What lies on the other side of the train tracks

Poverty. It's an ugly reality which most US cities can hide away in a part of town more or less isolated from the rest of the city. Where I'm from, a resident could go years without passing through Newtown, home to most of those who live under the poverty line in the generally wealthy county of Sarasota. Obviously, in bigger cities like New York and Washington, DC, it's a little harder to isolate poverty into one neighborhood, although those cities are working hard at it. In DC, higher rents and higher property demand within the city are pushing those who cannot afford it further and further out of the city into less expensive areas of Maryland and Virginia.

In Buenos Aires, however, one is confronted daily by extreme poverty. Not only does one see tons of homeless people and families sleeping on doorsteps but one also cannot escape seeing the villas miserias (or what we would call slums). Unlike in US cities, these marginalized villas are not separated from the city. There are 21 officially recognized villas spread throughout the city of Buenos Aires and  countless more throughout the province of Buenos Aires. The most famous and perhaps most overwhelming (at least from the perspective of an outsider looking in) is the Villa 31.

Now, I've been on a few mission/service trips to countries in Central America, so I've been exposed to slums and shanty towns before – though I am certainly not claiming to be some sort of expert. I've worked on projects in neighborhoods where people build their homes out of whatever material they can find, where houses are separated by dirt paths covered with garbage, where the sewage/drainage system is composed of ditches dug by residents, and where luxuries like running water and electricity are hard to come by. Most of the homes are single story (for structural reasons) and composed of metal sheets which cover a living space often complete with a dirt floor.

Even with this small bit of previous experience, I can't help but feel overwhelmed each time I see the Villa 31. I'm going to try to describe it, but maybe seeing a picture will help with the visualization. The Villa is certainly not hard to miss since it surrounds a highway which serves a main access point to the city. As one drives by, one sees three, four, five, and even six-story mostly brick buildings which look like square rooms stacked precariously one on top of the other. Many homes only have two walls and a roof so you see right through the family's living space. In order to 'steal' power, cables are strung haphazardly from wires bringing electricity into the city. Within the legally unrecognized Villa there are businesses, restaurants, and hotels; it's almost like a parallel society to the rest of Buenos Aires.

A few buildings in the Villa 31

For me, one of the most shocking aspects of the Villa is its location. It literally borders one of the wealthiest and most expensive neighborhoods of the city, Recoleta. All one has to do to get from Recoleta to the Villa 31 is cross one of the city's poshest avenues, la Avenida del Libertador, walk across the train tracks, and, voilà, welcome to another world. One minute you're walking from designer store to designer store in the upscale shopping center Patio Bullrich and the next you're walking from shack to shack among one of the city's largest shanty towns.

Patio Bullrich: one of Buenos Aires's most expensive shopping malls which lies about 200 meters from the Villa 31

The location of the Villa has led to many confrontations among the politicians of the city as well as the inhabitants of the nearby neighborhoods. Its rapid and uncontrolled expansion has even interfered with the all important bus and train station of Retiro, as some roadways and access points were cut off by illicit construction – not to mention the concerns about violent crime which surround the Villa.

A sky-view of just one part of the Villa 31. (Notice the train tracks separating the villa from the rest of the city)

Since I have not actually entered the Villa myself, nor do I know anybody personally who lives in the Villa 31, I'm not going to comment on the situations of the inhabitants regarding their backgrounds or reasons for living there, but I will comment a little on the massive centralization of Argentina. From what I've gathered from conversations with various Argentine friends and family, one of the main reasons why areas like the Villa 31 exist is the centralization of the country in Buenos Aires. Almost half of the nation's 40 million residents live in Buenos Aires, 15 million in the province and almost 3 million in the city. This massive centralization of population is due in large part to the perception that there is more opportunity and wealth in Buenos Aires than in the rest of the country. Thus, often when people from impoverished backgrounds move to the city with nothing, they settle in a villa miseria. At this point, I'm not really sure what the government is doing to solve the issue of the villas (especially regarding the safety of the villas' inhabitants who are exposed to major structural risks due to a huge lack of infrastructure and buildings which are certainly not up to code). Last I heard, the city government was trying to begin a massive urbanization project for the villas, but I'm not sure how much progress has been made.

PS. To read more about the Villa 31 here's a great article from the Huffington Post.