Lucila Rojas remembers the days when she and her neighbors
risked their lives to cook a hot meal over a wood-burning stove.
“We had to steal firewood, because there was no longer any left
in the places where you could freely look,” she said. “Sometimes
we were chased (by landowners), even by gunshots. I was fed up.
I didn’t want any more war.” So in 1989, Rojas, who lives in the
arid and deforested Elqui Valley, agreed to become one of four
women in this northern village of 300 residents to allow
researchers from the University of Chile to place a solar oven
in her home. “We were guinea pigs,” she said. When the project
coordinators returned after four months to take the ovens back,
Rojas protested and organized local women to raise funds for a
workshop to make solar ovens. With $700 they earned selling
everything from empanadas (meat pastry) to used clothing, they
built 33 solar ovens and have been using them ever since. Today,
Villaseca’s ovens are a novelty in a nation with just 10,000
solar energy panel s