escapando de la villa y visita

bue primeras dos semanas y no llegue con mi objetivo, quizas deba cambiarlo para no fracasar tan rapido. quizas deba dejar de tener insomnio por preocupaciones economicas respecto al a;o que viene, quizas deba dejar de enfurecerme con la institucion q me deja sin alternativas en un momento de particular vulnerabilidad. aca va lo que si escribi y que son mas unas 500 palabras por dia de trabajo. aun desordenadas, descriptivas, sin clara linea argumental aun. pero bue ahi va. escapando de la villa al barrio

1. Discourse
One of the first things that I heard about the Toba neighborhood from the older people living in it was how important was its constitution as a way to “get out” of the different villas (shanty towns) they were living in. This view was also shared by the people working in two NGO's who have helped them put together the project to receive the land donations and to generate a housing project, and different anthropologists who have been in touch with them during that period. Regardless the different moments of arrival to the city from the Chaco, the people that now constitute the barrio have lived and moved around several of the biggest shanty towns in Buenos Aires. Some of those shanty towns are very well-known through the press as being “holes of criminality”. Describe them as centres of illegal drug distribution, the residence of robbers and kidnapers that have generated a supposedly wave of insecurity, thus regarded as the responsible for one of the most compelling issues of concern of Buenos Aires Citizens (Quote TN, Macri’s campaign). Echoing the media discourses the common narrative among the “heads” of the families of the barrio is that life in the villas was getting unbearable: violence was escalating as a result of confrontation between gangs and with them and the police, drug dealing started to be a more common activity, and in the last years a lot of new people had arrived turning relations between neighbors into relations of strangers. Some people explained they had gotten robbed “even inside the villa” as a reference of the transgression of the basic respect of not stealing to fellow poor neighbors (a shift that Alarcon refers to in his journalistic research, 20xx).

Villas In all these descriptions a sharp contrast between the life in the villas and in the Chaco was stressed. The Chaco is presented as a place with no violence, where drug dealing and consumption is unknown, neighbors share food and tools and cooperate with each other. The adults in the neighbourhood (people in between 45 and 65) explain that they felt a total estrangement in the villas when they arrived to the city they and had no other place to go but to where most working class rural migrants settle.

Quote interview CL

The villas or barrio de emergencia, are scattered around different vacant areas near the city centre (such as railway lots) but mostly around the different concentric “rings” that surround Buenos Aires city constituting the conurbano or metropolitan Buenos Aires, a jurisdiction different from the city of Buenos Aires. People explain that they had no other networks in the city than with people living in villas, or when they did, it was in the villas where they were able to get a place to be. Coming from rural villages, marginal neighbourhoods in Chaco towns and cities, most people explain that they were unfamiliar with the dynamics of the villa, they felt observed, did not want to join collective events, were afraid of being caught in the middle of a dispute between youth banditas (gangs). Their estrangement got to the point that they were staying inside their homes most of the time in fear to being outside, they did not allow their children to play in public space, they run their way in and out of the neighbourhood to work, and could not receive visits because they were afraid of going there.

Quote Interview AM

Context of migration and arrival to villas. This, they explained, was in total opposition to how they use space in the Chaco, where most of the day is spent outside, meals take place around the outside kitchen, children come and go with ease being taken care by multiple women at the same time, and where visits are received in the galleries outside of the houses. Synthesizing this one man in his forties explained after a visit to the Chaco that he missed “the liberty to be outside, walk wherever you want, go hunting to any field”. The contrast was established in particular among the people who had arrived in the late 1980s and the 1990s to the city, a moment of deep economical crisis followed by the instauration of strict neoliberal reform. This reform that generated unemployment in the rural areas and in a broad sense can be identified as a cause for migration, also implied a drastic turn in the life in the city. State welfare programs and services were drastically reduced, the markets opened to foreign commodities and investment that generated national industry’s collapse and massive layovers of workers, state indebt and dependence from foreign loans that established the terms of those loans. The Tobas had experienced some of this process in the Chaco with the reduction of employment resulting from the crisis in the agro-industries and the mechanization of some of the processes they have been hired to cover decades before.

The first men coming for periods to Buenos Aires between the 50 and 70 had experienced the city in a different way. For them the city was a site of enhanced possibilities of accessing to a paid work, and to obtain better salaries than what they get in the Chaco. For these men, as for most migrant men the shanty towns were still potentially transitory places, however the context of the late 1980ies and the 1990ies the villas were places where people barely subsisted under the level of poverty and in some cases in state of indigence. For people arriving in the 1980 it was clear that people there no longer had the expectation of being able to get out of the villas.

The combination of successive crisis and unemployment, the retraction of state services, the exaltation of consumerism embraced by the middle classes, the arrival of illegal drug dealers are marked as elements introducing major shifts in the villas’ life. Unlike what their parents had experienced, for young men living in the villas in the 1990s the option of finishing secondary in a public school, finding a job in a factory or construction industry, saving money to have an independent home, stopped being a clear possibility. They did however share the desire for commodities, and the exposure to the search for immediate and intense forms of pleasure. This desires motorized by by the so called “the big 1990 party”, referring to the excess of commodity consumption, of political corruption, of easy money making to some groups, paired up with the experience of the impossibility to access education, health, the deferral of a accessing a salary, appear as the main reasons to explain why young men belonging to the former working classes got into robbery and into drug trafficking ( alarcon, “pibes chorros” svampa?) The involvement of young men in these activities conversely is what is presented as responsible for the start of a new era in the villas. An era in which the former widely accepted solidarity among the workers and poor was no longer sustained.

The Tobas however claim they have always kept themselves distant from those dynamics. They have been equally affected by economic crisis and social exclusion but in the narratives they present those changes as something exterior to them. In the narratives of people living for a longer time in the city they explained how the villas were very rapidly filled with people from other countries that were robbers, gangs known to have deals with the police, that generated situation in which they were caught in the middle with a reduced agency. All these events were presented as clear demonstrations for the need to leave the shanty town. Unlike other groups identifying with the shanty town in different moments of their history and all the social movements that have tried to transform the conditions of the villas and the life of the people in them, the Tobas now living in the neighborhood planned their way out.

Even when in longer accounts these experiences of feeling aliens to the villas were made relative, that the people they present as aliens and threats were in some cases good friends too, and when I found that not all the generations of each family had the same relation to the villas, the estrangement was a structuring narrative about the villas. In addition this estrangement is what explained the very existence of the barrio: as indigenous people they were not meant to be there, they had a different culture, they needed to be on their own in a calmer place. The NGO’s, schools, and anthropologists claimed the same, a suburban shanty town becoming violent could be a place for other people but was not a place for them one of the indigenous groups that have kept their authonomy form the Argentinean state for a longer time, who speak their language and thus are regarded as some of the most authentic unpolluted groups in the country. The indigenous are different: they had to be aided in finding a way out of the shanty town.

The barrio is therefore presented as a place of a necessary restoration of an order, in which in the Tobas distance themselves from other urban marginal groups, and in which the place they occupy is to be defined as a distinct place of aboriginality. In the words of one of the residents of the neighbourhood, a man in his forties, during a talk at a school, getting the lands of the neighbourhood was somehow like "going back to the chaco”, they now had big lots of lands with a garden and green fields around, they could see the sky and let the kids play outside. To this I would add that they also went back to living in delimited "Toba" locations and with a strong presence of the church, as the land donors and their immediate neighbours is a religious school (this is not to say that there is a relation of dependency, but that for many decades aboriginality in the Chaco is strongly intertwined with catholic and evangelic churches).

Barrio vs shantytown When I went to the neighbourhood the difference between villa and barrio were not absolutely evident in a first glance. I appreciated the main differences, in the barrio they have much bigger lots with space for a garden, they had brick houses, there was a smaller population density and the area was not as highly associated with criminality. However the young couples still had to take build themselves houses in plots they take, and they build these houses in a precarious way in the same way as shanty town houses are built. In addition in the dominant images the whole conurbano is a space of a general insecurity, housing of pauperized working class, (except of course for the north zone by the river and the spots of privilege represented by the gated neighbourhoods).

The first day I went to the neighbourhood the difference between barrio and villa was not so clear to me. I had received detailed instructions on how to avoid some dangers, go in the early morning, take the train in Retiro, do not walk from the train station but rather take a bus that would leave me in the barrio. I was in the middle of taking mates with the family that was my first contact that a kid clapped its hands outside, the younger of the men I was talking to went outside and asked the kid what was the matter, the kid replied they were collecting money to pay for the coffin of a neighbor that had killedhimself in the middle of an drug overdose. They explained everyone knew the man was very into drugs, he was unemployed and had a big family and robbed every now and then to get money just for the drugs. The barrio then was not an absolutely different space from the shanty towns. It was not exempted from the characteristics alluded as the reasons for moving away from the villas. Especially among Toba youth it could not be said that women and men were having better opportunities to find a job accessing education and saving for an independent house. If the improvement could be mostly measured in regards to owning plots and brick houses, why was such a huge distinction being made between one space and the other? In the initial months of my work and as I collected histories about the constitution of the barrio it was not clear for me how such a big qualitative difference could be established, except for the fact that the neighbourhood became a distinctively an indigenous place.

It is exactly because the neighbourhood is not only a "place" but mostly the result of successive flights form other places and situations that it is not enough to analyze of the narratives of how the neighbourhood contrasts with the shanty towns, how shanty towns contrast with the Chaco, how the neighbourhood is somehow like the Chaco. In this sense place making can be analyzed through semantic analysis to reach how places are experienced by people. However I find this is not enough. If place is a result of bodies moving in space and establishing new connections, of embodied rejection to become a villero (Agamben's muslim?), of the desire of being close to the big city of Buenos Aires, I found it was relevant to focus on the moving trajectories of those bodies. I did this by , tracing these movements in the narratives of people of the barrio and by joining some of their movements opening up space (Massey 2005). When people I talked to mentioned that coming to the neighbourhood was a relive as it implied moving out of the villas they were not just contrasting two places. They were also talking about the efforts they had to do to find a new place, the resources and relations mobilized and the fact they have succeeded to get away from a place that motorized relations they were not interested in pursuing but mostly to be placed in that location generated a series of stigmatizations they were not willing to carry. One question to pose is why they were not willing to renounce to be identified as indigenous while they did not accept to be regarded as villeros, ie pauperized working class, marginal, lacking of education and refined manners, even criminals. Unlike other ethnically marked urban enclaves, the creation of the neighbourhood then is not only the recreation of communal ties existing in place they migrated from, nor is it only the unplanned grouping resulting of chain migration, but rather is the result of a collective plan of escape, in which indigenous identity joins a groups of people from different Cahco areas, and is used to distance from the villas and the villeros. Thus to understand history of the neighbourhood it was not enough to compare country and city, Chaco and Buenos Aires, but to learn some more about the villas they were coming form and where many families have lived for more than ten years.

2. Visit

I worked with Z since the beging of my fieldwork. Being over seventy he is one of the older people, one of the first to come to Buenos Aires during the military service. Z is father of eleven sons and daughters, most of them adults with their own children living now in independent houses in the neighborhood. Because of his own children and as he helped other relatives to come he has generated one the biggest of the extended families networks in the barrio. In addition Z is experienced in working with anthropologists and linguists, and quite critical of them too. Z is sociable and fun, his daughters and adult granddaughters are particularly sociable and active. As Z got easily upset if i did not visited him when i was in the barrio, stopping at his place was thus always the first or last stop on my visit to the barrio.

After some of these visits I asked Z to make his life history. In it he told me about his childhood in the Chaco, his coming of age hunting with a distant uncle and cousins. He marked his pass through military service as a turning point that brought him to Buenos Aires, where he learnt and was able to do construction work on the weekends. He later went back to Chaco but returned several times to work for periods and svae some money and then come back to the Chaco, and finally his decision to move with his whole family to the city and the movements until they settled in one of the major villas in Ciudadela where they lived for fifteen years (check) and finally their moving to the barrio. It was at this point and after we have met for several times that we started talking about how the life of one of his daughters was as she, along with other of the older children, had stayed in Ciudadela when the rest of the family moved to the barrio. As we talked about this the idea of visiting her came about.

We met a Sunday morning at the train station, the station is one that sits on the limit between the city of Buenos Aires city and the suburbs named as conurbano. It is the line that runs from the capital city over the river at the east to the “big” Buenos Aires to the west. This is an area known for being inhabited by a lower middle class and a lower class this train carries the stigma of taking you to dangerous areas even when it is a succession of residential areas. Z was wearing a red beret, that was a personal item identifying him and that he wore for special events and visits, a black leather jacket and jeans and sneakers, all in perfect conditions, of a drastic cleanness and ironing. He conducted me to a bus stop under the highways that marks the limit of capital and the suburbs. We took a regular bus that zig zaged through the streets of the first suburb for less than half an hour until we got off in a corner of another street of a neighbourhood with flat and small houses. We walked east from where the bus have left us and as we did so he explained that that bus used to cross through the middle of the monoblocks the buildings that constitute the centre of the so called Fuerte. We arrived at a street that had a coffeshop at one corner and a closed grocery in the other, on the other side of the street there was an open space and a street getting pass through it. In the open space I could see the multiple carts of a Sunday fair Z has talked to me about. After the and contrasting the grey sky I could see the monoblocks, the multiple unit buildings of the housing project built during the third presidency of Peron (check). There was a typical Sunday morning movement in the area.

On one corner and under a tree there was a group of men in suits and women in long skirts, I identified as a group of the church ready to a Sunday service or to visit neighbors for bible readings. On the other corner there was a pretty different group that disrupted with the relaxed pase of a Sunday but reminded me that I was entering the supposedly most dangerous location in the country. A four wheel truck of gendarmeria nacional was parked in the entrance to the Fuerte. Beside the truck four men dressed in green battle uniforms, all of them taking long caliber guns and watching over the movements of the people passing by. We passed by them and made our way into the fair, we passed through it and arrived to a very well built soccer court, with synthetic grass, a tidy fence and professional looking goal fences.

Poner primera

Después de pensar sobre las incomodidades renovadas del mundo ordenado, de renovar un deseo por nunca asimilarme a esa subjetividad hermética y buena administradora, incluso entre gente más crítica, pero notando que acá estamos con el beneficio de la burbuja, la distancia de la urgencia, y tiempo para escribir, acá pongo primera e intento soltar el embrague con delicadeza y apretar el acelerador suavemente (eso q los conductores de caja automatica ignoran de manera irritante). La banda de sonido de esta etapa es calle 13, me ayuda a concentrarme y a seguir pero ante todo me concta con los suburbios globalizados, iguales pero diferentes.

No sé si tendría que haber estado al menos dos meses leyendo y releyendo entrevistas, catalogando notas y ordenando documentos, todo eso que suponía que iba a hacer también durante el trabajo de campo y solo hice a medias por que la velocidad de hacer cosas le gano al orden y el "análisis de datos". La estrategia entonces es empezar a escribir según ejes viejos, otros que fueron apareciendo y temas circulares que fui pensando durante el campo y sobre los que nunca llegue a escribir. Empiezo por escribir entonces y después iré armando las etiquetas para clasificar temas en las entrevistas y notas y documentos a partir de lo que surge de lo que quedo de la experiencia y de la escritura. Creo que las tesis anteriores la escribí finalmente así, después de perder varios meses ordenando y releyendo sin que eso sirviera mucho. La táctica es la siguiente, tres entradas de blog por semana, de 1500 palabras cada uno, durante 5 meses debería dar un borrador de unas 280 páginas, mas introducción y conclusión, eso más o menos puede llegar a ser una tesis. Claro ni que hablar de las miles de reescrituras que hare que van a ser mas de el doble de tiempo. Bue como sea. Ejercicio de escribir 4500 palabras por semana menos vomitadas que de costumbre, más que un intento por demostrar cuan brillante es uno. Como dice Mate trabajo y no inteligencia es lo que hace al académico valorable. A ver si llego y que pasa. Claro que nunca seré Arlt pero acá va la intensión de seguirlo, si tengo que ser un escritor que sea de trabajo y reconociendo limitaciones y no un refinado culto al ego.

El futuro es nuestro, por prepotencia de trabajo. Crearemos nuestra literatura, no conversando continuamente de literatura, sino escribiendo en orgullosa soledad libros que encierran la violencia de un "cross" a la mandíbula. Sí, un libro tras otro, y "que los eunucos bufen". El porvenir es triunfalmente nuestro.

Y sigo usando el blog como forma mas inmediata de comunicación, menos pretenciosa y con menos indefinición que sentir que trabajo en un gran libro. Obvio el riesgo de que todo salga con menos pulido, que sea semi-público y seré cuidadosa en hablar sobre los otros. Me toca hacer el cambio al inglés que esta medio oxidado. Ufff pocas ganas de inglés a ver cómo va.

En el norte otra vez

Bueno empiezo. Otra vez en el norte que es desde donde al pareceer la escritura en blog me surge mas. Ya pensé mentalmente varios comentarios un poco catarticos que podria incluir en este espacio virtual al que caen aleatoriamente algunos amigxs cada tanto y gente q encuentra algun resumen hecho para los comps. Pense en hacer una entrada sobre la "personal responsability" frase que me retumbo en las orejas desde que estaba en transito en tierra norteamericana, tratando de pedir ayuda para acarrear mi equipaje pesado de libros en castellano, para llegar a combinar con un avion en la otra punta del aeropuerto; y frase que me resono de nuevo mientras recorri durante dos semanas oficinas varias en la universidad para ver que opciones hay para que los estudiantes graduados puedan adaptar el periodo post parto sin tener que retirarme en una licencia y quedar asi por fuera de las limitadas opciones de financiamiento que ya de por si se ofrecen. Bue no se si es por venir de una familia en que las mujeres madres siempre fueron mitad del sosten familiar (y por momentos unicas sostenes), pero que me propongan que me retire de todo trabajo de enero a septiembre para q me mantenga mi familia o marido me parece excesivo, poco respetuoso a mis otras cualidades, de una irresponsabilidad social de lo q significa la reproduccion importante. En fin asi como las 8 horas de trabajo ya no corren para nadie, al parecer tampoco se puede siquiera discutir (en este marco claro, por q para los trabajadores en blanco es todo mucho mas coherente unas de las dimensiones del estado de bienestar que aun existe aca en canada) que mis empleadores me sustenten durante el perido de mayor demanada de la maternidad y me dejen reincorporarme con ayuda unos 2 meses despues (tambien las guarderias estan en crisis en la provincia y en la universidad hay mas de un año de espera) como hiciera mi madre, abuela y hermana. En fin todo esto por estar en un regimen que no es claramente laboral (ser estudiante como receptores de un "servicio" pero tambien como empleados de la institucion) y en una epoca en la que el trabajo tuvo que ceder aun mas al capital, en terminos sinteticos de un marxismo basico.

En esto no logro entender como la gente en algun occidente moderno cree realmente en la ficcion de la "responsabilidad personal" como ley rectora de las venturas y desventuras que se nos presentan, como los mecanismos que nos encauzan y nos dan solo un campo posible de accion, quedan tan invisibles e impunes. Claro que todavia podemos agarrar la silla y pararnos encima y saltar en vez de sentarnos, pero sea como sea sigo sin creer en la agencia individual como nada que nos salve. Justamente nos unde mas cuando se presenta a la responsabilidad individual como la unica opsion politica y de cambio. De todo esta experiencia rescato claro las relaciones con personas que se preocupan en serio, y que piensan conmigo opsiones para sacar algo mas digno de lo q hay disponible. Por algun motivo la conversacion con un horizonte mas comun fue en el gremio, con alguien q al menos compartia un lenguaje de "derechos" como algo que no equivale a las normas escritas y algo q al menos hay q tratar de arrancarle al estado, como diria Rosa Luxemburgo hace mas de un siglo.

Creo que a esto se sumo que mis peregrinaciones de una oficina a otra en las semanas anteriores al inicio de clases estaban interrumpidas por nuevas normas de circulacion por el campus que mas q nunca obstruyen los atajos que siempre tome, redireccionan el flujo mas aleatorio y hacen dificil acceder a los lugares predilectos del campus. Ademas de la construccion permanente, al parecer los caminos se restringieron y señalizaron para las olimpiadas. Vi con terror tambien como el area predilecta de trabajo en la biblioteca, que tenía una serie de mesas con rueditas y sillones mobibles tambien, fue restringida por boxes individuales con paneles que no dejan ver el trabajo del vecino, sillas rigidas y fijas. Asi paso tambien con el ultimo piso de koerner, con silloncitos y ventanas del techo al piso, donde pasabamos tardes laburando mientras varios undergrad dormian largas siestas extendidos en los sillones al lado, y de golpe al siguiente septiembre los sillocitos y mesitas habian desaparecido. En fin el arte de la relacion entre hombre y objetos no es algo desconocido para algun tecnico que esta planenando maximizar el uso del espacio de esta universidad publica. Y todo esto lo escribo desde el boonker que es la nueva oficina de estudiantes, desplazados por 4 vez cada vez a lugares mas chicos, mas abajo y mas oscuros (ahora sin ventanas, sin senyal de celular, internet pendular). Pero en fin mas alla de esto sigue siendo un lugar no tan malo desde donde mirar todo esto, hay muchos mucho peores. Y aca estamos contentos con las potencialidades del lugar, los encuentros con gente querida e interesante y el espacio burbujesco que tienen la ventaja de dar tiempo y lugar para pensar.

Bue este es el punto de partida, en esto estoy despues del trabajo de campo, que podria haber seguido y seguido por que no fue nada muy distinto a la vida pero si estuvo guiado por algunos objetivos. En toda esta vuelta calculo que algo que se juega es reeditar la subalternidad resbaladiza que se hace visible en la incomodidad en este mundo ordenando. Si bien no podemos ser el ejemplo de la insurgecia subalterna, si me paece que el llamado de spivak por buscar dialogar con el subalterno pero mas que nada con el subalterno en uno es parte del llamado desesperdo del norte, en los que tomar el sendero demarcado por los carteles del campus se vuelve habito sin salida aparente, es un problema del norte mas que del sur en donde la "clase media" o ser universitario casi que no son resguardo de nada. Todos los estudios de los otros, los activismos centrados en la solidaridad con regiones remotas donde se supone que la democracia no existe, el hambre es cotidiano, los techos se derrumban, a todos los veo como intentos desesperados de escaparse de los rankins de performance, de las carreras constantes por llegar a un lugar de respeto, de los pedidos de entrar a la biblioteca por una sola puerta, por recordarte que es tu responsabilidad aplicar antes de la fecha limite y que seras recompensado con mejoras si realmente te lo mereces.

De aca parto para pensar sobre el sur desde el norte y para pensar sobre el chaco siendo una porteña de palermo. Desde el privilegio de comer y dormir caliente pero reconociendo que este privilegio no tiene nada que ver con lo que nos hace felices en los sentidos de spinoza, aunque es muy feo realmente pasar hambre y que te llueva de noche arriba de la cama como a A. una de las chicas con las que charle mucho durante el trabajo de campo, claro. Escribo tambien desde la incomodidad de quedar restringida a moverme entre palermo y barrio norte, y desde otros intentos desesperados por evitar el tedio de ese supuesto privilegio. Si algo de esto pasa a la tesis como reconocimeinto del "posicionamiento" del investigador, que es ese conjuro para no tener culpas en "reproducir relaciones de poder con los sujetos de la investigacion", que sea solamente como reflexion politica. Tampoco que sea algo asi como un reconocimiento de clase, en el que las culpas se laven, culpas que llevan a los militantes a formas de trabajo extremo, de abnegacion por el otro en fromas cercanas a la penitencia cristiana, a trabajar mas alla de lo que hace bien, pero que muchas veces refuerzan al otro como subalternos sobre el que uno trabaja mas que alguien con quien uno trabaja. Mas bien que vaya como un intento de reflexion de la posicion actual, de como me encuentro con el barrio, pensar cuales son los planes que tratan de encauzar los recorridos de los grupos en el barrio y cuales son las formas de escape que encontraron algunas personas con las que trabaje. Pensar que cosas en comun tenemos mas alla de las multiplicidades en el plural.

Bue va con una foto tipica del antropologo en el campo, pero q me lleva a uno de los mejores dias del trabajo, aunque un poco accidentado tambien.