El fuerte - The Fort

(Good compilation of videos and basic information of the neighborhood here)


I stopped to watch the soccer court. A group of teenagers was playing a serious match; at least they looked concentrated and organized, with full teams on both sides. The younger kids and some girls watched as they stood beside the court. The sky was of a dark-grey, it announced a storm and made the synthetic green grass of the court glow with increased intensity. I wondered if the match would still go on during the time of the final game of 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup. "The court was a recent donation of Carlitos Tevez" Z explained to me. "that is where the old dust court where he started playing used to be, he lived over that building just over the court" "That is nice of him, has he ever came back ?" "Yes he does. All the time, we were expecting to get to the final and won the cup. In that case Tevez said he would pay for beer and burgers to everyone in the barrio who went to the burger cart on the corner. That is where he used to go for beers after his games. The owner ended up being a good friend of his. Now people went to see the Argentinean games over there." Tevez is the one celebrity of the Fuerte both a pride for the neighborhood and a figure that has made the neighborhood popular as he frequently talks about his origins in the interviews. From his humble origins playing in the dust court where the pressure of betting was part of the game and where he had to confront players carrying arms in the waist, he then started playing at one of the big clubs and turned into one of the best players in Argentina. He was sold to the Manchester United were he became internationally renounced. The people that have lived in the Fuerte where happy to talk to me about him and would tell me anecdotes with him when we were talking about the life in Fuerte. I also used it as a topic of conversation to decenter the negative connotations of the Fuerte and explore if they had positive aspects and experiences about it too. Unfortunately for the burger eaters, the Argentinean team under the command of Diego Maradona did not make it further than to the "octavos" and that day the final was between the Netherlands and Spain.


"That building over there the number four is where we used to live. We could watch the games from the balcony. That balcony is where my deceased wife spent most of the day, washing clothes and hanging them, and then sitting to take a few mates and keep an eye over our kids playing bellow. It was the part of our house where she felt most comfortable, as in the Chaco we spend most of our day outside and it was really hard for her to live in such a small and enclosed place." "Can I take a picture of you Z and the court and the building where you used to live behind?" "Sure" he said taking a step behind and posing for two seconds. But as I took my old automatic film camera, (a camera I had especially taken that camera thinking an old camera would not draw the attention over me as a journalist), he changed his mind. "Ok wait, better not, someone might get upset, put it away" he said suddenly being protective and assuming his role of warranting a calm visit to the neighborhood.

We walked pass the court in the direction of the buildings he had just pointed. We got to the corridors of the "nudo" (buildings complex) where his daughter lives. Orientation was complicated for me as buildings are all of a similar style and with multiple accesses just as any complex of buildings of the same style and with not a traditional distribution around roads but organized in blocks. Apart from the presence of the gendarmeria, so far el Fuerte was a place where I was not feeling much different than in any other working class neighborhood I had visited. We walked up a staircase to the second floor, the concrete walls and floor quickly connected me with that architecture I knew pretty well as a 1970 style and which the connect with the dictatorship. As we went up I could see other common element in the suburbs: metal screens protecting the doors and windows. For me it was a paradox that the middle class uses those screens to protect from the "poor", and when one is in a working class or marginal neighborhood you see that same element that distances families form the "threats" now displaced to the street.

A smiling late twenties woman opened the door; with her free hand she holed a 6 month old baby. Her hair was wet and smelled as conditioner. I did not take out my coat as I insisted in returning to the market to buy empanadas for all of us so that we did not generate work to our host, but she insisted she wanted to cook for us and show us what a great cook she is. She added that her father loves her food so she wanted to treat him in his visits to her. She made us sit down and I regretted I had not taken more food with me and handed in a big chocolate and a pudding for desert I had taken. Her two kids came out of the room where they both sleep and where they were playing, the older girl is in fourth grade and is the best of her class her mother explained, the boy is still in kindergarten. Her husband came out of the other room, the second one of the rooms; he also greeted us with very warm smile. He was instructed by his wife over what drinks to buy and where to get the bread: the second nudo for bread as is cheaper and better there and just the downstairs locales for coke. He left with an umbrella as it had started to rain.

The house was warm in spite of the chilly and wet weather. A small dining table and several chairs around took half of the living area where there was also a dish cabinet, a regular cabinet and a computer table with a computer. As the husband was leaving he told his daughter to put down the volume of the TV and to play some music. The girl turned the computer on and selected a playlist; the sound came out from the music centre speakers.

She started preparing coffee, a drink that I have learned to associate with more "urban" toba families, as what is most common is that any toba family will offer you mate as soon as you sit down to chat. Mate is also the wide spread drink of all Argentinean rural areas, being part of the basic courtesy gesture to offer you a well prepared and warm mate whenever you visit someone. She also asked if we wanted something else for a late breakfast. Meanwhile she started cooking; she was finishing a Bolognese sauce for pasta she would prepare. Her husband returned a couple of minutes later with fresh bread and coke.

We chatted about the soccer game and about her wedding two years ago as the daughter showed me some pictures in the computer. Her husband came back with the groceries, he changed the TV channel form a children's movie into the transmission of the game. He commented in being happy for getting cable TV a few months ago, they had more than 100 channels now, it was not so expensive as it was a special deal for the whole of the apartments of the block, but you still need to pay to watch TV he commented as he started laying the table. We talked about what each of them were doing these days, she is taking care of the children but she does other stuff in the side, she sells clothes, and cooks. Her husband, after doing several jobs, started working on a maintenance company. He was happy to have a job where they got to do a number of varied tasks; he had a very good relation with his boss who many times gave him the left over materials to take to improve his house. In fact beside the kitchen he had pilled a full floating wooden floor he was hoping to install in his next house, or sell it. L enquired about what job her younger siblings were having and how they were doing in them, they discussed how much money each of them was making, if there was any chance of getting better and how they were thinking of investing their salary. Z explained the younger was saving for Nike sneakers and the older wanted to get a TV.

At one point L's husband asked about my relation with Z, L explained that I was one of the language students of his father. "Are you a journalist?" "Kind of that. I am an anthropologist." was my reply. I immediately realized that as much as the barrio Toba is harassed by anthropologists along with other people interested in the "indigenous", the fort was continually being approached by journalists that want to portrait "true life" in the supposedly most dangerous place in the country. It was no surprising that L's husband was equating mi visit and interest in the fort to the voyeuristic interest of the media. Apart of the wonderful hosts they were being I was even more grateful that they were receiving me at their place so openly. I explained about an interest on Toba's migration to the city and to get to know all the places where they have lived, but that rose no particular interest.

I went to the kitchen as L finished preparing the meal. AS she chopped the meat and stir- fried it for a few seconds she told me how when Z moved to the "toba barrio" she never really moved with them, she was only there for two months in which she went back and forth to the Fuerte. By then she was too used to living there and that is the place where she feels at home. She understood her family wanted to move as they had more space over there but could not join them even when she tried. Her older sister C (now also living in the toba barrio) stayed in an apartment with her boyfriend's family, as well as the eldest of the brothers who was living in the "villa" of the fort (a group of precarious houses built in empty lots in between the monoblocks mostly to host either relatives of the people in the apartments or younger couples starting their own) who lived there with a girlfriend and their baby.

She explained that the toba neighborhood was too far away from the city and to sources of work, it was too isolated. In addition she did not agree the barrio was a safer place, as the only time she got robbed it was in the toba barrio and not in there. That is why she gets very angry when people portrait it as a dangerous place and a place of criminals and criminal activity. I agreed about how the press presents marginal neighborhoods when most of the people there go to work every day. She nodded and said that of course there are some bands of young men and criminal activity in the fort but the worse time was when different security forces literally took over the barrio. "For some time you could see all the existing military uniforms in here, there were green and blue and some of those you see only in the movies. They were carrying all types of weapons, always showing they were taking these big guns. I got very scared as I took the kids to school and had to pass through several controls. But still I have to recognize that night shootings were less frequent after that, the fort became a calmer place."

A few minutes later the sauce and the pasta was ready, we sat down and eat as we watched the game preview. They want back to tell me about their wedding only two years ago. How she had bought a beautiful dress for very cheap from the bagageras, women who take clothes from the shops and sell them. She told me how she had to go through a very quick conversion into Catholic Church because they could not find her baptism act, and how the priest had helped them expedite the marriage. The husband explained how this is a priest he respects unlike the priests and nuns of the school where he used to go as a boy, who would mistreat him and who do not really care about the people as they claim. There was one time in which he had answered in a bad mode to a priest and he just sent him home alone. He was only seven years old and was glad the way to his place was a straight line, but he had to do the whole walking off over a kilometer on his own. His sister, who generally took him and picked him up, was really worried when she saw him returning by himself at an earlier time.

The pasta was really good, there was still some after we have taken more than one serving each of us. We watched the first part of the game and L heated a bit more of coffee. In the intermediate time she told me she would take me for a short walk to where they lived as children with Z. We took two umbrellas and went out. We walked across a corridor and up a stairs and then we crossed two of the bridges connecting different buildings and we got to the apartment where they lived. 'That was S, my older sister's window", she told me as I recalled some of the things S herself had told me about her experiences in the fort and how some friend once shoot to her window to make her come down to hang out with them. She pointed to the living area window and then she took me across other passage. Up there in the eighth floor was were Tevez used to live, there is still his uncle there". From one of the corridors I could see that the soccer court was emptier now, just a few of the younger kids were playing there, probably taking advantage of the fact that the older ones had left.

We went back to the apartment and we had a second coffee. It was past 4 pm and Z suggested it was a good time to start heading back, or that otherwise we would catch by the night. We decided to take another train back as it was more convenient to get home for both of us. We walked into the opposite direction to where we had came in, crossed underneath some of the other buildings, passed through a small park and then we took a side street. Over that side there was no police, showing that that was somehow perceived more as a back entrance. Z explained that he used to take that way too as he worked as a construction worker when he lived there. He did not have a same work place but changes locations almost every week, his boss would wait with his van in some of the train stations. We walked two block and we were on the bus stop leading as to Caseros train station. As we waited Z said "did you see how small the apartment is over there? There is really no place". I was surprised of his perception, after all the apartment was no different from many small urban apartments and the inside was very well kept and equipped, my overall impression was that I had just visited a cozy apartment.