History of the fort

The history of Fuerte apache is not disengaged with the history of the toba people in Buenos Aires. In the life history of the oldest person living in the neighborhood, also the first person in the neighborhood to come to Buenos Aires he presents his own personal trajectory closely related to the one of the fort.

(Check life history of V)
He first arrived in Buenos Aires to leave in Dock Sud, one infamous port neighborhood, and weeks after he had arrived the neighborhood had a big fire. Many families were relocated to the Hotel de los inmigrantes, and then he went back to Dock Sud. From there he was aided by a group of university students to pose a demand for housing and land along with other neighbors. He recognizes himself as one of the leaders of the demand and as working closely with the students to put the paperwork together and negotiate with the government, at the time a peronist government. They were asking for permanent housing which was going to take some time to be built. It was at that point that V explains that they started a new stage in the building the "fort" in order to relocate a number of people living in shanty towns.

This coincides with media information’s that recognizes the neighborhood as a result of military governments attempts to eradicate or at least to hide the shantytowns. If apparently the first building were end of 1960 during a Ongania dictatorship, it is more certain that it received relocated shanty town dwellers in 1973 (clarin 31.10 2000 http://edant.clarin.com/diario/2000/10/31/s-03101.htm). After that there was an intermediate democratic period in which the neighbors renamed it "barrio Padre Mugica" after a recently killed third world priest. Before the 1978 world cup played in Argentina and in the period of the last and most violent military dictatorship new period of building apartments was undertaken to empty shanty towns that would be visible for tourists and international press and the plan was to relocate families in that area.

This history of being a place built to relocate shanty towns is probably one of the reasons why the Fuerte and the monoblocks themselves are considered "villa" in an ambiguous extension of a place name, that seems to refer more to a population than to an architecture or the availability or not of services. In any case it shows that in spite the supposed intention of the government was to end the existence of such marginal places in fact it was rein scribing and producing more of such places. It also shows that for the people living in the villas the stigma of aileron is not something easy to remove. Having a job, but also moving from a single room house made of cardboard and plastics to an apartment with running water and electricity in a 10 story building would not warranty them to get away from the stigma of being "villeros".

The responsible of the demand were living in precarious houses, a type of house identifies as the defining house of a villa and of rural to urban migrants, made with recycled pieces of wood, cardboards and plastics, and thought as a temporary, and thus part of the negotiation was to be relocated in temporary houses (he describes them as nice houses but small and made of wood) in Espeleta a neighborhood to the south of the conurbano. That temporary emplacement actually became their home for several year, to the point that when the neighborhood in ciudadela was ready to receive them as new inhabitants, many families preferred to stay at that place and not move. He says that even this idea crossed his mind, after having demanded so strongly for the place he could not back up at that point.

It was in the mid 1970s (V does not remember the exact year) that he and other people were taken to inhabit the fort. According to his narrative the distribution of the apartments was not as orderly as they had expected, they just let them go and get inside a house and that would be theirs. He and his family looked for the first they could enter and there they stayed. After they were inside they were given keys and property titles. Some people were luckier to get three bedroom apartments, while they got in a two bedroom.