Maximiliano is 4 years old, and to get to preschool, he doesn’t cross the street. He climbs into a school van and travels along a road that, for much of the winter, is covered in snow by morning.
He lives in Llanada Grande, a locality in the commune of Cochamó, in Chilean Patagonia, hours away by road from Puerto Montt. He is in pre-kindergarten at Escuela Rural Capitán de Bandada Carlos Rodríguez París, and attended 95% of his classes during the first semester. That figure, which may seem small, concealed dozens of cold mornings when someone at home decided that he would go anyway.
That’s why he won the “Haz que Despeguen” contest in the Los Lagos Region, run by Fundación Educacional Oportunidad, which doesn’t reward grades or projects: it rewards attendance. In January 2027, Maximiliano will travel with his dad to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in the United States.