spinoza II

Bueno sin salir del estilo nota. En una conexion con saltos, una de las cosas que me hizo pensar bastante de leer la etica es que spinoza no es un critico al pensamiento, pero si es critico a cierta forma de pensar. Le parece ridiculo el racionalismo que plantee poderes ilimitados de la razón y que da por sentada la libertad del individuo para actuar. El dice que pensar que el hombre es libre es ignorante. Ignorante de las multiples fuerzas externas que afectan a cualquier cuerpo. Ahi es cuando de golpe manda una definición de estupidez que viene tan bien para el trabajo como para la vida. Estupidez es cuando uno cree que esta explicando algo pero en realidad te estan faltando varias causas atraz del resultado que ves o cuando tomas el resultado como causa. A su vez los conflictos entre personas para Spinoza son sonflictos de entendimiento, no de intereses o de differencia.

(mucho tiempo despues esta inversion es por ejemplo la que hace latour cuando dice no hay que pensar cuales son las causas sociales a un problema x. sino ir más atraz estudiar conexiones y después hacernos la gran pregunta de que chucha es lo social en lo que estamos estudiando. como se ensambla lo social en asi)

Es por esto que cuando habla de afectos y de pensamiento esta hablando de algo mucho mas parecido a pensar en como se distribuyen las particulas de un gas que en una emoción. En la seccion sobre la mente explica como cuando un cuerpo que se encuentran con otro y no puede moverlo rebota.

Bueno vendran citas directas más abajo en breve. 

spinoza

I was never able to finish this here it goes to be continued...

I want to make at least a couple of notes with ideas about Spinoza before  keep on reading more about him. So i finished a  more detailed reading of the Ethics on January the 5 th. I was simultaneously reading Spinoza o la Prudencia a recent book from Ch. Jaquet I bought in Buenos Aires , Spinoza para principiantes (written by the translator of the former book, A. Cherniavsky), Spinoza practical Philosophy from Deleuze and his courses on Spinoza.  I did not finish any of them but I also piled Deleuze on Expresionism and a book by Kaminsky Rendija is reading. Anyways here a few points:

- Affect as taken in contemporary debates seems to be this post-representation, post dualistic relations  space of roughly speaking freedom, an alternative to resistance and the traps that have been widely  showed after Foucault. It seems to be the cool thing in media studies, a film is politically mobilizing  if it affects its multicultural audience into processing their condition (something like this in Laura Marks), we can talk of the active dimension of a book if it generates a circulation of affect, and so on. Affect thus is rightly confronted to habit and the structuration of life (Beasley Murray and Bourdieu), but in many authors is maybe too soon opposed to power and locate as new redemptive space.  However in this explorations I still find it a bit obscure how affect is present in the ordinary and the everyday (K Stuart make a very interesting experiment but remains in the experimental) and how it assembles the social (Latour seems to be getting to it even when he does not talk about affect). I need to reread Mazzarella who seems to be doing a good job making an ethnography of affect and beyond his book had a very good paper on the AAA 2009.

But what I want to say is that Spinoza is much more discrete about affect than most (not all) of this celebratory approaches seem to be doing. It seems than the current uses of affect either mistake it for emotion, only that they give it a stronger social force (A panel I heard in the aaa in 2008 was about the erotized affect to god of a particular religious community - for me that was emotion-, the affect of suicidal widows - emotion again-) and of course the aura of emancipatory force in itself, seems to be used as a "post" and "flexible" concept. Of course Massumi who is a strong reference in this turn into affect, shows that power is becoming affective (also Nigel Thrift, although not so clear), thus they are alert to show that not all about affect is about. I think that both lines are a bit confusing, the one that takes affect as a new turn in how to talk about emotions, and the one that stands on affects as the new concept for resistance.  

Back to Spinoza he interestingly gives us this concept that allows us to think in a physics of bodies, but he does not take affect as the space of redemption, contraryly for him is action (in the dimension of the body) and adequate ideas (the active dimension of mind) what create freedom. For him we need to understand affects, accept them and and strive to increase bodies capacities.

On the Affects
Thus I find in Spinoza a more challenging proposal on how to think the bodies and affect as a domain of the transformations of the bodies, transformations of which they are not the adequate and only cause, but they cannot avoid. Affect is about how the external bodies interact with an assembled and stable body. His chapter on the affects is a list of them in which he stresses how affects transform the capacities if the body and in which sense. One point I take is how he understands the transformation of the body at each moment. Thus a glass of wine can elevate your joy but as you get stuck in it and want to repeat the joy without having appropriate knowledge of the consequences one can keep on drinking and finally poisoning (a word he uses a lot) the body.

The final point of the chapter is however to propose the remedies for the affects and in a way to learn how to flow with them taking as much joy as possible until "one" can learn to be adequate  cause to joy, a kind of enlighted, or all consious, type of action - knowledge.


Mind and body as one and the same

On knowledge 
The book is a lot about knowledge, for him the main action of the Mind.       
Mind
Adequate Ideas

Physics
God or Nature.
Body and the two dimensions : a) stability of movement of the parts, motion and rest and b) capacity to affect and be affected. 
Action (when one is the only cause of it)

One difference with Nitsche

bergson

estoy tratando de suspender un poco la lectura de spinoza y engancharme con bergson para leerlo para nuetsro grupo. de la stanford encyclopedia of philosophy esto si que suena interesante:  

There is no negation in the duration. We shall return to this important point concerning negation when discussing “Creative evolution.”  In any case, the feelings are continuous with one another; they interpenetrate one another, and there is even an opposition between inferior needs and superior needs. A qualitative multiplicity is therefore heterogeneous (or singularized), continuous (or interpenetrating), oppositional (or dualistic) at the extremes, and progressive (or temporal, an irreversible flow, which is not given all at once). Because a qualitative multiplicity is heterogeneous and yet interpenetrating, it cannot be adequately represented by a symbol; indeed, for Bergson, a qualitative multiplicity is inexpressible. Bergson also calls the last characteristic of temporal progress mobility. For Bergson — and perhaps this is his greatest insight — freedom is mobility. Because Bergson connects duration with mobility, in the second half of the Twentieth Century (in Deleuze and Foucault, in particular), the Bergsonian concept of qualitative multiplicity will be dissociated from time and associated with space (Deleuze 1986).

the flaming lips yoshimi battles the pink robots part 1

cuerpos

un post aun mas vomitado que los que ya hacia, robándole un rato a uno de los ciclos de 2 o 3 horas, los minutos que debería aprovechar para bañarme o cumplir con la hora de trabajo que me propongo o hacer algo de ejercicio. seguramente no es tema para un blog, pero esto se convirtió en mi cuadernito de notas axial que aca va.

que decir del ultimo mes, hoy con la fecha calendario que se cumple desde que franka apareció finalmente por un hueco de la panza, tosiendo y si era ella nomás. otro cuerpo mucho mas flexible, robusto en su pequeñez, infinitamente lindo, con respuestas transparentes y sensaciones inmediatas. un mejor cuerpo de dos cuerpos. 

y si como dijo mi hermana a partir de ese momento no importo nada mas, y uno se confronta con lo que no podía creer del todo. por mas que se anticipa en largos meses y crece y se mueve y te va avisando que esta ahí, no lo podía creer del todo hasta que escuche la tos y vi. una persona nueva. por suerte fue ese momento que deje de pensar en los libros de foucault en aceptar o discutir con sospecha a las propuestas de enfermeras, que desde que entre al hospital pasaron a tener  ella y no los médicos un poder casi arrollador sobre el cuerpo de uno, deje de esperar que pasara la medica de "mi" clínica a charlar desenfrenadamente y decir algún chiste, se termino la sensación de que el trabajo no terminaba mas y el estado para siempre. como hasta ese momento solo me concentraba en las discusiones medicas técnicas, me pase los minutos anteriores teniendo una charla de sala de espera con la anestesióloga, "where in britain are you from?, "do people surf in the summer?" ella me contestaba de un buen humor increíble y a la vez me informaba que pasaba del otro lado de la cortina. y esa charla sobre el surf en el sur de Inglaterra se convirtieron en los últimos minutos de una etapa anterior, no totalmente distinta pero anterior a que apareciera una tercera de dos. 

que mas puedo decir de el fin de esa etapa, que el día anterior hubo sol y fue un día lindísimo, que fuimos a nadar, y que terminé un lectura mas lenta y obsesiva de la ética de espinoza y estaba empezando una lectura ambiciosa de textos secundarios sobre él. tuve esta pagina de blog abierta todo el día y el día siguiente mientras pasaban olas de músculos en tensión, pero no pude articular nada para completarla en ese momento.

que decir del mes desde que apareció? no puedo expresarlo todavia y no se si se puede. maravillada del encuentro, rodeadas de un olor dulzon, cuerpos medio menos desodorizados que de costumbre, una intensidad aperentemente pasiva, una vida mas parecida a ser un deportista, algo asi como un triatlon adentro de una casa, natacion olimpica dentro de una bañadera de plastico. 

 spinoza fue la mejor lectura que pude hacer antes y ahora veo un cuerpo que por ahora es casi todo puro afecto, algunas ideas que se forman de a poco, algo de habito que se repite pero por las necesidades del cuerpo y los afectos de otros, y no tanto por una costumbre corporizada. lo bueno y lo malo son cosas con causas bastante simples y totalmente inmediatas y claras. se supone que los recién llegados son cuerpos carentes, vulnerables, dependientes, frágiles, demandantes, pasivos. en realidad lo experimento totalmente opuesto. si claro que uno se la pasa con sueño interrumpido, que el alimento lo necesitan con mucha regularidad, que necesitan cuidado. pero tienen un potencia difícil de igualar en otro momento de la vida, son mucho mas fuertes en su flexibilidad que estas versiones adultas que somos nosotros, dependen no de alguien en particular sino de muchas personas diferentes con las que se relacionan en un plano de igualdad total (si claro el olor del cuerpo de donde salieron, y la voz parece generarles una tranquilidad bastante inmediata pero nunca irremplazable). Demandan solo lo que necesita su cuerpo para expandirse a una velocidad increíble, y trabajan obstinadamente en conseguir su alimento, sin importar en que medio social hayan nacido, trabajan sin alineación, trabajan cooperando, y descansan cuando ya no necesitan trabajar mas, no tienen aun el apremio de acumular, de apropiarse del trabajo ajeno, la ambición del reconocimiento. no iría al extremo de idealizar que es un estado absolutamente puro, pero si que es una etapa con una potencia a la que estaría bueno aproximarse de nuevo, acercarse desaprendiendo todo lo que inevitablemente le haremos aprender. ahí spinoza dejaba el consejo de que esta bueno ser una familia cuando la unión aumenta la potencia de los cuerpos involucrados y cuando colaboramos en formar un pensamiento intuitivo, ideas adecuadas que vengan de una mente activa y no de las pasiones externas que la desvían y confunden. 

bueno y las imagines por la subita camaraderia que siento con las vacas, aun me sorprende como es que en el plano de mercantilizar el cuerpo la leche humana no este siendo tan explotada, y me pregunto si es un poco por el borramiento de la lactancia de la escena. mucho enfasis en que se haga pero mucho enfasis en que quede fuera de escena. 

 

la hospitalidad (copia de un mail de axel)

Una cita que mando Axel por mail que no quiero perder

…Porque no se ofrece hospitalidad a un recién llegado anónimo y a alguien que no tiene nombre ni patronímico, ni familia, ni estatuto social, y que en consecuencia es tratado no como extranjero sino como otro bárbaro. Hemos aludido a esto: la diferencia, una de las sutiles diferencias, a veces imperceptibles entre el extranjero y el otro absoluto, es que este último puede no tener nombre ni apellido, la hospitalidad absoluta o incondicional que quisiera ofrecerle supone una ruptura con la hospitalidad en el sentido habitual, con la hospitalidad condicional, con el derecho o el pacto de hospitalidad. Al decir esto, una vez más, tomamos en cuenta una pervertibilidad irreductible, la ley de la hospitalidad, la ley formal que gobierna el concepto general de hospitalidad, aparece como una ley paradójica, pervertible o pervertidora. Parece dictar que la hospitalidad absoluta rompe con la ley de la hospitalidad como derecho o deber, con el “pacto” de hospitalidad. Para decirlo en otros términos, la hospitalidad absoluta exige que yo abra mi casa y que dé no solo al extranjero (provisto de un apellido, de un estatuto social de extranjero, etc.) sino al otro absoluto, desconocido, anónimo, y que le dé lugar, lo deje venir, lo deje llegar, y tener lugar en el lugar que le ofrezco, sin pedirle ni reciprocidad (la entrada en un pacto) ni siquiera su nombre. La ley de hospitalidad absoluta ordena romper con la hospitalidad de derecho, con la ley o la justicia como derecho. La hospitalidad justa rompe con la hospitalidad de derecho; no que la condene o se le oponga, por el contrario puede introducirla y mantenerla en un movimiento incesante de progreso; pero le es tan extrañamente heterogénea como la justicia es heterogénea al derecho del que es sin embargo tan próxima, y en verdad indisociable.

Jacques Derrida, La Hospitalidad.

Kusch 1994. Indios Porteños y Dioses

Henos aqui que ya estamos dispuestos a volver. Hemos tomado el tren en La Paz y dentro de seis días estaremos en Buenos Aires.
Nos resulta grata la idea del retorno. Volver a casa es como regresar al paraiso. Ah{i nos alberga el confort, los utensilios, amables, la heledera, los libros, los trajes. Luego los vecinos, los compañeros de trabajo, los amigos, los lugares donde nos divertimos los sábados y las calles preferidas o el cafe de siempre. As{i vamos recobrando nuestra pulcritud y empezamos a usar la mejor idea del hombre aprendida en Buenos Aires. Creemos nuevamente en la justicia, en el derecho, en el amor, en el progreso, y en la cultura.
Esto lo comprendi en Oruro. (72)
Y al fin la Quica. Hemos Cruzado la forntera. Ya estamos con un pie en casa. En los labios nos brota una zamba. Compramos unas empanaditas en la estaci{on. Respiramos orden y paz. ... hasta nos brota una fórmula, dos pronombres: "ellos y nosotros". ahora estamos en lo nuestro, allá en Buenos Aires volvemos a ser "nosotros", mientras que ellos se quedan aqui.(73) ... Al fin pasa el tiempo y ya no contamos mas. VOlvimos a nuestra tareay caminamos por la calle. Y pensamos: "Nosotros" Qué quedo de ese nosotros? Eso lo dijimos en La Quiaca. Y acá?... Que curioso: cuando pensamos nosotros, en verdad pensamos en yo y la gente?.. podriamos insistir en que de cualquier manera tenemos que progresar y hacer cosas en Buenos Aires... Pero estamos o no en el paraíso que soñamos encuando volvíamos en el tren? Decir que no sería ponernos le taparrabo del dicho del porteño y nosotros no estamos dispuestos a ponerlo. Aqui de ninguna manera somos indios. Somos cultos y progresistas. Sí pero detrás del arbol con vergüenza y miedo. (74)
Recuerdo la ultima mirada que echamos a Bolivia desde la Quiaca. ... con sus indios tímidos encerrrados en sus comunidades y trabajando como bestias... Ahi estaba un mundo de esfuerzo y de heroismo que seguía luchando, deteniendo siquiera un tren para ofrendar a a la locomotora, todos heroicos, silenciosos y fuertes. Y nos invadía una rara sensación, como si nos hubieran echado, como si no nos necesitaran y nos hubieran segragado desde el primer momento en que pisamos su tierra, y sin embargo con esa firme conviccion de haber dejado ahi a la mitad del hombre, al otro lado de la frontera, del lado de ellos, y de que nos habíamos venido sólo con la otra mitad, la que llamamos nosotros. ...
del otro lado de la forntera habia indios que lloraban en las iglesias... Sin embargo, nos pasamos varias horas en el café viendo desfilar gente, nos vamos el domingo al futbol y el sabado nos jugamos enteros en algún baile al compás de un tango. De que lado de la forntera está esto? Acaso está también del lado de allá? (75)

Y todo esto no es jugar al indio otra vez? Realmente ya no sé que pensar. Parece que al volver a Buenos Aires volvíamos a Bolivia, y al viajar a Bolivia descubríamos a Buenos Aires. Seguramente debemos ser una misma cosa y y nadie nos contó que era así. Qué empeño por separara las cosas en América y qué maravillosa capacidad para escabullir el fenómeno del hombre.
Pero que es un ser humano? Consiste realmente en estar a medias eb un lugar muy limpio y nada más? O un ser humanos es el que tira un cabo a la noche, a la suciedad, a la fe, para ver si consigue juntarse con su otra parte?...

Pero si es cosa de ofrecer simplemente un cigarriollo oara que todos recobremos nuestra humanidad y nos dejemos de empujar. Claro que para eso habría que salir de detrás del árbol- Pero a todos nos gusta andar escondidos por que tenemos mucho miedo en la gran ciudad....

Ratier, Villeros y villas miseria

"La villa es una realidad distinta [al combentillo], cuyas raices se hunden en el pasado nacional. Y de repente Buenos AIres de da cuenta que ella (y no la villa) también es America." p 15 Ratier 1972 Villeros y Villas Miseria, Buenos Aires :CEAL
El exito de integrar al extrangero al pais (por medio de un colonialismo cultural) comienza resquebrajarse cuando "en la ciudad irrumpa chocante y violenta la presencia del país no borrado, encerrado en los límites de la villa miseria" (24)... La ciudad es habitat del inmigrante y sus hijos y la campaña aloja aun al remanente de población autóctona. Gringos serán los comerciantes, los empleados, hasta los policías. Gringos también los obreros que traen de Europa una experiencia de lucha y que sentarán las bases -ante la oposición y crítica de las capas dominantes - de nuestras primeras organizaciones sindicales. Sus contingentes se van renovando periodicamente, y con ellos llegan nuevas doctrinas (el anarquismo y el marxismo entre ellas) que dan base ideologica a sus sueños y reivindicaciones. Las elites - que a veces suelen volverse oportunamente nacionalistas, las denominan "foraneas" como si las doctirnnas que sustentan sus propias tesis no lo fueran.
Esto tambien trae el problema de la "dificultad" de unificar la clase obrera (cita a un documento del Partido Comunista). "Las direccions de estos partidos de estos partidso obreros han estado prinipalmente en manos de intelectuales peque;o burgueses que adhierieron principalmente siempre, (...( a las concepciones históricas de las élites dominantes e ignoraron la existencia de la gran masa de población nativa, que jamás se sintió interpretada por ellos. Al margen de las teorias e interpretaciones la población del interior iba haciendo su experiencia hstorica en las duras condiciones del minifundio, el obraje quebrachero propiedad de las compañías inglesas, de los ingenios de Salta, Jujuy y Tucuman. su conciencia lo iba llevando hacia el apoyo de los grandes movimientos nacionales como el yrigoyenismo y el peronismo, a los que los partidos de izquierda se opusieron. El pueblo advertía con lucidez el contenido antiimperialista de tales movimientos y los enriquecía con su participación." (24-25)
Pero "caeriamos en el mismo raismo que criticamos" si se piensa que politicamente gringos y criollos se alineaban en distintos bandos políticos.
Aunque persistan elementos traídos de sus países de origen por los nmigrantes - que l atmosfera europeizada del Buenos Aires anterior a 1930 contribuirá mantener -, el proceso de aaptación y adopcion de las tradiciones nacionales se opera con bastante éxito." (25)
Bastante se ha pomocionado desde las esferas oficiales la panacea inmigratoria, nuestra condición de blanco y eurpeos como garantía de prosperidad creciente." (26)

p 28 Villas y peronismo. Cita Entrevista: villas inicialmente como lugar de paso, casas precarias por que son temporarias, no hay hambre, gente pasea por el centro.

p 29 planes de vivienda con el peronismo hacen que las villas dejen de ser transitorias. a su vez la oposicion (dirios delas elites) propicia la vuelta al campo de los "intrusos".

p 30 31 villas asociadas a Peron Decadas del 30 y 40 "Cuando comienzan a arbitrarse soluciones y el villero se ve en condicones, por acción de gobierno, de habitar una casa o un departament, aparece a leyenda negra de los monobloques.Vale la pena detenerse en ella por que constituye uno de los infundios de mas larga vida en el folklore de las clases dominantes" Lo que se cuenta es que cuando villeros ocupan monobloques levanta parquet para hacer asado, simebran en las bañaderas y venden broncería. El se dedica a ver si la historia tienen fundamento, no hay referencias periodisticas ni gente de los monobloques que atestigue que esto es cierto. "La falsa historia es explicable. Se trata del rechazo al nuevo tipo de obrero y expresaba el concepto de que otorgar viviendas dignas a "esa gente" constituía un derroche inutil." (31) "Como caracterización general del período parecería que el villero en la época peronista no era visualizado como un factor social tan diferecniaso del resto de la gente que padecía el problema de la carencia de vivienda en el país. Era un pore en ascenso, en transito hacia otra realidad social, cuyo ascenso a otro tipo de vida era cuastion de tiempo. Al caer Peron, se convierte en precioso objeto de estudio para los antagonistas " (31-32)

p 32 1950 polarizacion de clases dentro del pernismo, mas migracion interna y limitrofe y crecimiento de villas (10% y quintuplica la poblacion).

p 33 "Villa es un termometro de la pauperización del país"
p 34 historia de vida de corrientes a capital

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

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.