History of the fort II

In the 1978 that the world soccer championship was played in Argentina during the bloodiest of the military dictatorships. The military government took this chance to initiate a campaign to respond to the international concerns with the human rights violations being commited by the Junta (see Taylor 200..). As part of that campaign there was a new attampt to clean shaty towns from the city, or at least to evacuate the most visible ones and hide others. One villa known as Ciudad Oculta (litaraly "Hidden City") had a wall built around it so that from the "outside" of the vilal one could not see the inside of poor houses and deficient infraestracture (see Scorer 20...), separating people in the inside form people from the outside. The wall was also interrupting movement from different points of the villa connecting it to the rest of the cityand restricted people movements to get in and out through fewer points. Ver algo mas sobre ciudad oculta.

As part of this campaign a new attempt was made to empty the most uncompfortable of all shanty towns, the villa 31, that borderes the train station Retiro at the centre of the city only a few blocks away from aristocratic Recoleta neighbourhood, and the financial district. It was a big group of people form this villa some of the people arriving to the fuerte apache that V remembers as the big arrival of "unknown" people. It was them who also renamed for a short time Fuerte apache as Padre Mugica, a priest from the so called third world movement who worked mostly with the villa 31 people, and who was killed in 1974. for V that was turning point in the Furte, as form then on he was less compfortable in that place. He mentions that the new commers did not practice solidarty, some of them were immigrants from other countries and that some of them robbed as a way of life, what for him was the responsible for the neighbourhood to get stigmatized as a bad place. During that period V continued to be an activist in the first indigenist movements of the country, with the companion of a calchaqui indigenous person from the province of Salta but who had arrived as achild to the city and he had met at the Hotel de los Inmigrantes, they founded the AIRA an attempt to create a unified indigenous association at the national level. He recognizes he was never a front person as he does not like to talk in public, and he was not into establishing realtions with political parties as others in the associations were. At all times his main interest was to define what is an indigenous thinking and look for ways to be able to live according to that. In spite of this side position, he became a well known person in this growing indigenist movemnt and participated in multiple meetings, worked to solve conflicts in different regions and was part of a generation of leaders.

In the 1980s a big group of Toba from the Chaco arrived to the Fuerte and contacted V to ask if he thought they could take some empty shops in el fuerte. V instructed that they had to act wisely, "they had to act all together, otherwise if it was only a single family they would get eveicted, they had to occupy at night and stay in there for many days untill the police would accept their precense." he explained to me. The group of 4 families, among which Z family was did as they were instructed and lived in the shops for several years. V and others living in the shops explained that soon neighbours started to recognized the area as the palce of the "indians" and in spite of their small number they got some fame in and outside the Fuerte.

Z narrates that once he asked for a remise (private car acting as a taxi) and when the men arrived he was asking if it was true that in there where indians living there. Z happy of not being recognized as one replied that, that was true and that he could go to the other side to see them. But then when his daughters arrived, young and well known for being pretty he said "here are the indians, I am an indian too and my daughters are indians. Here you have them. you have met the indians." At this point of his account he would laugh in a loud voice explaining how the remisse driver was shocked to see "he was talking with an indian all the time" adn how the converstaion followed by him asking if they were really indians becasue they did not look like ones. Appart form the way racial steroetypes were playing in the interaction of this group of families and the other neighbours, this narrative shows that in spite of the small number of people the tobas were having a particular visibility in the Fuerte.

[He also clarified how he always surprised people when he said he was an indian because he doesn't look like one, as he is the son of a Toba woman who was fond of gringos and so got pregnant of a man of polish descent she met during cotton harvest in the chaco but then did not see again. Z expalins how he and espacially his daughters whom he describes as being "so blond" even they have brown hair, are most of the times not recognized as indigenous and in turn are "discriminated in the neighbourhood for being white". Note: this does probably not go here]

It was in the 1980 that Jose de Ser is said to have named the neighbourhood the Fort (see clarin, y nota Alarcon en Pagina). It was the turn of Z oldest daughter, a women with a strong personality, recently separated from her partner, and in her forties, with whom we made a very long life history, who illuminated on the story of how the Fort became named in that way. I asked other people about this story and I got not a robust affirmation nor a drastic denial. Even if the story is not "representative" of the dominant narratives about the collective experience in the fort I still find it representative of the experience the Toba families and in particular this intermediate generation was having in the 1980 at the monoblocks. In particular in regards with the way they were engaging with slippery forms of identification as "indigenous" in the city, in a tension in which they self identify in some instances but also prefered not to be identifed in others. Overall these families were making meaning about being tobas distant form the "source" of experience and place of identification, the chaco. At the same time they were confronting the effects of their bodies being a racial index of a generalized poor marginal urban inhabitant while they also recognized the complex set of asociations whenever they were recognized and interpelated as indigenous by other urban dweller.

Sara was then the one who told me how the whole neighbourhood gained it's name of Fuerte Apache after them, a group of 6 toba families. It was during a shooting between the police and a band of Chileneans who have made a major strike. The shooting with the police had started elsewhere (she does not remember) and then the band had run to search for refuge in the neighborhood at home in the nudo 3, the same in which they were living. The band occupied an apartment in a upper floor so once they were there they started shooting the police from the windows. The shooting took several hours and attracted the media, among whom was Jose de Zer, a well known journalist for his sensationalist style. According to police declarations the band of the Chileneans was out of reach once they were in the towers, because it was almost impossible for the police to enter the neighbourhood as other bands would ally with them and shoot the police. In addition Sara explains that Jose de Zer found out from the police that the building were the Chileneans were, was occupied by "indians" living in the ground level and who were evidently protecting the thefts. Then is when according to Sara Jose de Ser said his famous line that ended up giving an infamous name to the neighbourhood for ever. Something in the line of : "This part of the city is like the far West. Thefts get into the towers and become protected as if insede a Fort, this is an Apache Forte were the police nor the law can enter." Sara explains that someone among the toba families still kept the newspaper article in which they name the Toba families as responsible for defending the criminal bands in the Fort. Her explanation was highly spatial too. They, the Tobas were on the ground level and the thefts on the tower. The indians were thus the first protective line, creating a shield to the building, the thefts the shooters form above. Tower thus is literally how they call the building and also a reference to the defensive tower in a fort.

The shooting between a band call Los Chilenos and the fact that it was Jose de Zer the first to name the neighbourhood in that way is confirmed by journalist sources (see Alarcon 2008). While other point to the movie "Fort Apache, The bronx" as the cultural reference to the naming of neighbourhood (see Camps 2000).

This narrative of points to at list two points: the impact of the Tobas living in Buenos Aires was of very important dimensions, not only forthe "average" city dweller and the police, but also for the neighbours of the Fort themselves who pointed to this small group of people as an other within the other; the recognition and affection this interpelation was generating among the Toba families. It is this

As Taussig has signaled the indians are both mysterious and regarded as powerful (also Mary Douglas would say this because of unclasifyable nature). "Indians" are strange, are feared for their power to fight, and interestingly matched with a mediatic indian. The tobas and the Fort become a space of exteriority understood by the reference of to a foundational violence of North American society and transmited by media especially TV: the Far West, as a space, and to the Apache Indians, as its subjects. It is not a surprise then that a popular and sensationalist journalist choses a Tv cultural reference to describe an event taking place in Buenos Aires, a city imagined itself as white, western (in the 1980s and 1990 the US becomes a strong cultural reference when before that France was mostly the references to what Buenos Aires wanted to be) and non-latin american. The Chaco "indian" is not even conflated with a latin american indian, or with the presence of "latin americaness" in the city, but has to be codified as the North American "barbaric" character par excellance: The Apache indian. [parragraph to be polished]



List of references for this chapter
Ratier Cabecita Negra
Ratier Villeros y villas miseria
Verbinsky Villa Miseria tambien es America Latina (fiction)
Alarcon Cuando me muera quiera que me toquen cumbia
Alarcon nota 2008 Barrio Fuerte newspaper article pagina 12
Camps, 2000 Fuerte APache newspaper article Clarin
Svampa Cambio de epoca, Los que ganaron, Entre la ruta
Tamagno Ser Toba en la casa
Buscar Wright 2002 El chaco en Buenos Aires
Scorer, J 2007 Nomadic City
Gorelik, Bs As
Ciudad Oculta
Interviews V, S, J, Z