Yesterday Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff signed into law “Caring Brazil”, a programme designed to combat childhood extreme poverty. Since its launch last May, the program has lifted almost three million children out of extreme poverty and anticipates doubling that figure.

The programme distributes R$70 (the equivalent of US$35) monthly to each family of a child under the age of six living in extreme poverty. The amount is exactly that necessary to no longer classify a family as living in extreme poverty.

According to Minister of Social Development Tereza Campello, the programme will benefit almost nine million children and their family members. Children currently make up 40% of Brazilians living in extreme poverty.

“We will improve the situation of the most vulnerable group in Brazilian society: children, who also represent the future of the country,” stated Rousseff.

The programme compliments the “Family Pocket” program created in 2003 by Rousseff’s predecessor Luiz Inacio “Lula” Da Silva, which created a safety net of food, education, and health for Brazil’s poorest families. “Family Pocket” aids 11m families, a quarter of the country’s population, making it the largest social assistance programme in the world.

“Brazil has earned enormous respect throughout the world for its social policies” Rousseff said. And now “it has made another step towards perfecting them.”

According to the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INDEC), an income of $13 a day is enough for a person not to be considered ‘poor’. The organisation claims that this sum is enough to cover accommodation and bills, food, transport, healthcare, education, and clothing.

For a family of four, the figure of $13 a day means a total monthly income of $1555. However, according to private studies in the city of Buenos Aires and some provinces, the poverty line lies much higher, at $3600 a month or $30 per day per person.

The new statistics effectively brand six million previously considered to be living in poverty as above the poverty line, and this lowers Argentina’s official poverty rate to just 6.2% of the total population. In contrast, studies which take real inflation into account place poverty in Argentina at 21.9%, more than three times that of the official rate. According to the Catholic University, there are 8.5 million Argentines considered to be living in poverty in comparison to official statistics which limit the problem to only 2.6 million people.

According to social organisations, $13 a day would not be sufficient to cover the consumption habits of the population which the survey is based on. This would be true even if the family did not pay rent and illegally obtained electricity, if the children went to public school with free school lunches and the parents cycled to work, if the family used public hospitals and received free medication and if recreation consisted only of drinking mate in the local square on Sundays.

These worrying figures, however, do not just have theoretical implications. According to Ana Edwin, director of INDEC: “The reality is that these figures are used to set values for benefits and social programmes, amongst other things.”

These controversial statistics from the government institution come a month and a half after its declaration that it would be possible for a person to feed themselves adequately for just $6 per day.

The Argentina Independent plans on launching a free, independent, monthly publication in June. In order to remain 100% independent, we are hoping to raise the funds to cover the initial costs of design, printing and distribution via crowdfunding platform Ideame.

And to remind you of all the good things we have done over the course of the past six years as a publication, as well as giving you a reason to support us in our bid to go into print and help us keep doing such things, we will be bringing you a taste of some of the good times each week! This week – a selection of our best content.

If you would like to support us in our fundraising campaign, please visit our Ideame page where you can either make a donation (every cent counts), or help us by spreading the word!

Endangered: Argentina’s Disappearing Languages

Every two weeks, one of the world’s languages dies out, and Argentina is not immune to this mass linguistic extinction. Kate Granville-Jones’ investigated this phenomenon and discovered of the 35 languages spoken in Argentina in pre-Columbian times, now just 15 remain, and one has only two living speakers.

Gatillo Facil and Deaths in Police Custory

“2009 was not just another year. It started with a new Miguel Bru that was Luciano Arruga, and finished with a new Walter Bulacios: Ruben Carballo. Police repression and violence grew to the point of taking the life of someone every 24 hours.” Any student of Argentine history is familiar with the dictatorship of the 1970s and 80s, and the thousands of students, unionists and activists that were “disappeared” by the military regime. A subject which is less-publicised, however, is that state violence and repression did not end with the return of democracy in 1983. As Daniel Edwards discoverd in his 2010 report, federal and provincial police forces continue to routinely use extreme violence and torture against suspects and detainees in their facilities, which often results in the death of the victim.

Guaraní Suicide

After a 2008 report indicated that the Guaraní indigenous group had the highest rate of suicide as a people in the world, Kristie Robinson headed up to community in Misiones, just 15km from the world-famous Iguazú Falls, to meet with Guaraní leaders to talk about the alarming rates of suicide and what is being done to tackle the issue.

Paco: Drug Epidemic Sweeping the Streets of Buenos Aires

Anthony Bale’s 2008 article on paco, a by-product of cocaine that is wreaking havoc on the lives of many shantytown inhabitants, brought the stark reality of life in Buenos Aires’ underclass home to many of our readers.

Secret Squats and Silent Evictions: A Response to BA’s Housing Deficit

In 2009 Harriet Hernando’s looked into Buenos Aires’ social housing crisis and the city government’s handling of the situation, highlighting mass migration to the cities and inadequate government policies, as well as violent police crackdown on illegal squatters as the main culprits in the crisis.

A report from the National Institute of Statistics , published today, has shown that the poverty index in Uruguay fell sharply by five points in 2011. 162,827 people came out of poverty last year.

According to the report, poverty affects 13.7% of the population, a drop from 18.6% in 2010, and the poverty index now stands at 0.6%.

The report stated that the most concentrated area of poverty is in the capital, Montevideo, where half of the country’s population live. The report also noted that poverty is more prominent among children, teenagers and the black population.

The report confirms the trend that poverty has been dropping steadily in Uruguay since 2006.

Rates of poverty are at their lowest for 20 years. The poverty rate in Latin America fell by 17% between 1990 and 2010 according to The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). Amongst the indigenous communities, the rate was reduced by 10.3%.

The ECLAC claims that this can be credited to the increase in labour income as governments have spent more on social programs during the economic crisis.

The most significant rates of poverty reductions are in Peru, Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay and Colombia. In Mexico and Honduras however, rates of poverty have increased.

Alicia Barcena, the ECLAC’s executive secretary, added that “this progress is however threatened by the widening gaps in the productive structure in the region and by labour markets which generate employment in low-productivity sectors, without social protection”.

The organisation urges governments to spend money on social programs to continue to reduce poverty for the long term.

An amendment to the 3728 Act, which provides benefits to people 65 years and older in poverty now establishes that indigenous seniors will also be financially supported by government.

The Paraguayan Directorate of Non-Contributory Pensions (DPNC) issued regulations supplementing the new law. There are a number of outlined requirements for registration, as well as a designated system to determine whether the beneficiary was in poverty.

Studies conducted by the census identified that most Paraguayan indigenous people are in a state of poverty, especially adults of the communities. In response, the Ministry of Finance decided that the programme was universal for the indigenous elderly.

Following this decision, the system of registration for the indigenous elders programme was simplified. Now only basic details of the beneficiary are needed for registration.

The law allocates approximately 25% of current wages to the maintenance of people over 65 in poverty.

Courtesy of Agency Pulsar

A study released today by the NGO One Roof For My Country (UTPMP) found that more than half a million families are living in shantytowns in Buenos Aires. Over the past five years, 90 new shantytowns have formed in the outskirts of the city.

UTPMP defines a shantytown as “a highly crowded area with almost no roads but rather corridors that develop upwards,” which can “make growth difficult.”

As part of the on-going villa series looking at Buenos Aires’ poorest neighbourhoods, we re-visit Charlotte Turner’s 2007 story on the ‘Ciudad Oculta’.

The year is 1978. The eyes of the world are about to fall on Argentina, which is due to host the most-watched sporting spectacle on the calendar – the football World Cup. In preparation for the event the military dictatorship, led by Jorge Rafael Videla, has sent camionetas to scour the capital’s poorest neighbourhoods, scoop up residents and drive them out of the city’s limits and into the pampa where they’ll be dumped out of sight.

In the most westerly corner of the capital between Mataderos and Lugano, a wall is being constructed around a particular slum bordering the motorway that will run visitors from Ezeiza airport into the city centre. As planned, the neatly-laid brick wall cleverly conceals the disorderly clutter of Villa 15’s ill-construed shacks, blotting from view the shameful ‘scab’ of poverty that, if seen, would shatter the image of a prosperous and modern country that the de facto government is trying to project.

But still, there is one structure that refuses to be hidden – an abandoned 15-storey-high concrete giant that presides over the villa’s cowering shacks and towers defiantly over the new wall.

Built during the first Perón era, the building was meant to be a hospital for patients suffering from tuberculosis and was planned to be the biggest of its kind in Latin America. However, the 1955 military coup  that ended Perón’s presidency also brought to a close the hospital’s construction.

Today, although the dividing wall has long since crumbled, the ‘Ciudad Oculta’or ‘hidden city’ as Villa 15 has since been known, still continues to sprawl around the enormous edifice, referred to by locals as the ‘white elephant’.

The passing years have led the beguiling structure to take on significances of its own; for some it is a geographical landmark that pinpoints the villa from the blocks that surround it, a marker of identity for the barrio, whilst for others it is a symbol reflecting the boom and bust cycle of a country that, though wealthy in resources, too often ill-employs them, laying its riches to waste.

“I’m the old lady of the building,” laughs Julia, 28, with a smile through well-worn teeth but with a glint in her eye that gives away her youth. The white elephant has no greater significance than for Julia – for the last quarter of a century it has been her home. Until 2000, undeterred by rumours of structural damage that were spread to keep people away, the family in which she grew up was the only one to inhabit the building.

Since then desperate times have forced others in, and Julia, her husband Néstor and their seven children are now just one of 54 families occupying the desolate building’s vast ground floor.

Since October 2006, these families have welcomed a new neighbour from the other side of the villa’s limits. Following a fire that destroyed 25 neighbouring families homes, Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo (Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a human rights organisation set up after their children were disappeared during the last dictatorship) have successfully channelled government funds to construct 37 new homes alongside the disused building, giving form to their ‘Sueños Compartidos’or ’shared dreams’ project. Run from the white elephant itself, an office, classrooms, a soup kitchen, and even a nursery to look after employees’ children, occupy the mothers’ refurbished ground-floor wing.

“We give thanks to the mothers because everyone passes by here, saying that they are going to do things or whatever… and they never do,” says Julia’s mother, Graciela, the real mum of the building. It has been her home for more than 40 years and is the site from which she established and now runs her own community soup kitchen.

Graciela is only too happy to share her space with the Mothers. During the course of their 30-year-long struggle for human rights, the organisation has gained great respect within the barrio, even acting as an inspiration for some in their own struggles for respect and recognition beyond the villa.

“But what I’m most proud of is the fact that we are the ones in charge of what is being done here.”

A key characteristic of the Sueños Compartidos project is that all those who staff it are from the Villa 15 itself. In an area where unemployment figures run as high as 40%, the project has had a significant impact on the lives of the 300 people who now have gained fixed employment through it.

For most it is their first chance of working legally, with the added bonuses of social security, pension schemes, the chance to gain valuable work experience, and of course a regular wage.

Julia’s husband Néstor, 29, is one of those to have found work through the project. Before he started labouring on the construction site, he struggled to keep his family fed by working each night on the city’s streets searching for recyclable rubbish as a cartonero.

Clearly excited by his new job, he particularly enjoys learning differing skills from variety of trades from construction to electrical work to plumbing. At the same time, he is earning qualifications through the Universidad Popular de Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo which runs classes from the white elephant building – training that will have real currency when he seeks work in the traditional workplace, outside of the villa.

Liliana, the mother’s representative overseeing the project, has been astonished by the changes she has seen in some of those she now works alongside. In particular, what most struck her was that in the course of a couple of days, gestures and appearances changed as the employees started to show pride in themselves and the work that they were now doing.

“Many of the women are over 40 years old and this is the very first time that they have been given the responsibility of a real job.” She recalls how one of the cooks in the soup kitchen had arrived ‘with the composure of an old, bitter woman’. By the end of the week, with a feeling of dignity in the job at hand she started to come to work ‘dressed with care and with a smile on her face’.

What continues to impress Liliana is the growing sense of camaraderie amongst the staff, no more evident than on one particular payday when a construction worker had her wage stolen from her bag. Straight away, her colleagues began chipping-in to a kitty to make up the difference that she had lost from their own pockets.

And no I haven’t described the wrong person – with a policy of employing equal numbers of men and women, half of the labourers on-site are women, a strange sight in machismo-fuelled Argentine society.

Aware that women are typically the most sidelined members of an already marginalised community, the mothers insisted on non-gender specific roles, encouraging woman to take paths that they previously did not think possible.

Another stipulation was that for every family to move into the new houses, each must have a member working on the project to promote feelings of self-reliance and, most important of all, ownership.

Together with her husband and their one-year-old granddaughter, Gómez María Angelica, 52, has spent the last few months following the fire that left her homeless living in a government-provided emergency shelter. Perched on the edge of the villa and right on the side of the road, the white elephant’s skeleton overshadows the corrugated iron and wood structure that she currently calls home. It is clearly as highly unstable and unsafe as her previous house that was so easily destroyed by flames.

Although only provisional, government inaction frequently means that such short-term, ‘quick-fix’ measures commonly transform into the long-term solution.

With less than one month to go until the move-in date, Angelica is feeling relieved that her family will live in an environment that is ‘covered, insulated and clean’. “I am very happy,” she says, clutching her granddaughter in her arms and letting her eyes wander again to the construction site where her new home is steadily taking shape.

In a barrio whose inhabitants live in conditions of extreme poverty, overcrowding and insecurity, it speaks volumes that these three simple attributes to a home mean far more to Angelica than the luxuries of hot running water, modern sanitation and a safe electricity supply, with all of which each house will be equipped.

Perhaps the most obvious question would be: why not solve the villa’s housing problems by converting the deserted levels that make up the white elephant into apartments? Unfortunately, the costs of such an undertaking would exceed those of constructing separate homes from scratch. Since 2001, as in most parts of the country, times have been tough. Brick by brick, nearby residents have chipped away at the edifice, taking what they can to use to construct their own dwellings.

Walking up the wide staircase into the building, you look up at a mighty wall that now stencils the sky in blue squares – open holes that once used to be glass-filled windows and ledges.

To the right as you step inside is the area run by the Mothers’ Universidad Popular, the organisation involved in recruiting and training project staff. Here, noticeboards line the walls displaying posters offering classes from English to cookery, and educational workshops on subjects from security, hygiene and electrical risks to paco (a drug made of base cocaine) prevention.

It seems like this could be the hallway to any UBA faculty building, only this one is planted right inside one of Buenos Aires’ most impoverished and poorly-educated communities.

Pinned to the door of the cinema room, whose floor has just been surfaced by the ceramic tiling workshop, a small sign reads: “Every man has the right to be educated, and the duty to contribute to the education of others.”

The courses here are mainly attended by the 300 project workers, although they are all open to anybody in the villa. Each entrant on the project’s work scheme must have an attendance rate of at least 75% to continue on with it, and once approved, his or her learning gets accredited through a diploma awarded by the Universidad Popular.

Following the corridor, pastel-coloured drawings on the walls lead the way to the project’s nursery, where 100 sleepy heads are enjoying a post-lunch siesta. Fully-equipped with its own kitchen, playrooms, child-sized toilets and sinks, high chairs and tables – the nursery appears just like any that you would find in one of the city’s wealthier suburbs.

For many of the children, this is the only truly safe and clean environment they have known. Even to turn on a tap for the very first time and let the water rush out proved a terrifying experience for some.

At the far end of the nursery a door opens out onto the gutted carcass of the building’s un-used ground floor. Instead of toy mountains and alphabet square mats, the floor here is littered with rubble, dirt, glass and bonfire remains, a reminder that it is just a thin wall that separates these children, cocooned in the quiet and ordered tranquility of the nursery, from the often harsh everyday realities of life out in their barrio.

The hope is that enough funds can be raised to convert this empty space into a primary and a secondary school for local children from Villa 15. One of the major problems that will affect these children’s futures is the difficulty of finding schools where they will be respected and encouraged to build a steady education for themselves. In neighbouring areas outside the villa, school places are scarce. If accepted, bullying towards students from poorer areas such as this is commonplace.

“Discrimination comes from the outside,” says Graciela. I ask her how she feels towards more prosperous parts of society who take such things as housing and their children’s education almost for granted. “It is the same for them as it is for us. The middle classes might seem to be rich, but nowadays, they too must work hard to pay for their rent and bills each month.”

With wide viewpoints sweeping over the villa, Julia’s children shout down to friends from their high, unobstructed and glass-free window as the afternoon sun licks long shadows on the glimmering tin roofs below. Her family is on the list for a new home in the next phase of the Mother’s housing project and she hopes that one day her children will call what was once their home, their school.

The greatest problems that afflict this neighbourhood – drug addiction, violence, unemployment – are the same that affect all neighbourhoods. However, they tend to have a greater impact here due to the difficulty, and at times, impossibility of gaining access to essential services and rights such as education, health care and employment. Only serving to make these problems worse are the unnecessary barriers of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’- a form of exclusion and marginalisation inflicted by society – which often prevents it from seeing anything beyond just the problems that affect the villa’s population.

“The ‘hidden city’ our barrio was called when, long ago, certain people with money decided to build a wall so that they wouldn’t see the poor,” explains Julia, “…but all we want is to give it back its original name: barrio General Belgrano.”

Despite a strong economic recovery since 2003 and various government efforts at social inclusion, many Argentines remain working in the informal sector, impoverished, or unemployed. Implemented in 2009, the  Asignación Universal por Hijo (AUH), a conditional cash transfer programme tied to children’s school attendance and vaccination, has reduced poverty and increased class attendance around the country, according to government and independent studies.

Closely mimicking successful programmes in Brazil and Chile, the policy entails a monthly payment of up to $180 per child of unemployed and informal workers. Eighty percent of the subsidy is paid out automatically; the remaining 20% is issued when parents present valid vaccine documentation for children aged four and under, or proof of school attendance starting at the age of five. The measure includes a $720 monthly subsidy for children with disabilities.

The National Social Security Administration (ANSES), the organisation responsible for administering the programme, has noted its mitigating effects on poverty.

“The Asignacion Universal por Hijo has contributed significantly to the drop in poverty and indigence in Argentina,” said Diego Bossio, executive director of ANSES. Bossio backed his claims by citing independent studies and statistics from INDEC, the national statistics bureau, that say poverty in Argentina has dropped significantly since the programme’s implementation.

But INDEC in recent years has been accused of manipulating inflation statistics, which directly affects its poverty measurements.

A study by researchers Leonardo Gasparini and Guillermo Cruces at the Universidad de la Plata reinforces the government’s claims. Outlining Argentina’s need for a “massive cash transfer programme as an axis for social policy, providing relief for the most immediate economic needs of the population”, the report calls the AUH the “most transcendent social policy decision in a long time”.

Extreme poverty is down to 2.8% from 6.9%, and child poverty dropped to 3.7% from 12%, according to the report.

Investigators at the National Council of Scientific and Technical Investigation (CONICET) claim that the AUH has reduced indigence by up to 70%, and poverty by 13-32%. A report issued by the Council says that the AUH is the “most successful social policy measure of the last 50 years, especially for its impact on indigence and extreme inequality between rich and poor”.

Gains in School Attendance

The programme has also boosted school attendance, according to official data. The Ministry of Education, in a survey of 676 of the nation’s schools, found that 51% reported an increase in student inscription since the programme’s inception until May 2010. The average increase in attendance was 15%, and a majority of school directors credit the AUH for the gains.

But its apparent success in promoting school attendance has laid bare deep problems in Argentina’s education infrastructure, as many schools are ill-equipped to absorb the uptick in primary and secondary school enrolment, particularly in Buenos Aires province.

“The right to the AUH should imply an inclusive space, as such, the conditions to learn and teach must be in agreement with the needs of our children and teachers,” said Mirta Petrocini, president of the Federation of Buenos Aires Educators (FEB).

“The growing demand in matriculation is not reflected in a bigger budget or efficient management in order to resolve the daily problems seen in provincial schools.”

In a visit to schools in greater Buenos Aires, the FEB found hallways being used as administrative space to make room for classrooms, halted construction projects due to lack of funds, unsanitary bathrooms, leaky ceilings, deficient libraries, and a shortage of table and chairs.

A More Inclusive Social Policy, with Caveats

After the crisis of 2001-02, Argentina’s sustained economic recovery from 2003-8 led to employment recuperation and lifted many out of destitution. Although social programmes like ‘Jefes y Jefas de Hogar Desocupados’ and ‘Plan Familias’ helped certain sectors and alleviated situations of emergency, they didn’t respond to the magnitude of Argentina’s persistent poverty. Politicians, academics, and NGOs began pushing for a more inclusive distributive policy such as the AUH.

The AUH was passed by presidential decree in October 2009 and expanded coverage to children of informal and unemployed workers. At the time, the decree was criticized by opposition legislators for bypassing the parliamentary process and disallowing debate on alternative proposals.

Elisa Carrió, founder of the political party Coalición Cívica, argued that the measure isn’t redistributive because it “takes money from poor retirees and gives it to poor children” by using the pension system to pay the subsidies. Other legislators claimed the measure “foments clientelism” – exchanging favours for votes – by targeting primarily the middle and lower classes, the traditional base of the Peronist party.

In a column in La Nación, the economist Roberto Cachanosky echoed the critiques of many economists who partly blame the AUH for causing inflation in Argentina by creating consumer demand and putting upward pressure on prices. He called inflation “one of the most perverse taxes” because it disproportionately affects low-income workers, and said the recipients of the AUH have lost “a good part of their purchasing power” because of inflation – by some measures – of up to 22% annually.

These inflation worries are perhaps what lead President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, again by decree, to boost the monthly subsidy. In October, the payment will increase to $220 pesos per child, and $880 for children with disabilities, a gain of 22.2%.

A 2010 report from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Argentina also lauds the programme but says there’s more work to be done.

Calling the AUH a “big advance” in terms of fortifying the economic capacity of families to send their kids to school, the report goes on to say that these types of policies are “diluted” if not accompanied by a “more profound transformation of economic, social, and educational policy”.

Lead image: President Cristina Kirchner at an event to assign the first cards for Asignación Universa por Hijo in Mar del Plata by Presidencia de la Nacion Argentina.

“When I left, I wasn’t busy with art… I was more busy with politics as a young boy. At that time, I would’ve liked to change the world…”

Khosro Adibi was 24 when he left Iran. His slight build and soft-spoken manner contradict a militant past as a Marxist activist and political refugee. He refers to his wish to change the world as a past attitude, but conversation with him indicates that this wish is very much alive, albeit manifested in a different way; through Fronteras International Art Festival, which starts today in Rosario.

Following his escape from Iran and six months in a United Arab Emirates’ prison, Adibi obtained Dutch citizenship through the United Nations. In the Netherlands he trained in visual art and dance, which led to teaching, the opening of his own dance studio in Brussels and, eventually, Fronteras.

It began as a personal project: “In society you see so much poverty and so much inequality… As an artist you close yourself inside and you think all the world is about what you are doing. It was a contradiction… And that brought a question for me because I come from that kind of environment. I come from a kind of ghetto and an environment that was not so wealthy. So I recognised that. It touched me… That was the moment Fronteras happened.”

The project uses art to help children in deprived areas. Adibi leads teaching labs, where questions of a pedagogic nature are discussed, and the artists involved use these as a base from which to run workshops in dance, music, theatre or visual art with local children.

“With Fronteras, we go to the people and we introduce the work to them. For sure, not all these kids are going to be artists and it isn’t about that… It’s more to give them attention and create for them an environment where they feel they are worth. They feel they can be equal to anybody else and that it is not the only way – fighting, robbing, drugs.”

Whilst these aspirations are admirable, they are also rather idealistic. I ask him whether it might be more beneficial to offer something more substantial to those who take part in the workshops, such as certification, and he replies, “In the traditional, conventional system of education you need to spend 15 to 20 years studying to arrive to a point that you can make a living out of it… I feel like in the conditions that this kind of country has, it is a hard process… it is a long way…

“Most of the time they think, ‘When people are poor, it’s because they don’t have money.’ I think it is because of lack of education and lack of education is because they don’t have the creativity to find the way to deal with their personal life, to find the solution in life… you need to be creative in the life to find a solution to your problems.”

Asked exactly how this creativity helps in concrete terms, he explains: “When kids have a lot of energy… and they want to get rid of it in one or other way, one of the reactions is fighting or stealing in normal life. Same kid, you put it in a gym and they start to work on their body… We went to the school that was visual artists working with the kids on the comic. They had to draw and the kids they were so quiet! Just focusing on the piece of paper and trying to do their best to draw something. And same kids, you take the paper from them, they jump all over the room… It is not often a matter of kids born to be violent. They need a focus… by creating a focus you distract the focus from violence and other things.”

I ask him how he ensures that this focus continues after the artists depart and he tells me that each festival has its own local production team. The producers invite artists they feel will be the most beneficial for the local community. Half the artists that partake in the festivals are local and continue working with the community afterwards. According to Adibi, some artists who taught at the recent festival in Concepción, Chile, have been employed by local schools to continue their work.

The artists are unpaid and fund their own travel. Adibi reports that some public institutions have been forthcoming, offering the artists a place to sleep or providing free food or publicity. Everything else has to be covered by the money he earns through dance workshops that he earns in between the Fronteras festivals. This, he believes, is why he has never felt compromised whilst running the project and can continue to work without a political agenda.

He concedes that, if necessary, he would be willing to work with politicians for the sake of the children: “If they want to play my game, I play with them, but I don’t play their game… Concepción project happened in the moment that elections were in Chile. Left wing lost. Right wing takes over… People say, ‘Khosro, how we deal with this? I don’t want to work for the right wing.’” Adibi maintained then, as he does now, that it is irrelevant as long as the government supports their work.

He informs me that there is the possibility of renovating a school in Matao, in São Paolo, Brazil, with the aim of creating a self-sustaining community where Fronteras work can continue. The plans have been made, but we have yet to see how they will come into fruition and whether Adibi will have to play ball with the local government.

He also tells me about the “family” he has cultivated through Fronteras. He refers warmly to past experiences, such that of meeting Paolo in Araraquara, Brazil. He describes him as a 19-year-old who “didn’t even have the ambition, potential or idea to get out of Araraquara… Now he took off.” Paolo now attends PARTS dance school in Brussels.

Adibi also shared with me the daily joys of being able to work with children that have suffered in the past, describing how they gradually become less dependent on social workers and throw their arms around his neck to greet him.

When I first met Khosro Adibi, I was rather skeptical, imagining him as the director of an over-idealistic project. However, he was surprisingly frank and willing to respond to my doubts. His personal accounts were touching, but nevertheless interspersed with assertions about the necessity of doctors, cooks and local institutions such as schools, homeless shelters and prison groups. Whilst he remains dismissive of politicians, he understands the requisite role they will eventually play if Fronteras is to be anything more than a temporary fixture in a town calendar.

He may be less political, but Khosro Adibi is still an activist, aiming now for revelations rather than revolution. He admits that each festival varies according to location, so he does not know what to expect from Rosario. I can only hope it leads to more cases like that of Paolo from Araraquara.

Fronteras will be visiting the following cities:

Rosario, Argentina: 22nd February-14th March

Valparaiso, Chile: 29th March-18th April

Santiago, Chile: 5th-25th April

Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico: 21st June-18th July

Araraquara, Matao & Taquaritinga, São Paolo state, Brazil: 19th July-8th August

Huaraz, Peru: 16th August-6th September

For more information, visit www.fronterasconcepcionchile.blogspot.com or www.lasterstudio.be/Fronteras or email fronterasconcepcionchile@gmail.com