[News] Argentina: Locals and indigenous groups combat big real estate
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Wed Apr 14 20:19:58 EDT 2010
Preserving Culture, Protecting the Environment:
Locals and indigenous groups combat big real estate in Greater Buenos Aires
Written by Francesca Fiorentini
Wednesday, 14 April 2010 09:40
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/2445-preserving-culture-protecting-the-environment-locals-and-indigenous-groups-combat-big-real-estate-in-greater-buenos-aires-
El pobre tiene que volar. Ya no hay más campo.
Todo country, todo country. [The poor man has to
disappear. There is no more countryside. Its all
private neighborhoods. All private neighborhoods.]
These are the words of Sara Espinosa, age 94, who
lives in Punta Canal in the town of Tigre, just a
meters away from the waters of Canal Villanueva.
Though she has lived here for more than half a
century, in the past few years Espinosa has found
herself increasingly isolated from the world
beyond her home thanks to fences and a wall of
mud built around it by real estate giant EIDICO.
The company has purchased the area and is
currently constructing two gated communities on
either side. While most of her neighbors have
sold their land and moved away, Espinosa remains,
perhaps unaware of the profit to be made off the
land where her humble home stands.
She is talking to Graciela Satalic of the
Movement for the Pacha or Mother Earth, the
organization of neighbors and indigenous people
that has been fighting for four years for the
preservation of Punta Canal. Satalic later tells
me that the EIDICO has isolated the elderly
Espinosa to the point where she cant even get
out. When I ask her what the company expects the
old woman to do she tells me plainly, They are waiting for her to die.
Nuevo Tigre
In Tigre, located in the province of Buenos Aires
about an hour up the river from the bustling
city, the ground begins to break off into a
series of islands separated by canals and
streams, giving way to an abundance of marshlands
rich in vegetation and wildlife. Dotting the tall
grasses of the wetlands are many poor and
working-class communities that use the canals for
fishing, recreation, and transportation. One of
those communities is that of Punta Canal that
runs along Canal Villanueva between the unpaved
Brazil street and the Garín stream. The area has
long been used by locals and considered public as
it holds a portion of an old railway line also
known as Punta Canal that belongs to the state.
When I came to this place that were defending
now, it was a paradise. A marshland with a lot of
native vegetation; fauna with birds, water
animals, otters, partridges, says Satalic who
lives in Intendente Maschwitz, the next town
over. But in the past ten years a new species has
become the most dominant in the Delta: the
private neighborhood, which has increasingly
encroached on the marshlands, displacing
residents and endangering the ecosystem.
Today upon arriving at Punta Canal, one is
greeted with a handful of tents, a van that holds
up a tarp covering a table and chairs, and two
indigenous rainbow flags that make up the
encampment of Movement for the Pacha. However it
is what lies directly in front of the encampment,
across the still waterway that is the real sight:
raised embankments covered with palm trees,
eucalyptus, and pristine lawns in front of large
modern homes. The scene looks ripped from a
trendy living magazine and plastered on top of
the marshland. It is Santa Catalina, the
exclusive nautical neighborhood that is part of
EIDICOs 850 hectare complex Villanueva made up
of nine other neighborhoods. These neighborhoods,
along with other urban mega-developments like
NorDelta (complete with private schools and
shopping centers) are part of what is becoming known as Nuevo Tigre.
Sandwiched between two of EIDICOs neighborhoods
under construction, San Benito and San Marcos,
the movement has been working to protect and
preserve two precious hectares of Punta Canal for
what many believe good reason.
Burial grounds and bulldozers
In 2001 after ten years of living away from the
place that she had grown up, Graciela Satalic
moved back to the area to find the entire
landscape of the marshlands changed due to new
developments. Still, she enjoyed taking walks
along the water by the old railway. During these
walks she began to discover what seemed like indigenous pieces of pottery.
I picked them up and some clearly had native
etchings on them. Then I found some arrowheads,
needles made of bone, things that were really hand-worked, she says.
She began collecting all that she could,
returning to the shore every day to look, and
eventually took them to the museum of Escobar
(the next district over) to be looked at by a
specialist. From there she was referred to Daniel
Loponte, an archeologist of the National
Institute of Latin American Anthropology and
Thought (INAPL -- an organization of the
Secretary of Culture) who is responsible for
sites in the Delta. In 2006 he finally came to
recognize the area as one that had supposedly
been previously discovered and then lost. Though
he didnt carry out a full excavation at the
time, Loponte identified the items Satalic had
found as being more than 1000 to 1500 years old,
belonging primarily to the Querandí people as
well as a variety of other indigenous groups such as the Guaraní.
Satalic along with residents of the area and
members of indigenous organizations began making
regular trips to Punta Canal (now dubbed Punta
Querandí), holding traditional prayer circles and
paying respects to what they consider a sacred
site. That is until 2007 when EIDICO began to lay
the groundwork for San Marcos just meters away,
and it became clear that Punta Querandí would be the next to go.
In December 2008, in an attempt to attend to the
concerns of residents and archeologists, EIDICO
hired Daniel Loponte to lead small dig on the
site that uncovered more than 10 thousand
different pieces, from instruments to tools to
pottery. Despite no bones having been discovered,
the movement claims that the site was also once a
burial ground as in many locations along the
Delta human remains have been found. In an
interview with Indymedia Argentina, archeologist
Loponte explains that all these sites have
burial grounds. Its rare they wouldnt have them.
By simply walking around the area one finds
pieces of pottery in plain sight and it is clear
that there is an abundance of artifacts. Member
Alberto Aguirre, a native Toba, shows me around
the now muddied and deforested area. He pauses
and asks painfully, How would they like it if we
went to a cemetery where they have their loved
ones buried and built our homes?
Members of Movement for the Pacha arent
satisfied with what they see as a dig of a few
square meters on a two-hectare site, claiming
that there are thousands more pieces to be uncovered.
EIDICO financed the excavation so that we would
stop coming here, says Satalic. But we keep fighting.
Encampment ensues
On February 18th of this year the situation
became elevated when EIDICO bulldozers entered
Punta Canal and began ripping up trees and
leveling the land. Satalic and another member of
the group happened to be nearby, went immediately
to the site and placed themselves in front of the
machines. Soon EIDICO lawyers and police came to threaten the two with arrest.
Fine, arrest me if you want, says Satalic
recounting the day. But the police didnt do
anything. So I said, fine, Im leaving, and the
next day we were here with tents and all.
Now over a month into their encampment, the
100-odd members of the Movement for the Pacha
take turns spending days and nights along the
waterway, fearing to leave the area alone for more than a few hours.
They are continually pressuring us by taking
different measures, says Julio Maiz, a native
Colla. They put a guard who asked to see our
identification and where we were going and
wouldnt let us enter, until one day we said,
Look this is public space and this is a street,
and you are going to have a lawsuit on your hands. They stopped bothering us.
The guard, stationed at the end of Brazil street,
marks the border what EIDICO hopes will become
part of their developments. Only problem is,
homes of locals like Sara Espinosa have been
trapped inside that border. Carlos Arrambide and
his familys home is another that has been
encircled. In 2008 Arrambide filed a lawsuit
against EIDICO, denouncing the illegality of the
sale of land on behalf of the state and managed
to get two precautionary measures against the
company not to further destroy the land. EIDICO however paid no mind.
A pricetag on nature
During the week the few members able to remain at
the encampment watch a dredger stationed in Canal
Villanueva pull mud up from the bottom of the
river into its tubes and fill in the lower areas
of the the site, readying the land for construction.
Member Liliana Leiva is a beekeeper from Tigre
who has been working against pollution in the
area with the Assembly of the Delta and Río de la
Plata. She explains the environmental damage of
dredging and filling, a staple method in the
construction of private neighborhoods.
The marshlands serve a very important function.
They are like the kidneys of nature, she says.
She explains that the vegetation and nutrients
from the marshes filter water that enters the
canals from upstream, water polluted by industry
and urban development. If you fill in the
marshland, they fail to carry out that function of cleaning the water.
Discussing the process of dredging, Leiva
explains that the dredgers take mud from the
riverbed that is made of saltwater, which when
disturbed creates a saltwater system inside one
of freshwater. They break the riverbed and break
the equilibrium, she says, and that ultimately
the beautiful indigenous vegetation will die.
In an area that must strive to combat annual
flooding, the creation of private neighborhoods
on raised ground drastically impacts those left
on low ground who will suffer floods much more than before, says Leiva.
Since the locals are ending up in a ditch
because they are raising the streets and the
lands, they are hoping that the next flood, the
people will grow tired and sell for 20 cents what
they [EIDICO] will resell for thousands of dollars.
Shady business
[]
"Don't Destroy the Delta!"
EIDICO, Emprendimientos Inmobiliarios De Interés
Común or Common Interest Real Estate
Undertakings has become known one of the largest
land developers in Argentina through its tactic
of selling ready lots to future residents in
advance of the neighborhoods construction that
then pays the costs of development. In 2007 the
company declared more than 41 projects throughout
Argentina worth more than 400 million dollars,
spanning from the northern province of Salta,
down to Ushuaia, and even in the exclusive beach
town of Punta del Este, Uruguay.
To turn a profit, land purchased by the company
must come cheap. Though EIDICO has never shown
deeds to the area, it has come up with a receipt.
The twenty hectares purchased -- of which
includes Punta Canal -- ran the company one
million pesos, five pesos per square meter or 1.3
US dollars. Current price per square meter in the
neighborhood of San Benito now under
construction? Forty four dollars per square
meter. Thats a staggering 3284 percent increase
in value on land that many say should never have been sold in the first place.
Disturbed by the potentially illegal sale of
state land in addition to the cultural and
environmental destruction, national and
provincial politicians have joined in the
struggle. In May 2009, the Chamber of
Representatives of the province of Buenos Aires
solicited reports from executive powers regarding
the sale of land and authorization of
construction. That November the Senate of the
province led by Daniel Expósito of the Coalición
Civica, declared an interest in protecting the
land, declaring that the State should not sell
the public land belonging to the Administration
of Railway Infrastructure and should work to
preserve the archeological sites of aboriginal peoples.
Early this March in a press conference held by
the Movement for the Pacha, national
congresswoman Silvia Vázquez talked about the
dramatic social impact of private neighborhoods
in the Delta and EIDICOs potentially illegal purchase of Punta Canal.
It is necessary to be conscious of this
violation because more than real estate value,
these fiscal lands have tremendous social value
and should be utilized to preserve the natural
and cultural goods, and also ensure the neighbors
right of passage and free access to the river, she said.
But perhaps the more troubling still are the
apparent crossovers that exist between the real
estate giant and local government. A member of
Opus Dei, the radically conservative sector of
the Catholic Church, EIDICO owner Jorge OReilly
has had an intimate relationship with the mayor
of Tigre, Sergio Massa. According to a January
2009 article in La Nacion by Gabriel Sued, the
two met in 2000 at a folklore festival in Tigre,
soon after which OReilly asked Massa to
intervene on behalf of EIDICO regarding delays in paperwork.
When Sergio Massa served a year as Cabinet
Secretary for President Cristina Kirchner from
2008 to 2009, he called on OReilly to be a
consultant. Additionally, EIDICOs former
director Pablo Dameno is now the current
sub-secretary of urban planning of Tigre, a
direct violation of the national Law of Ethics of
Public Duty that forbids former business
functionaries from serving on regulatory commissions of the same industry.
The fight is unequal because we are confronting
very powerful interests that have relationships
to those in political power, says Leiva. But we know we are right.
Road ahead
Though up against large moneyed interests, the
movement holds out hope of winning protection of the site.
We arent asking for all of what they bought.
They can delegate these two hectares that have
sufficient reasons for which to be preserved,
says Maiz. Rather than a private neighborhood, he
and the other members dream of a museum to
educate locals and visitors about indigenous of
the region and preserve indigenous culture.
We would try to recuperate and rescue that, and
construct an open museum. Many people say that in
Buenos Aires there werent indigenous peoples.
Thats what they made up, says Aguirre.
There is also concern for other archeological
sites nearby. No more than two kilometers from
Punta Canal lies Rancho Largo, a site registered
by the INAPL in December of 2008 though not yet
excavated. It too is owned by EIDICO and lots
have already been sold for the forthcoming
neighborhood San Rafael. Additionally in the
neighboring community of Villa La Ñata lies a
70-hectare stretch of land for sale, under which
are three excavated sites long recognized by the
INAPL as La Bellaca 1, 2, and 3. Many suspect
this will be EIDCOs next conquest.
We are trying to spread the word so that people
become conscious of this, because what we are
preserving is not only our history as people of
the area, but for the future of the generations
to come, says Levia. We cant leave them a
world in ruins for economic interests.
Francesca Fiorentini is a freelance journalist
based in Buenos Aires and an editor with Left
Turn magazine. She can be reached at
<mailto:francesca at leftturn.org>francesca at leftturn.org
This e-mail address is being protected from
spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
Freedom Archives
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