to me. When she hugs me, a giggle shocks her small stature.
Art by Edgar Endress
Ruthy lives in San Juan de la Costa, a rural community known for its Mapuche-Huilliche population. A turbulent geography contorts the agriculturally dominated landscape.
Ruthy’s house is atop a hill that creeps up from the gravel road. Today, the sun shines unobscured. Looking out from the hill, the landscape has the scintillating contrast of a PC background. Winter is ending in Chile.
Once past the gate, Reyes begins to show me her pièce de résistance: six greenhouses filled with organic vegetables and herbs.
Ruthy wakes up at 6:45 a.m. As the South slips into summer, she will have to wake up earlier and earlier to water each of her greenhouses. A stagnant heat swells under the tarp. If she waits until afternoon, she tells me, the plants boil in the water. The entire watering process takes about an hour and a half.
Reyes shows me her medicinal greenhouse first. Pennyroyal and viadil for stomach pains. Arugula for diabetes. Lemon verbena and valerian for anxiety. Cuatro cantos to unburden smoke-filled lungs.
In the vegetable greenhouse, she shows me that she has planted a species of wood sorrel called vinagrillo. She uses it as a garnish for salads. “My grandparents had these,” she says proudly. According to her, they’re no longer commonly grown. I can’t say that I have seen them at markets.
Ruthy was raised on this land at a time before accessible transportation. The community is now becoming increasingly connected to the city of Osorno, 35 kilometers away. Buses pass on the gravel road occasionally. Ruthy’s mother and father were Mapuche, but did not belong to a community, leaving them isolated and with a lack of resources. Ruthy’s mother died when Ruthy was 5. “I grew up without the love of a mother,” she laments. Her father spiraled into alcoholism, leaving Ruthy and her siblings to fend for themselves.
“I walked to school barefoot,” she said. She still remembers the burns her feet endured on hot days. “My dad never bought us shoes because he didn’t have the money.” Ruthy surveys the landscape as she says this; her eyes soften slightly.
Eventually, her siblings got older and made their own lives up North. Reyes was left alone and stopped going to school in third grade. “ I had no support since I was alone. So, who was going to send me to school?”
Reyes got married young and had her first son at 19. A few years later, she had her second son. She planted vegetables in the open air, struggling in the winters when little would grow. She couldn’t afford nylon for a greenhouse. Her husband left the house early in search of odd jobs. He chopped word, prepared land for planting, and helped with construction projects. Reyes says she felt hopeful for the first time when she received a government subsidy for mothers. “So, I took care of that money and saved it. When you suffer necessity, you really care for what you have.”
Continue
