The Public Tap: Water Collection at the Core of Shantytown Space and Politics (Buenos Aires, 1954-1978)

ADRIANA LAURA MASSIDDA

Cambridge

Conferencia; City Seminar; 2018

University of Cambridge

Queues and water collection from public taps emerge as a recurrent element in accounts about mid-twentieth century shantytowns in Buenos Aires. Starting as early as 4am, hundreds of residents (in fact, mainly women and children) approached the few available sources of running water they had nearby to stock up for the day. By midday taps would be almost empty. The queue was a key place of socialisation, information exchange, and also disputes. Moreover, the proximity to public taps determined the location that each family would choose when first settling in a shantytown. In fact, shantytowns grew through the gradual accretion of individual self-built houses over time, and aerial photos illustrate the way in which spaces fill-up from the borders of the plots toward the centre.This talk will explore the centrality of one element, taps, and one material, water, in mid-twentieth shantytown public space and politics. In fact, taps and water did not only play a key role in everyday practices and space transformation in shantytowns. Crucial for survival, their provision and the extension of networks were at the core of the first collective organisations in Buenos Aires shantytowns. Furthermore, they were also a key point of negotiation between residents? groups and local and national governments, also standing as one of the first items destroyed by goverments which attempted at shantytown eradication. In fact, amongst the several material scarcities faced in these communities self-built on unserviced occupied land, fresh water appears as the most urgent and also most powerful material to bring people together, both for collection and for collective provision - in Buenos Aires and also along the Americas.