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© 2021 Javier Alvarez
Coquimbo, Chile, 2020. Victor Briceño, the stepbrother of a teenager killed during a riot, holds a pair of old soccer shoes that were used by his brother when he was a kid. He explains in an interview, “I bought these shoes for him when he was five, I always kept them at home. Kevin came to live with us when he was a baby and was a brother to me. I raised him. When the army murdered him, I put the shoes in the coffin, but I decided to keep them with us forever at the last minute.”
Kevin Gómez, a 24-year-old student, was shot and killed by a member of the military forces deployed during a state of emergency on the first week of riots and lootings in the region of Coquimbo, in the north of Chile. Kevin was shot in the back with his hands in the air when the military assumed he was looting a strip mall with other protesters. The investigation is still ongoing after a year.