Animita de Romualdito

An animita is a small shrine, often built like a little house, at the place where someone died suddenly or violently. Memoria Chilena, the heritage site of Chile's National Library, traces the custom to both Andean and Spanish practice: the apacheta, the piles of stones left at sacred places along Andean paths, and the Catholic devotion to the souls in Purgatory. A soul taken without warning is believed to linger between this world and the next, and the little house gives it somewhere familiar to wait. The exchange runs both ways. The living ask the soul for favors, and they pray to help it reach heaven.

Some animitas become known for answering. The National Library notes that collective faith turns their dead into saints, and in the process changes their stories and sometimes their names. Animitas have outlasted the Church's objections to them and the rebuilding of Chilean cities around them.

The man on the wall

In August 2012, four trainee detectives of the Policía de Investigaciones, with Prefect General Gilberto Loch as their instructor, announced what they had found about the man at San Borja. He was Romualdo Ivani Zambelli, a single mechanic from San Bernardo who lived on Calle Lisperguer, about five blocks from the wall. On the evening of Tuesday, August 8, 1933, at the corner of the Alameda and San Borja, attackers robbed him and stabbed him in the heart. He was buried in the Cementerio General on August 14.

The trainees gave his age as 41, and the Cementerio General's own heritage page says 42. Press reports of their finding spelled his name Ivanni Sambelli, and the cemetery spells it Ivani Zambelli.

The versions it replaced

Before 2012, Romualdito had several biographies. Memoria Chilena records that he was a farmworker passing through Santiago who was killed by thugs, a young man from the neighborhood with a mental disability who was killed the same way, a small child who was assaulted and murdered, or a man recovering from a lung illness who was robbed and stabbed on his way home and bled to death on the spot. The library calls the mechanic the most convincing account, and adds that it upset some devotees, who had come to him believing he was a child.

The plaques never settled on a name either. They thank Romualdito, Rumualdito, Rumaldo Ivani, and Romualdo Ivanz, and a 2018 study by University of Chile history students also found Reinaldo, Rupertito, and Ibañez.

The wall

In December 2003, a student asked the Consejo de Monumentos Nacionales to declare the animita a historic monument. The council's minutes from January 7, 2004, describe it as set against the wall of an old building, about 13 meters (43 feet) long and 5 meters (16 feet) high, on the San Borja sidewalk just short of the Alameda. Plaques thanking Romualdito for miracles and favors covered the wall. On the sidewalk below sat small animitas and offerings of photographs, flowers, toys, saints, crucifixes, and clothing. The request came with the mayor's support and about a hundred signatures.

The council asked who owned the site before going further, and it reopened the request in 2017. The animita does not appear on the council's list of national monuments. In April 2023, the council voted to seek protection for the funerary monument of Petronila Neira in Concepción, a murdered seamstress whose grave also collects thank-you plaques. Members pointed to Romualdito as a similar case and warned that a declaration should not take the spontaneity out of places like these.

The 2018 study found that neither the expansion of the nearby bus terminal nor the construction of a shopping center next to it had disturbed the animita. The Chilean writer Roberto Merino wrote in 2012 that no contractor had ever found workers willing to knock down Romualdo's earthly home.

At the foot of the wall, the students counted 24 small candle houses. Some held lit candles, and others sheltered street dogs from the rain and the cold.

The animita is on the public sidewalk and can be seen at any hour, with no ticket or opening time. It is a few steps from the Estación Central stop on Metro Line 1, at the train station on the Alameda.

People stop to light a candle in one of the small houses, leave flowers, or read the plaques, which carry dates from the last century and this one and come from as far as Argentina, Germany, the United States, and Sweden. Passersby often cross themselves as they walk by. This is an active devotional site, so it's best practice to ask before photographing anyone who is praying, or to frame your shots so that people aren't included.

Romualdo Ivani Zambelli's niche in the Cementerio General, in Recoleta, collects thank-you plaques of its own, and the cemetery includes him in its heritage listings.