This is a CTP of initiative: ICA/CCVQ (Argentina)
This Critical Turning Point, is focus on the problem of the connection to public services of the neighborhood were the Quilmes Cooperative Limited of consumption and housing (in its Spanish name Cooperativa de consumo y vivienda Quilmes Ltda.) is located. This problem is very common to several of these housing cooperatives because, usually, the land does not have basic services: connection to the public network of drinking water, to the electric energy network, to the natural gas network and to the drains network, among others. The stage of housing construction and the neighborhood, coincide with the process of crisis of state companies that till the 1990s in which they offered basic public services. The crisis of state companies was solved with the privatization of the services. This decision implied, in the case of the cooperative as well in the periphery neighborhoods, to replace their role by the personal effort –both material and physical- of all partners. “Already in 1989 we can continuing to build, and at that time another 20 houses were adjudicated but we still had a big problem: we did not had electric energy, drinking water, gas and also we did not had asphalt, so was almost impossible to enter to the neighborhood… At that time, we did not had public services; there were public politics that emptied them, in order to privatize them for the value of “2 coins”. In this context the state appeared like inefficient and the neoliberalism "take all" the services and goods that were around it… We struggle during for three years to get electric light. We were literally hooked to three blocks of light, with certain frequency exploded all… There was no water, sometimes when rained a lot flooded all because we did not had marked the streets and the drains were still in the construction phase, so the water came over here. One reason was that around the Cooperative there were “quintas” (similar to small farms), due to its design and construction, the inclination of the land and the way the rains were build, did not benefit the houses of the Cooperative. Most of the times we could not enter to the neighborhood”. Besides the advance in the self-building of houses and the access to urban public services, the Cooperative has others important chievements, such as: the regularization of the neighborhood, got -in the HCD (the Honorable Consejo Deliberante, in its Spanish name) of Quilmes- approbation of the ordinance number 4 (1993) that allowed that the size of the plot could be smaller than the conventional; the municipal plans were approved and the Cooperative got the urbanistic certificate. A decree of the Governor of the Province of Buenos Aires ratified the subdivision of each of the plots enabling the registration of a deed of the 90% of houses, partly by the management of the Cooperative and partly in a private mode, obeying with the Decree-Law 8912/775 (subdivision by Geodesy - Provincial Direction of Territorial Land Registry).
The processes developed in this CTP were co-produced among the Quilmes Cooperative Limited of consumption and housing (in its Spanish name Cooperativa de consumo y vivienda Quilmes Ltda.); provincial and municipal governmental offices and private companies that provided public services. The Municipality of Quilmes approved the plans for the subdivision of the land, in which today are built the houses of the Cooperatives. This allowed the deed of it and increases the number of houses per hectare. The works of public services of the cooperative were made by the members in conjunction with private utility companies and the municipality. As in the case of connection to the drinking water: “We started working with a lot of people in the construction, we are talking about 50 or 60 persons per day in the work, and there we did an agreement with the water supply company to do the drains for the water. We did all the construction and AySA gave us the materials and the Municipality must to help with the technical part. Obviously, they did not give us the materials, and we did the entire work”. The paving of the streets of the neighborhood of the cooperative was solved, without the cooperation of other institutions, using the savings of the surplus of the cooperative during the 1990s: “In the 2002 and the 2003 we had a lot of unemployed workforce, a lot of neighbors doing nothing, and we already did a big number of inter-trabados[1]; so we started to pave the entire neighborhood. We did, with all the neighbors, 22 blocks of paving, but also we taught to each owner how the system worked and how to carry out. We had a mechanical shovel… I had it and worked with it. We had also the materials; we produced inter-trabados during the ’90, with the surplus of the Cooperative. The member of the Cooperative never paid for them, because it was paid with the surplus”. In this way, the members of the Quilmes Cooperative Limited of consumption and housing (in its Spanish name Cooperativa de consumo y vivienda Quilmes Ltda.) were producing, as from building alliances with different institutions, the management of their own resources and training of their workforce and access to public services.
[1] the inter-trabados are solid uniform elements name “adoquines”, that are put in juxtaposition attached, and to due to the lateral contact through the material filling “the board”/la juntas, allows to transfer frictional load from the element that receives it to all its adjacent, working solidarity with the possibility of individual disassembly.
The events related to this Critical Turning Point are framed in the wider national policy of decentralization of the functions of the Argentine Government and the emptying and subsequent privatization of the companies of public services. On July 9, 1989, five months before the original date of assumption of the constitutional mandate (December 10), two months to succeed in elections (May 14), in a hyperinflationary process and facing a serious social crisis, becomes President of the nation the Dr. Carlos Saul Menem, while Dr. Raul Alfonsín leaved the presidential position. Given the unsustainable socio-economic situation, on August 17 of 1989 is approved the Emergency Law (Law 23.696) that will start the process of the Reform of the State (Law 23.697). This law aimed to reduce the tenure of companies, societies and productive governmental establishments, opening “the doors” to private capital inflows from international market. On August of 1989 in Argentina, the National Executive Power sanctioned the law 23.696 of State Reform that declared the emergency of the provision of public services. Since the reform of the National State in the nineties, occurred the provincialism of a significant portion of the public spending, but in practice, this strategy only served to shift the responsibility over the fiscal adjustment. Besides, we can see the territorial impact of the privatization of the services. This caused that private companies sought profitability and run away from the neighborhoods that had less purchasing power. The policy that came next that phase, amplified the lack of integration, followed by a strong and decisive abandonment of the poor people, carried out by the state. That level of decomposition appears clearly in Quilmes during the 1990s. The time of the construction of the infrastructure to connect with the companies’ services, governmental by then, coincided with the previous period of privatization and concession that was characterized by the emptying of them as providers of urban public services (Electricity, Gas, Sanitary and Telephone services).
This Critical Turning Point is totally of a dispute. In the first place arises in response to the needs of the members of the Quilmes Cooperative Limited of consumption and housing (in its Spanish name Cooperativa de consumo y vivienda Quilmes Ltda.), to have basic services in order to be able habit the houses that had been built. Secondly, it is a form of response to face the change of rationality of the agencies that provide these public services, which were privatized during the 1990s. The logic of democratization and universal access was replaced by the increased of high performance of capital investments. “We did not have public services; there were public politics that emptied them, in order to privatize them for the value of “2 coins”. In this context the state appeared like inefficient and the neoliberalism "take all" the services and goods that were around it… We struggle during for three years to get electric light. We were literally hooked to three blocks of light, with certain frequency exploded all… There was no water, sometimes when rained a lot flooded all because we did not had marked the streets and the drains were still in the construction phase, so the water came over here. One reason was that around the Cooperative there were “quintas” (similar to small farms), due to its design and construction, the inclination of the land and the way the rains were build, did not benefit the houses of the Cooperative. Most of the times we could not enter to the neighborhood”. Thirdly, it is a way of keeping alive the cooperative during the period because otherwise the houses that were built would not be habitable. "So during the years ’92 and ‘93, we were struggled for the access to public services, meanwhile we were building, and finishing the houses, because without services people cannot inhabit them. That situation was until 1993, in the same time we bought more land. We were building the house number 80 and we had a “fake” convertibility that told us that was cheaper to buy a house in the center of Quilmes than here. At that moment, we talked about this issue with some colleagues in the Municipality of Quilmes, and they told us: “do not build anymore, buy houses in the center of Quilmes instead”.
The capacity of anticipation for the events of the members of the Quilmes Cooperative Limited of consumption and housing (in its Spanish name Cooperativa de consumo y vivienda Quilmes Ltda.) in this CTP, it can be seen in the strategy for the resolutions of the infrastructure's problems, solved by the auto-construction actions. The members of the Cooperative became aware of the way of resolving the difficulties to access to basic public services from the auto-construction. This represents an awareness of the incapacity of the public utility companies and of the private companies. In this sense, all the development of the Cooperative can be understood as a raising awareness of the need to articulate among the members, the modes of resolution of the access to goods (housing) and basic services (access to the network of electric energy, natural gas, drinking water, drains, waste collection, and asphalt roads that allows the entry to the neighborhood of ambulance and policy).
The learning processes in this Critical Turning Point were produced by the processes of “learning by doing”, related to sef-building and the management of the resources. For example, the member of the Cooperative developed a system of asphalt of the streets from the usage of the inter-trabados. “The material for the streets had been solved in a very creative way. They have a factory of inter-trabados, where a specific kind of brick is produced, that is used for paving”. The connection to services was also carried out from the training of the work force of the Cooperative, so, the members besides to access to basic services obtained training in trade, like construction worker and electrician. This supposed a bigger level of difficulty in the development of the work, but, in the other hand, allows processes in which knowledge circulate inside the Cooperative. “Well, we struggle until we could build a factory, do 800 meters of media-tension, distribute it to all the houses, with did a borehole of 64 meters where we got drinking water and then we distribute it to all the water tanks. I know that is it easy to say it, but we did that among all the neighbors”.
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