WUNRN
ARGENTINA:
Madres de Plaza de Mayo Bring Housing Hope to
Slums
Luciana Peker
BUENOS AIRES, Feb 5 (IPS) - Wearing blue coveralls with a
picture of a white scarf, the symbol of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, some 300
men and women from a slum in the Argentine capital are building new homes -- and
new lives -- for themselves.
The activists in the Asociación Madres
de Plaza de Mayo have been working tirelessly in Argentina for three decades to
find out what happened to their sons and daughters who were "disappeared" by the
1976-1983 military dictatorship.
Internationally renowned for their work
in defence of human rights, the Madres (mothers) have branched out in their
activities. Last year, they undertook the mission of building decent housing in
slum neighbourhoods, known in Argentina as "villas miserias".
The first
project was launched on Oct. 16 in Villa 15, better known as Ciudad Oculta
(Hidden City), located in the southern Buenos Aires neighbourhood of Villa
Lugano, with the participation of 280 workers, half of whom are women.
They are building two complexes of 36 housing units each. The
three-bedroom units are 62 square metres in size, and are fully equipped with a
bathroom, kitchen, hot water and central heating.
The partially built
homes stand out in the midst of the precarious dwellings and dirt roads of the
slum, where proper sanitation does not exist.
The men and women involved
in the project wear coveralls that sport the phrase "decent housing" and a
drawing of the trademark white scarf of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, which the
activists have traditionally worn on their heads since they began to hold silent
walking vigils every Thursday in the plaza outside of the seat of government in
Buenos Aires in the 1970s, demanding that their "disappeared" sons and daughters
be returned to them. (According to human rights groups, some 30,000 leftists and
others opposed to the regime fell victim to forced disappearance during the
dictatorship).
The construction method used by the project comes from an
Italian firm, M2 Emmedue, and uses structural panels of reinforced galvanised
steel and expanded corrugated polystyrene, with a fast-drying concrete. The
rapid concrete construction system, which has been used in more than 40
countries, is economical, and the homes are cool in the summertime and warm in
the winter.
The cost of each complex is around two million Argentine
pesos (650,000 dollars), which is financed by the Ministry of Human Rights of
the government of the city of Buenos Aires. The participants/beneficiaries were
selected from among the residents of Ciudad Oculta -- mainly people made
homeless by a fire who are living in shacks constructed of sheet metal and
cardboard.
Félix Narváez, 38, who has three children --10-year-old
Yamil, eight-year-old Félix and two-year-old Kevin -- is one of the local
residents whose house was destroyed by the fire over a year ago. Now he is not
only the project's chief electrician but also a future owner of one of the
modern new homes.
"I am building this with love," he commented to IPS.
"I'm very proud, because I feel respected here, not exploited, and I like the
fact that people listen to me. The day of the fire, my son Félix asked me ‘Now
where are we going to sleep?' That was the most painful question I have ever
been asked. But today I am building the answer, to give him a roof over his
head."
There are obvious differences between the working methods of a
human rights group and those of a private company.
"We are doing the
building, but we don't care about making profits under the capitalist logic of
paying less wages for more hours of work," engineer Juan Enrique Reale, projects
director in the Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo, told IPS. "This is a way to
carry out small revolutions in the barrios by building decent housing and
generating real work."
Because of the stigma of living in a slum, those
involved in the project generally have a very difficult time finding work.
Half of the people building the new homes are women, who have received
training in an area that is traditionally dominated by men.
Jessica
Reta, a 26-year-old mother of three, is an example of how the project is opening
up new horizons.
"I thought that my only purpose in life was to attend
to my husband, children and home," Reta told IPS, as she helped build her new
house.
"I graduated from high school, but when I saw I couldn't move
ahead and that no one would give me a job because I lived in a villa miseria, my
ambitions and hopes faded," she said.
Today, however, she returns home
after a long day of work, exhausted but happy that she is learning new skills.
"We have courses in electricity, plumbing and laying tiles. The men who were our
unemployed neighbours are now our teachers," she explained.
Reale said
"the hard work, determination and precision with which these women work are just
incredible."
The engineer also pointed out that the number of mothers
who are now showing up to work in coveralls and hard hats made it necessary to
open up a new child care centre in the neighbourhood to tend to the children
while their mothers are working.
Hebe de Bonafini, the president of the
Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo, said "our housing project initiatives are
making good on a debt that we owe the barrios and the homeless and
marginalised."
On Jan. 22, the Madres also began to build a new housing
complex in Los Piletones, in Villa Soldati, another slum neighbourhood in Buenos
Aires.
In this case, the novelty is that they won a public tender
offered by the Buenos Aires city government in competition with private
companies, to build 432 housing units with the M2 Emmedue system.
The
Madres de Plaza de Mayo project won the public tender because of its added
social value. The plan includes the construction of a child care centre, two
schools, a community centre and a hospital, while providing vocational training
and decent working conditions for the local residents.
The Madres de
Plaza de Mayo are thus not only a symbol of the memory of a tragic episode in
Argentina's history, but of hope for the future as well.
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