Side B: the contrasts of the suburbs

Side B: the contrasts of the suburbs

August 18, 2023 – 18:16

The Buenos Aires suburbs occupies more than a million hectares and alternates different realities: it is the place where more popular neighborhoods (villas) and more closed neighborhoods (countries) are erected.

Our Christiania is the Buenos Aires suburbs.

In a suburb of Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, there is a neighborhood called Christiania, where approximately 1,000 people live semi-legally. It extends over an area of ​​35 hectares that were occupied in the 70s where a community lives that pays few services. Christiania declares itself independent of the Danish state. There are asphalt, cobblestone or dirt streets and there are some bars and shops where soft drugs can be freely purchased. Its inhabitants perceive themselves outside the system, do not pay taxes and enact their own rules that periodically collide with official legislation.

In these latitudes, we have our own Christiania, with some differences and several similarities: it occupies more than a million hectares and alternates different segmented and fenced realities that contrast, since it is the place where more popular neighborhoods (villas) and more are built. closed neighborhoods (countries). Our Christiania is the Buenos Aires suburbsseat of different migratory currents from Europe, from neighboring countries or from the interior of the country, where 62% of the Buenos Aires population lives and 23.6% of the national population, forming a mamushka state, one inside another and another , made up of 24 districts of the Province of Buenos Aires that surround the Federal Capital, which grew approximately 10% in a decade and where, according to different measurements, between 55 and 72% of the children are poor.

Carlos Pagnijournalist and historian, in his book The knot says, “…the suburbs are a difficult region to understand and, therefore, difficult to govern and transform. It is the most blatant representation of a silent defeat of politics, since the strategy to grow in the medium term loses elections in the short term. ”. And it says in another paragraph, “CABA doubles its population during the day due to people from the suburbs who work in the Capital and although two thirds of the people who are treated in CABA hospitals live in Greater Buenos Aires, no less important are the 3 million people who pay taxes per day with their consumption in the coffers of Buenos Aires, mainly through gross income.”

A well-known character from the suburbs, especially from its villas, is the political pointer. In a 2015 paper, SJ Rodrigo Zarazaga, director of the Center for Research and Social Action says, “…the punteros have assured the loyalty of the poor in the dark room because they expect solutions to their problems in the future… Just as the ruralistas support the candidates who promise them benefits for the countryside, the poor support the punteros who They promise to improve their income.

The Instagram The Walking Urban defines the suburbs in a brilliant way as A post-apocalyptic paradise minutes from the obelisk And those of us who have ever walked the streets of the suburbs, could clearly perceive the justified distrust of the inhabitants of popular neighborhoods with academic politicians and also the toxic loyalties with political leaders, where drug trafficking, clientelism, hypocrisy, discrimination and marginality are mixed. . The same distrust that underlies the trinomial state – pointer – needy and that leads me sadly to the monologue of apocalypse now, Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam film, when Marlon Brando’s tough character says at the end, “We went into the jungle to vaccinate children against polio. As we were leaving, an old man came running towards us, he was crying. We went back there and they had come and amputated every inoculated arm. A mountain of little arms. And I remember that I cried. They were stronger than us. The horror, the horror, the horror.

Source: Ambito

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