Twice Migrants, Three Times Displaced: The Mobilities of Shantytown Residents in 1970s Buenos Aires

ADRIANA LAURA MASSIDDA

Santiago de Chile

Congreso; Knowledge Culture Ecologies International Conference; 2017

Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University

In the early 1970s in Buenos Aires several shantytown communities were displaced as part of a municipal programme of shantytown ?eradication?. This programme, rooted in a larger series of eradication attempts, read the shantytowns as not only as a sign of backwardness but also as a hindrance to the what the government regarded as the country?s modernisation. Thus, the programme demolished the shantytowns and set out to re-host thoseresidents who could afford housing instalments in a purpose-built neighbourhood in the urban periphery. For those with the lowest income no specific alternative was outlined. Half-way its implementation, the referred programme was combined with a national eradication initiative which regarded the residents as responsible for their own dwelling conditions, and which inserted one step between eviction and permanent housing: that of temporary accommodation, where families were meant to be re-educated into modern ways. In the context of these programmes Buenos Aires shantytown residents became two-times mobilised: first, at a regional scale, residents had in their majority migrated to Buenos Aires from rural areas or smaller towns in search of better livelihoods and employment opportunities; and second, within the city, they were displaced by the state. Furthermore, the idea of re-education and the discourse that accompanied the programmes represented a symbolic displacement where residents were not only (against all evidence) blamed for the dwelling conditions that they suffered but also strongly stigmatized and thus at risk of becoming alienated from their own identities. This paper will explore the intertwining of scales and layers of displacement entailed in this combined local and national programme, and will contextualize it in earlier and later initiatives of shantytown eviction in Argentina.