Alexis, what do you miss the most when you're away? —My home.
When Alexis Sánchez says "home" he's not thinking about his mansion in London, nor the luxurious one he lived in for three years in Barcelona. Nor Udine, Buenos Aires or Santiago. When the 26-year-old footballer talks about home, he thinks of a simple facade, a flat front, two floors, mustard color, located on Orella Street in Tocopilla, in the Antofagasta Region, which he left years ago, but always comes back to.
Tocopilla means land of death or devil's corner. It is located more than 1,500 kilometers north of the capital Santiago, between the desert, the sea and nothingness. It is a city dedicated to mining, fishing and energy. It has 31,000 inhabitants and there is an inevitable and contagious defeat in the environment.
Damir Galaz, historian and academic expert on Tocopilla, defines it like this. "Here, there are many problems of pollution, alcoholism, unemployment and school dropout. Now we appear on the map because of the earthquake in 2007, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Alexis." The idol of Chile grew up here, in that house that was not two floors nor was furnished, along with his mother, Martina, and his three siblings Humberto, Tamara and Marjorie, in the midst of a family with limited resources.
Helps. In the city these days, everyone claims to have spent some time with him and everyone has something to say. The stories flow quickly. "The former mayor Aleksander Kurtovic, who died in 2006, gave him his first sneakers when he was six years old," says Fernando San Román, the current mayor of the commune. "The nickname was Dilla, not because of an eagle, but because of a nightmare," demands Roberto Díaz, who knew him in his childhood.
In that same neighborhood, on the hills, the stories told by the player himself are also in sight. The small Lazareto field, where he took his first shots, and the cemetery where he earned a couple of coins doing tricks with the ball and cleaning cars. Also, the ruins of the E-10 School, where he said for the first time that he would be "the best in the world," and the new headquarters of Club Arauco, where he began to be the promise, the player, the idol, the wonderkid.
Since his breakthrough a decade ago, Alexis has always provided resources for the commune. "The roofs of the houses are covered with a toxic material produced by the two electric generators. We double the rate of cancer deaths and have the highest mortality rate in children under one year old," laments historian Galaz.
After the Copa América, they will be waiting for him again in the north. He will return for a week to be the friend, the nephew, the brother, the son, the Dilla. To be in the house on Orella Street. To look out the window and see the empty sky, the desert, the hills and the sea. And feel, after all, that this is his place.
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