Persecuted Precarity: Tracking the history of working class housing in Argentina
Molly Rockhold December 2016
Government relations with the low-income and working-class inhabitants of Buenos Aires has undergone a number of phases that echo those of different nations across the world. These relations are seen clearest when dealing with a limited stock of housing stock for these residents that do not sit high on the socioeconomic scale. Many who face situations of homelessness have found a solution to the rising costs of housing and lack of affordable options by creating informal settlements, or villas as they are commonly referred to in Argentina, in unoccupied areas throughout cities, especially in Argentina’s densest city, Buenos Aires. Radical and populist democracies and authoritarian military dictatorships have all attempted to introduce solutions to the issue of precarious, urban housing, whether from a human rights perspective or one of urban aesthetics, but statistics show that the number of those living in precarious conditions has continued to rise within the last 20 years. Within these failed attempts to remedy the problem, the last and most repressive military dictatorship in Argentina’s recent history took the most severe stance to combat the growth of these settlements, waging a political and social war against villas and their inhabitants. For the nearly 7 million working class immigrants arriving from Europe in the immigration boom of the early 20th century, housing frequently took the form of conventillos. These were small apartment complexes with miniscule private rooms and a common, open courtyard in the center of the building, a layout of which is shown below. Entire families would share one or two of these small rooms and convene in courtyards for the children to play and the adults to cook or wash clothes (Tella). An alternate, more upscale option was the casa chorizo. These homes, were normally one story buildings, with small, street-front facades that extended quite deep into the city block (below). During this period of mass immigration, property owners quickly realized the potential of such large homes with as many as seven rooms, and they began to rent them out to the immigrants, who would share the space with fewer people than in conventillos (Liernur).
Layout of a Traditional Conventillo (Liernur)
A Casa Chorizo in Buenos Aires
The next wave of migration would be largely internal and peripheral as Argentina developed its industrial sector and jobs became available in the capital city of Buenos Aires. Architect and “Urban Doctor” Guillermo Tella describes the process of industrialization in two phases. The first is the expansion of Riachuelo (also known as the Matanza River, a river that cuts through Buenos Aires to feed into the La Plata River Delta and the Pacific Ocean) into a critical port and warehouse center for the nation’s goods and merchandise. This triggered the second phase, the development of industry that required large factories normally bought on cheap land along what became the cordon industrial, the industrial corridor of Buenos Aires that followed Riachuelo (Tella). Although attempts were made to develop Argentina’s industrial sector in the 1930s under president Hipolito Yrigoyen, the populist government of Juan Domingo Peron (1945-1955) set the stage for this second phase of industry growth. As many European immigrants came to Argentina on a temporary basis (it is estimated that over 40% of these immigrants returned to their home nations after 1930), migrants from Argentina’s 23 provinces and immigrants from across the Bolivian, Uruguayan, Peruvian and Chilean borders began arriving to fill these gaps in the 1950s and 1960s (Jachimowicz). Beginning as early as the late years of European immigration, the working class began to settle around the centrally located neighborhood of Retiro, a neighborhood just on the coast of the La Plata River (mapped below). In Retiro, occupational opportunities abounded, with the large port and railroad centers located in the neighborhood. Housing stock, however was severely limited as the area was heavily centered on industry (Blaustein). The solution most found was to begin settling wherever possible, usually on unused plots of land or abandoned
buildings close to places of employment: around ports or the developing industrial sector of Buenos Aires.
The first shanty towns (or villas) began to appear in Buenos Aires after two crucial events: the international financial crash of 1929 and a military coup d’etat in 1930 (which would come to be the first of five in the nation’s recent history). In 1931 as journalist Eduardo Blaustein cites, the Buenos Aires municipal government began to give Polish immigrants refuge in a series of empty warehouses in Puerto Nuevo, an informal part of the Retiro neighborhood (Mapped below). From this point on, workers began settling in the area, creating informal settlements on public land. Named villas miserias or villas de emergencia, after the first “emergency” attempt to do away with these areas of precarity, these neighborhoods reached their apex during industry growth in the 1950s. Villas soon began to attract internal migrants and immigrants from peripheral nations that came to the city to work in and around the ports as well as in the surrounding railroad and production industries. The central location of Retiro and later and the northern neighborhoods of Bajo Belgrano (below) that housed villas also allowed for relatively easy access to urban services, such as the benefits of basic infrastructure (running water, electricity) (Ozlak 149). Informal settlements such as Villa Lugano in southern Buenos Aires (settled in the 1950s), on the other hand, were located closer to meatpacking districts and processing plants. As can be seen in the elevation map below, many of these neighborhoods are also located in areas prone to flooding, with low elevations and on the coast of major waterways, namely the large La Plata River or the Riachuelo that follows the southern border of Buenos Aires proper. In 1956, the recently created Comisión Nacional de la Vivienda (National Housing Commission) cited the existence of 21 villas with 33,920 inhabitants in the urban core (Blaustein). Since then, the number of villas in and around the urban core of Buenos Aires has only continued to grow.
Neighborhoods of Bajo Belgrano, Retiro and Villa Lugano, Circled (Latido Buenos Aires)
Elevation map of Buenos Aires (Floodmap)
Within the last 60 years, the Argentine government has made many attempts to grapple with this growing number of informal settlements on public land, whether in hopes to secure all citizens a safe roof over their heads or in order to cleanse the city of visible, unorganized precarity. In 1958, residents of a number of villas began to organize, joining together to create la Federación de Villas y Barrios de Emergencia (the Federation of Villas and Neighborhoods of Emergency) in order to secure and fight for certain social and political rights. The federación successfully sustained a working relationship with the democratically elected, radicalist government of President Arturo Umberto Illia (1963-1966) who, in 1964 accepted a list of demands made by the Federation, including well-defined, guaranteed methods of rehousing displaced residents, neighborhood infrastructural repairs (which the residents would help construct), suspension of the deportation of Paraguayans, Chileans and Bolivians villeros and the prioritized assistance of families who were most in need of microloans and financial assistance to repair or rebuild their homes (Blaustein 5). As a result, in 1965, Plan Piloto was launched as an eradication plan with these requests in mind, but the policy would only ever see the completion of the first phase, the “urgent repairs” of power lines, running water and roadways (Liernur V5, 88, Ozlak 151-152).
This relationship with villeros (villa residents) changed after a 1966 military coup (the third in Argentina’s history). In fact, both the municipal and federal governments’ relationships with the villeros changed so radically that the policy created within the seven years of this dictatorship (1966-1973) would present the most aggressive attempt to eradicate villas thusfar.
The de facto government of Juan Carlos Onganía presented the Plan de Erradicación de Villas de Emergencia (Eradication Plan for the Villas de Emergencia) (PEVE), in 1968 as the first large-scale attempt to fully erase villas in the capital city and its surrounding areas. As a response to large-scale floods that ravaged a number of unprepared villas in 1967 in the Riachuelo area seen in the flood map above, this plan of action would see itself evolving multiple times in the years to come (Liernur V5, 88, Ozlak). President Ongania’s de facto government aimed to construct 56,000 homes in seven years to rehouse over 56,000 families it planned to evict. In the end, however, only 3,000 families a year were evicted (much less than the anticipated yearly number of 8,000) from their villas for total of 35,691 residents. 25,952 of these residents were housed in units, both temporary and permanent, that were located in the outer areas of the city, such as Ciudadela I in western Buenos Aires, pictured below (Liernur V5, 89). Although this plan did not treat residents as violently as those that followed, PEVE was revolutionary in its use of powerful equipment of force, such as bulldozers and methods of discouraging villa residents from protesting that left a mark on the city of Buenos Aires (Blaustein).
(Ciudadela I y II (Now known as “Fuerte Apache”) with 2,360 housing units to house 13,400 inhabitants) (Liernur) (Photo: Tango Critico)
With the second government of Juan Domingo Peron (1973-1976), the PEVE project came to be known as Plan Alborada until the last civic-military coup of 1976. The main goals of the second Peronist government were to improve the conditions of the villas. Keeping in mind the populist discourse of this president, these missions quickly shifted from eradication to “transformation” of the villas into well-serviced areas with monoblock housing complexes. Though villeros were allowed greater participation in the decisions that affected them, the government was still not able to achieve its main goal of containing the growth of these areas (Ozlak 155).
In March of 1976, a civic-military coup overthrew the populist government that Peron had installed and instigated the “Processo de Reorganizacion Nacional” [“The National Process of Reorganizaion”] to restructure and “clean-up” Argentine society. The process involved
physical, social and political cleansing of the nation, led by the de facto president, Jorge Rafael Videla. Disappearing over 30,000 people deemed suspicious or “enemies of the state,” Videla headed an authoritarian regime that pursued many large-scale projects that, under a democratic environment would never be possible. One of these projects was cleaning to pave the way for the aesthetic improvement of the city and, therefore, the eradication of villas. The de facto military government’s intentions for doing away with the villas were twofold; villas were considered both an eyesore for tourists and the upper-class residents, especially with the approaching World Cup of 1978. Furthermore, villas presented potential for development, growth and the general “improvement” of the city through the installation of new, public amenities for the deserving population that remained (Cacciatore 224). Public officials insisted upon the idea that “living in Buenos Aires is not for anyone. It is for those who deserve it and live lives that are courteous and efficient for the rest of the community,” as the director of the Comisión Municipal de la Vivienda (CMV)(Municipal Commission of Housing) stated in 1980 (Blaustein 18). Their methodology for “creating a better city for better people” was by doing away with and “disappearing” these unappealing, impoverished areas and their residents who, it was said, enjoyed these conditions (18). By labeling them as such, villeros had no place in modern Buenos Aires.
In order to erase these problematic settlements from the map, the municipal government of Buenos Aires set up a three-tiered plan inspired by that of the Juan Carlos Onganía’s previous dictatorship (Blaustein 13). The first step was to “freeze” (congelamiento) the selected villa. By “freezing” the area, officials sought to aggressively halt any further growth and development in the villa. Government officials were sent to collect all possible information regarding the particular villa and its residents, dehumanizing the process by turning the people, their homes and simple ways of life into mere statistics. These censuses were then used to justify the “problem” in the misuse of land that could be “taken back” and reused for “proper” purposes (Cacciatore 224).
Topographical and cartographical maps of the villas were also made in order to plot irregularities in the land for future use and public record. These maps were created using “groundbreaking” and modern aerial photography methods and other advanced surveying techniques which would also serve to mark and label each individual home, assigning each structure a corresponding number. Simultaneously, the government undertook the above-mentioned census of the inhabitants of each villa (Ozlak 162, 163). Although a wide range of useful data was collected by this census, namely household size, household income, property holdings, education levels and occupation, officials only claimed these censuses were taken to map the number of residents, in order to prevent the growth of individual households and businesses. The agency in charge of carrying out these steps, the Municipal Commission of Housing (CMV), concluded that by the end of 1976, Buenos Aires was home to 28 villas with
37,083 inhabiting families, totaling over 170,000 “marginalized inhabitants” (Cacciatore 223). In fact, some statistics even cite this problematic number of villeros as high as 225,000 (Blaustein 16). Although statistics abound, little information is available regarding the daily lives of these low-income members of society. Few bothered to record the state of the homes in the neighborhoods for purposes other than to bring attention to an aesthetic eyesore that plagued the city.
The second phase of this plan was the desaliento (discouragement), intended to create unattractive environments for villa residents and encourage evacuation. Public officials went so far as to make the neighborhood unlivable for residents. Among other tactics, businesses deemed unhealthy and illegal (as were most in the villas) were quickly shut down and government workers were sent to villas with increased frequently to take detailed censuses and enforce the ban on new construction, rentals and acquisitions (Cacciatore, Ozlak). As many as 50 government personnel were stationed in each of the villas, beginning the long process of searching for and removing squatting “lowlifes” (malvivientes) and “convincing” other residents to leave by their own volition, forcing them to find their own housing solutions (Cacciatore 225). Those who did not would later be “convinced” with greater amounts of force. Interviews, articles and rescued documents all mention the use of firearms, tear gas, and physical force in order to remove inhabitants who refused to leave without being offered an established, permanent solution, a sharp contrast to the relationship the Federacón de Villeros had with President Illia and Plan Piloto (Ozlak 168).
Once inhabitants cleared their neighborhoods, the last step of the eradication plan could be executed. The much awaited leveling of the villas opened the door for erradicación and “freeing” these lands for more beneficial uses. Residents were reduced to nothing, those who remained being taken away in military trucks, and, in many cases with as little warning as one day or a week in order to “reclaim” public land. Echoing PEVE once again, government officials entered the villas with bulldozers and used brute force to eliminate any traces of a built environment left behind by villeros (Bettanin). As seen below, this implied the destruction of any previous improvements, made by past governments or the persercuted community members themselves. Community constructed telephone wires, roads, community centers, schools and even healthcare centers were destroyed without looking back (Snitcofsky).
A leveled villa in central Buenos Aires (Snitcofsky)
The dictatorial government also employed the Plan 25 de Mayo to construct public housing as a continuation of the Plan 17 de Octubre created by Peron’s populist government in 1973 (itself a continuation of Plan Viviendas Económicas Argentinas [Plan for Economic Argentine Housing] created in 1969) (Liernur V5, 87). Plan 25 de Mayo in conjunction with the National Housing Fund (created in 1970) provided for the construction of 8,400 homes from 1976 to 1977 and 3,600 from 1980 to 1981 to assist the housing deficit (Liernur V5, 87). Taking into account the almost 200,000 residents displaced by the villa eradication process, the scant amount of housing constructed to offset this number contradicts any attempts made to justify the Plan de Erradicacion’s good intentions. Sociologist Oscar Ozlak astutely notes that the majority of these eradications were located in the north of the capital city, where many tourists would arrive for the 1978 World Cup. Eduardo Blaustein highlights that the first villa in this series to be eradicated was none other than Bajo Belgrano (mapped above), located just a few miles to the north of the inaugural stadium of the tournament, Estado Monumental. Bajo Belgrano, a neighborhood known for its passionate support for soccer club, River Plate (whose home stadium is the Estadio Monumental) consisted of eleven blocks that once harbored a golf club, equestrian rink and “beautiful parks” according the CMV’s official documentation on the matter (Blaustein 25). Bajo Belgrano was quickly cleared in order to make way for infrastructural improvements for the World Cup, such as hotels and media networks stations for the groundbreaking color transmissions that would broadcast the tournament internationally and show that Argentina, too, was a modern, orderly nation (“Infraestructura Para el Mundial”).
Second on the list was Villa 31 located in the neighborhood of Retiro, strategically placed behind the heavily transited central bus and train stations. As large quantities of tourists and fútbol aficionados would arrive through these stations and the national airport, Aeroparque, just to the north, Villa 31 was aggressively eradicated and leveled in order to beautify the area. The vast majority of the residents from these two villas were housed in the Fuerte Apache
(Ciudadela I and II) housing complex that soon reached and surpassed maximum capacity in the south of the city (Blaustein 25).
This systematic eradication, the stigmatization of the villas, and the clandestine nature of the process made it possible for the de facto government to carry out this plan with the force necessary to yield the sought-after results. Villas were not neighborhoods that house low-income residents, they became nothing more than “problems” and their inhabitants lived “lifestyles in a dangerous promiscuity” (Cacciatore 224). The villa-freezing process, for example, was made possible by framing the shut-down businesses as “unhygienic and out of control” (225). Moreover, overcrowded homes and their “intruding” residents that squatted on public land were postulated as negative features that only served to increase and promote delinquency in the area. Instead of working-class laborers lacking the resources to construct or buy “proper” homes for themselves and their families, these people were seen as nothing but “intruders generating serious disturbances of serious confrontations” (224). Furthermore, the government insisted upon the idea that since some villeros owned cars and businesses, they had sufficient resources to secure other forms of housing, but until the moment of eradication, they had not wanted to (Ozlak). Sociologist Oscar Ozlak highlights these strategies and more as direct attempts by the dictatorship in order to justify their tactics and position the general population against villa residents (159). He states,
“[The authorities] justified the eradication of the villas de emergencia by questioning the ways of appropriating and using [state-owned] land. Recuperating zones destined for public works unilaterally decided would give way to expropriating land for the construction of highways or the expansion of green spaces. Relocating industry produced the virtual disappearance of jobs and, inevitably, the exodus of the worker population…. From the lens of certain social and state sectors, the poor of the city were always a pending threat” (160)
The focus of the government was land improvement, such as was the case of Plaza Monseñor de Andrea. In his memoir, Brigadier Mayor Osvaldo Cacciatore explicitly describes this area as one plagued by nothing more than unsanitary businesses and unkempt homes. The clear solution, therefore, was to “rehabilitate” the area by doing away with precarity and building a small, neighborhood plaza that all could benefit from (Cacciatore). It is unknown where these eleven families went after being expelled from their homes, but, to this day, Cacciatore’s legacy of “improvement” remains in the city with this multi-functional, centrally located plaza, just to the south of Retiro that features, large fountains, playground equipment for children, illuminated walkways and even a thoroughfare for automobiles (“Plaza Monseñor de Andrea”).
In her case study, “Políticas Urbanas Autoritarias’’ (“Authoritarian Urban Policies”), social worker Cristina Bettanin interviews an ex-resident of Villa Soldati who recalls how the government brought in bulldozers to raze the villa they lived in and military trucks to take the residents away. As a result, she states that many families of these razed villas returned to their
provinces of origin or even left the country in search of better conditions (114). The social implications of the situation only worsened as residents watched their neighbors being taken away in humiliating, large convoys. The city under authoritarian, dictatorial rule was not meant for everyone and this was made expressly clear by the government’s actions.
The impacts of the dictatorship on villas and low-income people were also not limited to the planned razing and eradications. Blanket prohibitions on public assembly also greatly affected low-income residents and their daily lives. The ban on public gathering (allowed by a state of emergency declared by Videla few days after the coup) made it difficult for communities to raise funds in order to buy food or pay basic bills such as electricity and gas. In an interview conducted by Bettanin, we see that these gatherings were essential to the daily lives of those who lived in Conjunto Soldati, a public housing complex constructed just years before the coup to house displaced members of Villa Soldati. One resident mentions that after the coup, they feared for their lives when meeting with other residents, as many of her neighbors had already been taken away by the military for suspicious behavior . The only solution deemed fit by community members was to gather in locations hidden from public view, such as homes of those willing to take the risk or stairways in these same buildings or to carry on individually, supporting themselves financially as possible (Bettanin 114-116).
The marks left by this aggressive government are clear, but maps such as the one below demonstrate that these precarious settlements have returned to the city of Buenos Aires, albeit in slightly different locations. Now clustered in the south, the majority of the villas are located closer to the outskirts of the city. Others, such as Villa 31 (1 on the map) have succeeded in rebuilding itself since eradication in 1976 as has Villa Rodriguez Bueno (number 2 on the map). These villas are no longer located in the north of the city, close to ports and transit centers, they now densely dot the flood-prone areas along the Riachuelo River.
Villas in the City of Buenos Aires (Tella)
Along with this forced relocation of Buenos Aires’ most impoverished citizens, zoning changes made by the same dictatorial government in their fight to improve environmental conditions caused a massive exodus of industry from central Buenos Aires as the periphery began to look more attractive with increased zoning regulations. Cacciatore’s legacy Urban Planning code for Buenos Aires was signed in 1977 in order to, among other lofty goals, fix “confusing zoning [and] incompatible land uses throughout the city” and to correct the deterioration of environmental conditions due to this heavy, centrally located industry (Cacciatore 140). Meatpacking plant Lisandro de la Torre is the most prominent example of the factories that were shut down under this urban planning code. With a rich history in Argentine politics and workers’ rights, Frigorífico Lisandro de la Torre was the center of massive protests in the 1950s in which workers called out for shorter workdays and better pay (Clementi 6). The plant was shut down without prior notice in 1979 and by 1981, the municipal government had inaugurated Parque Alberdi (Alberdi Park) (8). Today, the area remains a park and recreation area thanks to the last Argentine dictatorship and Cacciatore’s firm hand in zoning the city. Although this is one example, the longstanding effects of this general zoning plan can be seen below in a map created by Gaston Cirio, a member of the National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Buenos Aires, with 1998 statistics from the Environmental Politics Council of Buenos Aires. Most of Buenos Aires’ industry has moved to the periphery of Gran Buenos Aires (the greater Buenos Aires Area) and, therefore, as the above map, a most recent plotting of villas in the city, proves, this also caused the flocking of workers to the peripheries of the capital city (Cirio).
Location of Parque Alberdi, Ex-Meatpacking Plant Lisandro de la Torre (Courtesy of Google Maps)
Map of the peripherally located industry centers in 1998 (Cirio)
The last military dictatorship’s effect on the country of Argentina and its capital city spread from parks to housing, and human rights in the span of an impactful seven years. Villas that spent almost 40 years developing were flattened and their residents displaced, granting temporary, visible solutions to the very tangible problem Buenos Aires had providing decent housing to its citizens. Another 30 years later, conditions have returned to their original conditions or have worsened, which begs the question, will the nation be able to learn from its past mistakes, or will the government return to previous methods? There is much to learn from Buenos Aires’ history and relationship with its impoverished citizens, but only by improving real conditions, not aesthetics for these low-income residents will the landscape begin to change.
Works Cited
Bettanin, Cristina Inés. (2010). “Políticas urbanas autoritarias: testimonios y prácticas de memoria colectiva acerca del pasado reciente en conjuntos urbanos de vivienda social en la ciudad de Buenos Aires/Authoritarian urban policies: the testimonies and practices of collective memory about the recent past in Urban Social Housing at Buenos Aires City.” Cuadernos de Trabajo Social, 23, 103-123. Retrieved from ProQuest Central K12 database. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/853642996. Blaustein, Eduardo. Villas Miseria. Prohibido Vivir Aqui: La Erradicacion De Villas Durante La Dictadura. Buenos Aires: Editorial Punto De Encuentro, 2006. (Parts 1-4) 1-52. Web. http://www.elortiba.org/pdf/Eduardo-Blaustein_-_Villas-Miseria.pdf Cacciatore, Osvaldo. Sólo Los Hechos. First ed. Buenos Aires: Metáfora Editorial, 1993. Print. Clementi, H., & Barela, L. (2002). Frigorífico Lisandro de la Torre. Cronista Mayor de Buenos Aires, 5(35), 1-8. Retrieved from http://www.buenosaires.gob.ar/sites/gcaba/files/documents/cronista35.pdf. "Infraestructura Para El Mundial De 1978." Summa (Edición Especial) 125 (1978): 25-30. Print. Jachimowicz, Maia. "Argentina: A New Era of Migration and Migration Policy." Migrationpolicy.org. Migration Policy Institute, 1 Feb. 2006. Web. 05 Dec. 2016 http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/argentina-new-era-migration-and-migration-policy Liernur, Jorge Francisco, and Fernando Aliata, eds. Diccionario De Arquitectura En La Argentina: Estilos, Obras, Biografías, Instituciones, Ciudades. First ed. Vol 1-5. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Artes Gráficas Rioplatenses S.A., 2004. Print. Oszlak, Oscar. "Erradicación De Villas De Emergencia." Merecer La Ciudad: Los Pobres Y El Derecho Al Espacio Urbano. Buenos Aires: CEDES, 1991. 147-98. Print. Pastoriza, Elisa, and Juan Carlos Torre. "La Democratización Del Bienestar." Nueva Historia Argentina Tomo VIII. By Juan Suriano. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 2002. 257-313. Print. "Plaza Monseñor De Andrea." Summa 119 (1977): 34-35. Print. Snitcofsky, Victoria. "Merecer La Ciudad." Haroldo. Haroldo, 29 Sept. 2016. Web. 6 Dec. 2016. http://revistaharoldo.com.ar/nota.php?id=171 Tella, Guillermo. "Los Patrones De Asentamiento [Patterns of Settlement]." Un Crack En La Ciudad: Rupturas Y Continuidades En La Trama Urbana De Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires: Nobuko, 2007. 57-93. Print.
Pictures and Maps Barrio Ejercito De Los Andes. 2013. Taller De Fotografia, Tango Citico, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Tango Critico. Web. 11 Dec. 2016.
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