Water as Death and Rebirth: The 1967 Flood in Buenos Aires

ADRIANA LAURA MASSIDDA

Cambridge

Simposio; Postcolonial Ecologies in the Global South: Explorations at the Culture/Nature Interface; 2018

Consortium for the Interdisciplinary Study of the Global South, University of Cambridge

I am currently expanding my doctoral research on the urban history of the South West of Buenos Aires during the 1958-19762 period, with a focus on shantytowns. The South West was a marshland area until the 1960s, crossed by the meandering river Riachuelo (partially canalised in the 1940s) and increasingly contaminated by refuse. Simultaneously, it became a key location for the settlement of shantytowns. In the workshop I would like to discuss the 1967 flood within this context and the transformation of the urban territory by interweaved material and social agents.