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More than a month after the social, preventive and compulsory isolation declared by the Argentine Government, the first two confirmed cases of coronaviruses in the Padre Carlos Mugica neighborhood, ex Villa 31 and 31 bis, put neighbors and organizations from all the villages on alert and emergency settlements.
The situation of the first 43-year-old patient, who lived in a box with her parents, both older adults and patients at risk, and shared the house with three other families, revealed a scene of fear that is repeated in many other neighborhoods. popular in the City and Province of Buenos Aires.
According to the testimony given by the first patient to the organization “La Garganta Poderosa”, the woman who became infected with coronavirus shared the bathroom with thirteen people, who are currently isolated. Both this woman and the new case that was confirmed on Wednesday the 22nd suffer from asthma.
The second infection is a 36-year-old woman, who became infected after having close contact with the first case. Both people were treated at CeSAC No. 21 in the popular neighborhood, which is the center of possible Covid-19 cases.
The general critical overcrowding increases the panorama of fear in the villages, for which reason, the social groups present request more presence from the State, while the main public actors face the situation with assistance in schools, information campaigns and actions by the Armed Forces. .
To account for this difficult reality, the Profile Education Research Team got into the corridors of the Buenos Aires and Buenos Aires villages to reflect the harsh X-ray that these neighborhoods go through in quarantine.
The overcrowding that exposes the testimony of the first confirmed case of Covid-19 is characteristic of urban villas in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires (CABA). According to the latest survey by the Villero Observatory of “La Garganta Poderosa”, the outlook is even more serious than in the Province of Buenos Aires (PBA), as between four and ten people live in each section of the city.
Natalia Molina, a neighbor of Villa 21.24 and a member of the Corriente Villera Independiente, told the Investigation Team that the lack of urbanization in the neighborhood does not favor quarantine.
“Bathrooms and kitchens are shared by six people, the corridors between house and house are half a meter or a meter and there is no ventilation,” Molina told the Investigation Team. For this reason, the residents are made aware so that they do not leave the neighborhood, because although the referent of 21.24 assured that “it was a disease of the rich,” the representatives of social organizations know that if the virus enters the town, it would attack the most vulnerable population.
Along the same lines, Adela Britos, president of the Neighborhood Council of Neighborhood Councilors Carlos Mugica and neighbor of the neighborhood thirty years ago, stated in dialogue with the Investigation Team that after the confirmation of the first case, the priority is that the inhabitants neighborhoods become aware so that the disease does not spread. “We already know what the symptoms are, we already know the problem that it can cause to the family and to the entire neighborhood. We have to be inside our houses, “said Britos.
According to the latest survey presented by the TECHO organization, more than three million people currently live in the emergency villages in Argentina. More than half of the informal settlements are concentrated in PBA (1,352, 55% of the total), where 61% of the families living in the country are in very precarious conditions to face quarantine: 95% of the families do not have access to running water and 98% do not have regular access to the sewage network, according to this survey, which the Research Team agreed.
This is situated in a context of global inequality. The global NGO Oxfam accounts for 735 million people living in extreme poverty in the world. Between dire need and critical overcrowding, the big picture is one of hunger and fear.
In PBA more than two million people live in towns and settlements, according to the Buenos Aires government’s Ministry of Community Development. The demand for food increased as the quarantine progressed, reaching an increase of 40%. For this reason, the management of Axell Kicillof tripled the budget of the School Food Service (SAE) to reach more than 10,000 public schools every fortnight, in addition to the 4,500 dining rooms and food distribution points to which it provides assistance in delivering commodity.
Fernanda Raverta, Minister of Community Development, explained to the Research Team how the work is done. “We continue to accompany the different members of our ministry in the poorest neighborhoods of the Province of Buenos Aires, also in the Child Development Units, shelter houses, and the rest of the initiatives. Everything he is in charge of, the provincial government put in function of this health emergency, ”said Raverta.
Despite these measures, which are combined with subsidies such as the Universal Child Allowance (AUH), the increase in minimum pensions, the AlimentAR card and the recent income for emergency families, poverty and precariousness are structural in the Province. .
According to the latest INDEC report, 1,315,000 people live in a state of critical overcrowding in 227,000 Argentine households, that is, more than 3 people per room. Furthermore, more than two million people do not have a bathroom and 848 thousand inhabitants have to access water from outside the home.
“The measures that were taken at a general level are good, but food assistance is taking too long to arrive and is not covering all neighborhoods sufficiently,” said Francisco Ferrario, director of Regionales de Techo Argentina, an organization that works at 111 emergency settlements. Ferrario added that the crisis situation hit doubly in these sectors and forces organizations to multiply their presence and assistance.
Some organizations further emphasize the increased need for food. According to María Nichea, a reference for the Barrios de Pie organization in the northwest of the Province of Buenos Aires, the families that resort to the organization’s 980 picnic areas and dining rooms doubled.
In the PBA, Barrios de Pie directly assists 40,000 families and accompanies risk factor purchases with people. Regarding the quarantine, Nichea said: “Most people take it seriously and are complying, but there are people who out of necessity have to go out and look for work, whatever it is.”
“What this shows is an x-ray of the economic situation. It is time to think about public policies that give a structural response to this problem, not a patch for these months, “said Nicolás Marcioni, a member of the Darío Santillany Front organization of the Movement of Peoples network.
Marcioni agrees that the demand for food doubled and tripled in some neighborhoods. Two weeks ago, the organization of which she is a member was invited to join the National Emergency Committee, which in its first two meetings in March only brought together organizations allied with the government, the Church, some NGOs and public officials.
In CABA, the need presents a similar situation. As in the PBA, hunger is the main actor in the villages and emergency settlements. The number of people who attend dining rooms has doubled and tripled in some cases, according to the social organizations the Research Team consulted for this report.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Human Development and Buenos Aires Habitat adjusts policies to manage the 287 dining rooms in the City. “The objective is that no one is missing a plate of food during these difficult times,” said Minister María Migliore in dialogue with the Research Team.
However, the urgent need seems to have exceeded the capacity of Buenos Aires management in some districts. “The City government today gives us 400 servings and people ask us for 700 plates of food per day,” said Mónica Ruejas, president of the neighborhood council of the “Los Piletones” neighborhood of Villa Soldati.
“The feeders who attended fifty people, today attend one hundred. The only merchandise they have is the one that the government orders, but we have experienced situations of all colors to be able to move the food to the dining rooms. In many cases, if Barrios de Pie does not deliver the merchandise, people do not have enough to eat, “Sebastián Martino, coordinator of the organization” Barrios de Pie “in CABA, told the Research Team.
From the City government schools, the delivery of bags of breakfast, snacks and lunch is organized, but only for students who have the Dining Room Scholarship. In the first days of April, the first delivery of 349,220 bags was made to 1,100 Buenos Aires schools. Meals and snacks for school enrollment delivered by the government of Horacio Rodríguez Larreta will have a frequency of fifteen days.
According to Graciela Duarte, of the Villara Independent Current of Villa 31, on April 2 it was the first time that she was able to remove the nutritional basket of her four-year-old son. She was summoned to the Maria Elena Walsh Educational Center and waited more than four hours in an agglomeration to receive two liters of milk, four alfajores, two packets of cookies, some muffins and some tea bags, which would correspond only to the “snack” of the nutritious school basket.
Although neighbors and social organizations assure that the content of the basket varied according to the area of the capital, the City government affirmed that the basket delivered was the same in the north and south of the municipality and that the elements of it correspond to the type of scholarship of the student.
The problem is compounded by a lack of work. Most of the people who live in the villas do not have access to formal employment and live in “changas” that were cut with the obligatory isolation. “People are not being able to go out to work. There are many heads of household who are domestic servants in middle-class houses and the quarantine cut their wages, because although it is obligatory, many employers do not maintain the payment, ”denounced Melisa Correa, referring to the Network of Teachers, Families and Organizations of the Under Flowers.
In the Padre Ricciardelli neighborhood, known as Villa 1.11.14 until the law that changed its name in 2019, more than forty thousand people live, according to the 2018 census of the City Housing Institute (IVC). There, an episode of police abuse occurred in the first days of the quarantine, starring three gendarmes who made two young men squat.
After the broadcast of the video of the event went viral on social networks, the security minister, Sabrina Frederic, decided to separate the three agents from the security forces. “Stay in your neighborhood” is the adaptation for the villas of the slogan “Stay in your house” that the Government released. “We are used to living in quarantine, it is the same situation that would be in a prison,” said Father Paco Olveira, from the organization “Cures in Anointing with the Poor.” The group met with President Alberto Fernández three weeks ago and expressed concern about the excessive price increase in shops within the villas.
“Locals charge a plus of 10% or 15% for paying with the food card and it is normal practice to pay more to be charged for the SUBE or the prepaid electricity,” Olveira told the Investigation Team. And he added that although the Government launched a Decree of Necessity and Urgency (DNU) to avoid power cuts due to non-payment, in popular neighborhoods it is not being followed.
For those who work in these neighborhoods, police repression was a factor that added to the quarantine. For this reason, the organization “La Garganta Poderosa” began organizing residents in commissions that control police actions, record situations of violence and assist victims. Fidel Ruiz, head of the “People’s Control Teams for the Security Forces” in CABA, told the Investigation Team that complaints of violence and arbitrariness have increased since the quarantine began.
When consulted by the Investigation Team, the Institutional Communication Department of the General Secretariat of the Army stated that they had received no complaints about the actions of the armed forces in the most humble neighborhoods.
On the other hand, in the Province, the Argentine Army deals with the production of hygiene elements, such as chinstraps and gel alcohol, attends vaccination controls and prepares and distributes food to families, picnic areas and dining rooms.
In this framework, disinformation can be a great aggravating factor. Therefore, social organizations emphasize informational campaigns on WhatsApp. The Ministry of Human Development and Habitat of the City, for its part, disseminates Coronavirus prevention content through brochures, megaphones and social networks.
In the information package, they also share alerts about dengue, which is very present in popular neighborhoods. Argentina currently has the highest peak of dengue since the 2015-2016 outbreak, where there were 76,803 cases and 11 deaths from dengue.
So far in 2020 and until April 17, 39,573 suspected cases of dengue have been reported. CABA is the most compromised area and tripled its cases compared to January 2019. According to the latest CABA Epidemiological Bulletin, 4,049 cases were confirmed in the City so far in 2020. More than 92% of confirmed cases do not have a travel history, that is, they contracted dengue directly from the CABA and not in risk areas.
The places most affected by dengue are precisely where the largest towns in the City and Province are located. The Buenos Aires neighborhoods with the highest number of confirmed cases are: Flores (23%), Barracas (13%), Villa Lugano (14%), Retiro (4%). While in the PBA, where 947 dengue cases were confirmed, the most compromised regions are in Greater Buenos Aires, municipalities such as Tres de Febrero, Avellaneda, General San Martín, Hurlingam, Quilmes, La Matanza, among others, according to the Bulletin Epidemiological of the province.
“Many of the people who live in the neighborhood have had dengue once, it is an everyday situation and there are no concrete policies on the part of the city government to combat it,” said Eva Rodriguez, a reference from the Lugano Network of Villa 20. In this neighborhood, residents and organizations have carried out a historic demand for 34 years for the opening of a Hospital. In 2020, the 207 confirmed cases in this neighborhood were treated at Health Centers 18 and 43, with limited resources.
Finally, the tenants of the villas do not have great expectations of being contained by the presidential DNU that prohibits increases and evictions. Charly Fernández, a reference from the Front of Organizations in Struggle (FOL), stressed that in most of the villas the tenants business, investors outside the villa, is not officially registered, therefore, it is almost impossible to regulate it.
“There are two types of rents, that of a family that makes itself a little house that it rents as a changa and that of external investors, who build modern tenements and take advantage of the poor,” said Fernández. In Villa 31, the complexes occupy the front of the villa and are up to four stories high. This situation is repeated in other urban villas such as Villa 21.24.
For this reason, more than sixty organizations presented a letter on Thursday, April 9 to the City government to guarantee compliance with the DNU that prohibits evictions. Jonatan Baldiviezo, director of the Observatory of the Right to the City (ODC), promoter of this measure, warned the Investigation Team of the concern over the increase in evictions in the port towns. The situation is also critical in the main popular neighborhoods of the Buenos Aires suburbs.
The Covid-19 pandemic makes Argentina’s deepest social problems visible. And the concern with which the quarantine is lived in the emergency neighborhoods in the City and the Province of Buenos Aires is a very clear example of this crisis.
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