This morning, residents of Villa 31, the slum outside Retiro Station, blocked long-distance buses from the downtown terminal.

The protests arose because the representatives of Villa 31 residents in the federal courts in Comodoro Py have yet to settle a housing agreement with the provincial and national governments. Residents wish to have legal tenure of the land and to start formal construction of housing within the area, something residents feel they have been waiting 20 years for.

The protests have continued intermittently throughout the last few days, blocking roads around the neighbourhood in response to repeated negligence of the villa, highlighting the ongoing conflict around social negligence.

Two days ago, on a national holiday, residents also blocked the terminal’s long-distance bus entrance as a response to the state of heating conditions and the state of the primary school in the neighbourhood.

The electric energy and schools are not the only problems facing Villa 31.

Today, two medics of the System of Emergency Medical Attention (SAME) offered $140,000 to the family of Sapito Ruiz, a man from Villa 31 who died the 5th April, 2011 after having suffered a series of epileptic seizures. His death was believed to be preventable if he had received adequate and swift treatment from professionals. Although two ambulances were sent on the morning of Ruiz’s seizures, they did not enter the villa for fear of danger. Despite police and residents willing to escort the medics, they refused.

Emiliano Gareca, Ruiz’s family’s representative, told Pagina 12 that the compensation is a not enough: “It’s a desperate attempt to avoid a public apology and to buy impunity.”

I recently hosted my parents here in Buenos Aires. It was a trip we had been planning for over a month now – choosing restaurants, day-trips, markets, accommodation… etc.

Over their ten days here, I played host and translator, and somehow managed to get us into one tricky situation after another. As a relatively new porteño myself, parts of this city still get the best of me, and probably always will.

The best way to explore this city is to ‘lose yourself’ in it; to wander its streets soaking in the architecture, history, and cityscapes. I think maybe we took that a bit too literally as we spent a lot of time hopelessly lost.

While wandering is important, wandering aimlessly while babbling (in English) about how lost you are makes you a bit of a target in certain areas you probably shouldn’t be wandering in. Combine that with the fact that you definitely look like foreigners (the combination of rain jackets, hiking boots, and fanny-packs are the visual equivalent of demanding to be robbed).

This week’s top five is the result of ten days of hard earned gum-shoe research towards where/how not to take your parents, or any visiting relatives, arriving at the city for the first time.

1. Villa 31

Villa 31 'Barrio Carlos Mujica' (Photo: Henry0 on Flickr)

I’m not really sure how it happened or why I didn’t realise it earlier (I find myself asking this question a lot though) but somehow we managed to stumble into Villa 31, or at least close enough to send my mum into conniptions and my dad’s eyebrows into his hairline.

Most villas are off the beaten tourist track, located outside the city limits or hugging its furthest edges, far enough away from thimble hot-spots to keep my parents and I out of their limits. Villa 31 on the other hand, is right in Retiro, easy wandering distance from the train station

We were at the train station in Retiro waiting for our ride to Tigre. With about 20 mins to kill until the train was scheduled to leave we decided to take a tour of the area. We sauntered around for awhile and eventually, as aimless wandering often goes, veered onto the wrong side of the tracks. Soon enough it became pretty clear that my mom wasn’t going to find any thimbles for her collection here and we high-tailed it out pretty quick.

No need for details on this one. Villas, while a evident part of life in Buenos Aires, aren’t a good place to bring your parents. Lots of great people live there, but the abject poverty draws in some who could try and take advantage of you.

Caminito in La Boca (Photo: Gus Guslight)

2. Tourist Traps

Any city with a market for tourism is going to have a couple of these. There are a few in Buenos Aires – pedestrianised Florida and La Boca’s ‘Caminito’ are a couple of classics.

It is important to give yourself a tight schedule when entering known tourist sections as one can easily end up spending more time than needed. I would suggest drawing up short contracts for all to sign, which clearly limit the amount of time allotted for searching for thimbles (we did this a lot), or any other unnecessary souvenir.

The fruit market in Tigre is another example: it offers some great local crafts, but pier after pier of wicker can start getting prickly (get it?). I would highly recommend Tigre as a place to visit. It is beautiful, but wicker is stupid.

3. Plaza de Mayo (during a protest)

Protest in Playa de Mayo (Photo: Patricio Murphy)

This historic square is a must-see when you are in Buenos Aires. Since being the scene of the 25th May 1810 revolution that led to Argentina’s independence. It is the seat of countless historical events over the life and times of the city.

You really can’t come to Buenos Aires and miss the chance to soak up the square. Unfortunately, though, I brought my parents here just in time for the heat of Hugo Moyano’s CGT demonstration, which brought thousands of angry unionists together to get rowdy and do some shouting.

A tourist hot-spot with an aura of ‘protest’, that has bubbled over into violence in the past, a major social demonstration can become rowdy and uncomfortable for unaccustomed sightseers.

Be sure to check the news before leading your parents into a possible riot, if not to avoid, then at least to give yourself time to make a fun sign and think of clever chants.

On the plus side, protests do draw in the best street vendors!

4. Adult Shows

Restaurant Te Mataré Ramirez (courtesy of Te Mataré Ramirez)

Buenos Aires can be a bit more sexually liberal than other places, especially straight-laced North America. Even television and advertising seems more explicit.

The nightlife in general is pretty liberal in this respect. There are plenty of clubs, restaurants, bars, etc, that cater to the ‘erotic’ tourist, not to mention that the city is often labelled as the ‘gay mecca’ of Latin America.

In short, there are plenty of opportunities to create painfully uncomfortable situations if you are travelling with relatives in tote.

Conveniently located in Palermo, Te Mataré Ramirez is an excellent example of a place you probably don’t want to take your parents. The restaurant markets itself as an aphrodisiac dining experience; Kama Sutra themed décor and nightly erotic shows top the menu here.

A friend of mine shared a lesbian tango show and a male strip tease with her parents – just a couple of examples of what you could enjoy with your meal here.

Speaking for myself here, but associating my parents with anything, remotely sexual is a special kind of awful. That said, if you feel like enjoying some erotic performances with mum and dad, here you can do so- and eat too!

5. Bosques de Palermo (at night)

Bosques de Palermo at night (Photo: Daniel Vercelli)

Like Plaza de Mayo, the bosques are a must-see in BA. Some 400 hectares of beautiful park replete with groves, lakes, and rose gardens. You can take a stroll, rent a bike, rent a boat, bring some mate and just have a sit down – have fun!

After dark, however, the lungs of the city turn into a red-light district specialising in transsexuals.

By all means check out the bosques, just don’t hang around too late, unless of course you’re seeking that sort of entertainment (even then, hopefully not as part of a family outing).

While it was still daylight when my parents and I strolled through the Bosques, we managed to find some trouble here as well. Pausing to look at the map we fell for the ol’ spray-you-with-fake-bird-poo-steal-your-wallet trick. Fortunately, before we had time to hand-over our passports and socks, an unknown gentleman came to the rescue. This is apparently a common trick, so heads up!

In the end we all had a great time, and maybe even had a more authentic experience than most through our aimless wandering. In that sense, this week’s top five could be taken either way.

Have you had an interesting experience with visiting relatives in Buenos Aires? Tell us about it in the comments below!

Mayor Mauricio Macri sharply criticised the national government for its handling of a 12-hour protest yesterday at the Illia Highway and Rafael Castillo avenue in Villa 31, about 150 metres from the port of Buenos Aires.

Traffic swelled yesterday as protesters, demonstrating for the second time this week, pressed their demand for two buses to transport children to a school in Belgrano.

Mayor Macri charged that the Federal Police sent to monitor the protests failed to enforce the law and allowed the chaos to disrupt the city. Referencing a Soda Stereo song, Macri called the area a “City of Fury” and questioned the government’s motives in permitting a protest to continue for that duration.

“There is no claim to justify 20, let alone 200 people preventing other citizens, in this case thousands, from attending work,” Macri said.

Officials from the national government have countered that the missing buses are evidence the mayor does not take care of the city’s problems.

Buenos Aires Minister of Finance Néstor Grindetti addressed the status of the buses, stating that the issue was to be resolved later in the day with the arrival of new Security Minister Sergio Berni.

Recent decades in the City of Buenos Aires don’t make for a happy story. In this time, we have witnessed the consolidation of various dynamics that have fragmented space and dissolved policies. As such, our great Latin American city has grown in a chaotic way, with little regard for urban planning, environmental contamination, or the increase of urban insecurity.

Villa 31 (foreground) is by Buenos Aires' most exclusive neighbourhoods (photo/Nancy Kulfas-Perri)

Buenos Aires is, increasingly, a divided city: an ensemble of “urban islands” separated by architectural barriers of delimitation, which are ever more pronounced. To these physical barriers are added more and more social, economic and cultural dividers.

Sitting between one of the richest zones in the city and the port, Villa 31 is one of these “islands” surrounded by visible and invisible walls. Neither the postal system nor public transport enter the villa. Ambulances cannot circulate the narrow corners, and there are entire zones without a police presence.

Today, however, the villa is going through a historical moment that could pave the way for a different future. Today, the inhabitants are convinced that the walls are falling down and the barrio (neighbourhood) will be definitively integrated into the formal city.

The recent developments in villa 31 mark a sea-change in local politics. It aspires to be an example, which turns the marginalisation process on its head by incorporating large sectors of social society in the transformation of the space.

From Eradication to Urbanisation

Villa 31 was born in the 1940s after a group of Italian workers, fleeing the Second World War, settled there. In the years since, the area became a home for migrants arriving from around Argentina and, more recently, from bordering countries. Currently, it is one of the biggest shantytowns in the city of Buenos Aires, with around 30,000 inhabitants.

A child in Villa 31, home to an estimated 30,000 (photo/buen-rumbo)

The long history explains the existence of third and even fouth-generation families now living in the neighbourhood. Through them, the memories of resistance live on. Villa 31 was seen by previous city administrators as a space that had been usurped and would be converted back when the State recuperated their land. Attempts to evict the shantytown were frequent. In the best cases, subsidies were offered for evacuation of the land; in the worst, bulldozers were called in to demolish anything in their path.

However, the 21st century has brought new continental winds which have changed the shape of the city: the times of loss and of resistance have been given different meaning. At the end of 2009, the Buenos Aires city legislature unanimously approved Ley 3343 which ordered the urbanization of Villa 31.

This law aims to give official recognition to an underground process initially protagonised by academic groups from FADU-UBA (Faculty of Architecture, Design and Urbanism – University of Buenos Aires). In short, the law buries the policy of the eradicating the shantytown with the methods traditionally used, and opens the door for its residents to be formally incorporated into the city.

The Urbanising Process

The focus of the urbanising process is novel in Argentina, as it proposes capitalizing on the popular investment that has already been made in the space which surrounds the houses. That is to say, it does not propose tearing down the villa to urbanise ex-novo, but advocates a strong investment in public areas accompanied by support and improvement of the existing constructions.

Inside Villa 31 (photo/Eric)

But this policy, modelled on the urbanisation experiences of favelas of Rio de Janeiro, is even more innovative in the manner in which it is unfolding. Under ‘Ley 3343’, the responsibility for defining the details of the urbanisation project is assigned to the “Table for Multidisciplinary and Participatory Management and Planning for the Urbanizing of Villa 31”.
 
Strictly, this “Table” must define, among other things, the final urbanisation planning, the mechanisms for the dominial regulation of the real estate and the criteria for opening the public highway and infrastructure with the aim of reaching total integration into the urban plot of the neighbourhood and its surroundings.
 
The “Table”, presided by the deputy Rocío Sánchez Andía (Coalición Cívica), is formed of members of the legislature, of the Buenos Aires executive, of the national (National Commission of Lands, Secretary of Transport and others) and the technical team from FADU-UBA which proposed the preliminary plan of urbanization.
 
The true protagonists, however, are the members of the community who encircle the “Table”. Their meetings, in the building of the city legislature, are overflowing with the neighbours of Villa 31 who participated in all of the commissions: study analysis, regulations, financing, accessibility and transport, authority, habitat, public space and management.

Villa Participation

Although the participation of Villa 31 residents has been constant during all of the process, their role in the “Mesa” has never been formalised. Under the existing scheme, the representative for the residents is designated by a City Judge until clean and transparent elections are undertaken to designate legitimate authorities in the villa. Finally, after many delays, those elections took place the 28th November with a level of participation at around 40% of the electoral register—the highest in the history of villa elections.

As a result, the residents of Villa 31 elected 114 delegates, 59 women and 55 men, which will represent each block of the neighbourhood. These elected delegates will now be responsible for the information that flows in the barrio to attract the neighbours that are still not mobilized by the process. But, they will also be in charge of electing the 11 people who will sit at the “Table of Management and Planning” to negotiate, as equals, everything related to the process of urbanization in their barrio with the politicians.

Setting an Example

Elections took place in Villa 31 on 28th November (photo/Beatrice Murch)

The changes going on in Villa 31 today could set a precedent for the urbanisation of other villas of Buenos Aires. The case demonstrates that democratising the management of their transformation allows the institutions involves make more participatory decisions, chosen in light of stipulated criteria.

Thanks to a series of extraordinary circumstances that Argentina, and all of South America, is experiencing, the poor, who live on the most expensive land in the city of Buenos Aires, no longer have to fear eviction. Nor do they feel that they will forever live with their backs to a city that builds ‘walls’ around them.

These poor, for so many years seen as squatters, will be owners. They will be able to transfer their houses, a tangible asset with a market value, to their children. These poor have given shape to a unique system of representation in the country. These poor, for so many years exploited by political manoeuvring, will now be seen at the working tables which address subjects that will improve their own surroundings.

Lead image: La Villa 31 by Raphael V.