fc-list is empty

Some time ago I deleted a lot of packages from a VPS that seemed to be needed only for visual programs (I got the list from some other question here, I don't remember where exactly). Now I'm running into trouble when trying to run Chrome Headless, I see the error [1107/124949.591619:FATAL:platform_font_linux.cc(83)] Check failed: InitDefaultFont(). Could not find the default font, which after some time I related to the fact that the output of fc-list in this system is entirely blank. This is happening even though I've installed a lot of font packages already (with apt), mirroring the font packages installed in my desktop. It seems, however, that some package that would recognize these fonts is still missing, or some configuration file that would tell where these fonts are, I don't know.