A City of Contrasts

It is so very interesting to visit a new city with Habitat, because you get to see the city and the people who live in it from a number of different perspectives. In the time that we have been here, we took a city tour, had an introduction with the local affiliate, and have completed our first work session on Emilio’s house.

To start with, I have to say that BA is a beautiful city. It reminds me a lot of Paris, although perhaps a bit more run down. Right now the jacaranda trees are in full bloom, and the purple flowers are very impressive.

Sculptures made out of old pop bottles
with jacaranda trees in the background

Citizens of Argentina are also very lucky. They have free schooling (including University), and free health-care. There are events almost every week, and lots of green spaces in which to enjoy the weather and the sunshine.

This large flower statue was donated to the city of BA
by an engineer in thanks for his state-sponsored education.

 

Where it gets a bit interesting, though, is when you start to talk about the economic situation and the fact that it is common practice to not really ‘follow the rules’. Every person employed in Argentina has to belong to a trade union, and union members have been given 30% pay increases in each of the last 5 years. However, only 51% of the people are officially ‘employed’ – the rest work ‘under the table’, so about half of the people do not get these fantastic raises. In addition, although the raises of 30% were enough to cover inflation during the first couple of years, the last couple of years have seen real incomes increase less than inflation, so no-one is getting ahead.

 

We went to Recoleta cemetery in the center of town to see the burial plots of the rich and famous (including Eva Peron), and the plots were pretty much the size of the whole house that our home-owner Emilio lives in.

 

One of the thousands of sculptures in Recoleta Cemetery

There is garbage in the streets. Not so much in the nicer areas, but noticeable in other areas. Apparently there is no formal program for recycling, but there is money to made from recycled goods. Add in a bit of corruption and you have a situation where garbage trucks divert their loads from the more prosperous neighbourhoods to the ‘Garbage Mafia’ sites instead of the dump. The garbage is picked through for electronics, glass, metal, and even cardboard… and the rest is illegally dumped. We heard that the ‘Garbage Mafia’ is more powerful than the ‘Drug Mafia’. Emilio’s lane does not even have garbage pickup, because the garbage trucks can not get down his rutted street. In town, you often see people rooting through dumpsters for anything they can sell to recyclers.

 

Garbage-Pickers at Night - note the children in the cart

There are really nice neighbourhoods next to shanty-towns. The shanty-towns are inhabited by people who work in the nice neighbourhoods, but they can not afford to live anywhere close to there, so they build illegal houses nearby on unclaimed land (under bridges, by streams, etc..). When they need more room, they just build another floor, and eventually the place looks like a bunch of lego-block houses. Some have electricity, but none have water or toilets. Emilio has undisputed title to his small plot of land but only because he was a squatter there for more than 20 years.









Lego-Block squatters houses