Thousands Made Homeless by COVID-19 Are Squatting on a Vacant Lot in Argentina

BUENOS AIRES - Yamila Rodriguez broke into a wide smile as she turned to watch the sun set over the improvised huts and tarpaulin tents of her new neighborhood. With no electricity, her way along grassy streets and ditches would soon be lit by little more than the light of the moon. She says she likes it that way.

“I prefer not to have power, because the night is beautiful,” she told VICE News, gazing at the darkening sky. “I know this field from end to end.”

Rodriguez is one of thousands of people who have been occupying this vacant lot in Guernica, on the southern edge of the city of Buenos Aires, since July. Many came after losing their jobs and homes because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, they are braving the rain and wind in makeshift huts of wood, metal sheeting, and tarpaulins.

Rodriguez was on her way to a meeting to find out whether they would be forced off the land the next morning by the authorities.

The community hopes they will be allowed to stay and build safe, dignified homes for their families. But they’re fighting a repossession order that would kick them off, and hand the land over to owners including El Bellaco, a construction company that plans to build an exclusive gated community.

When the pandemic hit, Rodriguez had to move back in with her mum. “I worked in catering,” she said. “My income went from having three jobs to zero.” The house was packed: Her eight siblings were also living there, and several of them had brought their families.

So when her brothers moved to the land occupation, she went to help and ended up staying. Community leaders say there are 2,500 families living there, including around 3,000 children. Several women on the site are fleeing domestic violence, and some people were living on the streets.

Ownership of the site is claimed by El Bellaco and several other private owners. Lawyers assisting the families now living there say the claims of the companies to the land is tenuous, and the site was a long-abandoned vacant lot that the state could take over under Argentine law in order to protect the occupiers.

“These are lands that have been in a state of abandonment for decades, and are in an extremely weak land ownership situation on the part of the claimants,” read court filings by María del Rosario Fernández and Eduardo Néstor Soares of the Guild of Lawyers, a professional group that focuses on human rights and social causes.

A team of architects and lawyers says there’s room for El Bellaco to build their estate on the land next to the occupation without evicting anyone. Under Argentine law, property developers building this kind of large project are required to cede 10% of the land. By placing this concession next to the wasteland, there would be enough space to build a housing estate for those living at the occupation.

The architects have drawn up detailed plans to transform the site into a new neighborhood of permanent housing, complete with green spaces, health centres and a kindergarten.

The expulsion date has been slowly pushed back as the occupants, judge, and authorities look for a solution that would avoid a forced eviction. Such ejections are usually violent and people are sometimes killed: two people were shot dead and five more injured after police used live rounds during the eviction of the Parque Indoamericano occupation in Buenos Aires in 2010. Activist Rodolfo Orellana was fatally shot at an occupation in the Ciudad Evita area in 2018.

Last week, local judge Martín Rizzo, who has been handling the case, postponed the eviction to October 15, noting that Buenos Aires Province governor Axel Kicillof had just announced a massive housing plan that could influence the situation in Guernica.

The Guernica occupation is already organized into four barrios (neighborhoods). Plots have been carefully kept free for public squares and even kitchen gardens, staked out in the grass by fences of canes and string. With the threat of eviction constantly looming, people are reluctant to invest in more permanent structures, according to Nazareno Olguin, whose house is a sturdy cube of corrugated iron in a part of the settlement known as La Unión.

“Rather than this being turned into a barrio for millionaires, I’d prefer it was a place for people to live,” he said.

He was preparing breakfast with his neighbours as he spoke to VICE News, sprinkling sugar and grated ginger into his morning mate (a caffeinated infusion ubiquitous in Argentina) to ward off colds. They sat on overturned crates and empty paint buckets around a log fire, nibbling biscuits and heating water in a sooty black kettle on a grill.

With no drains or sewage system, rain wreaks havoc here, turning the streets into a swamp  and soaking clothes and beds. Olguin has little choice but to spend rainy days sheltering indoors, playing cards with his neighbour, Rodrigo. Both his firewood and the ground get wet, making a fire near impossible.

“On rainy days, we don’t eat, generally,” he said. “Just maybe cold cuts.”

The Guernica occupation is currently understood to be the largest in Argentina, but smaller settlements like these are common, according to Jonatan Baldiviezo, president of the Observatory of the City, a think-tank that analyses the public policy that shapes cities. Argentina’s Ministry of Security estimates that there have been around 1,800 occupations in Buenos Aires province this year to date. Observers believe the number is increasing because of COVID-19.

Occupations should be seen as a product of unequal and highly concentrated land distribution, made worse by neoliberal deregulation during Argentina’s last dictatorship, which ended in 1983, says Baldiviezo.

“Historically in Argentina, distribution of land was never equative. Not to produce, nor to live,” he said. “That distribution has been concentrated in the hands of the few in recent years.”

Groups are sometimes allowed to stay on land they occupy, but it’s difficult to predict the fate of specific cases because it depends on a number of factors including government policy and what the occupied land is like, according to Baldiviezo.

In the meantime, the occupants are stigmatized as delinquents by hostile local media and face constant harassment from the police. Buenos Aires Province security minister Sergio Berni has told Argentine media that middle-men and organized criminals are taking advantage of people’s desperation so they can buy and sell the land.

But the occupants are adamant that they’re just there because they desperately need somewhere to live. “What we want is a piece of land,” Rodriguez said.

Argentina was in the grip of a brutal economic crisis even before the pandemic hit, and COVID-19 has made a dire situation worse. The economy has been in recession since 2018 and galloping inflation means workers’ salaries are rapidly losing value.

On Wednesday, the country’s National Institute of Statistics and Census (INDEC) released figures showing that unemployment had reached 13.1% and 40.9% of people were living in poverty. UNICEF has forecast that 63% of Argentine children will be poor by the end of the year.

For the people at the land occupation in Guernica, they have little choice but to keep fighting. Hunkering against the wind or squatting on car tyres around campfires, people reacted to the news that the eviction had been postponed with weary relief.

They knew they could still get forced out. But not today.