This is a CTP of initiative: ICA/MOI (Argentina)
This CTP addresses the first collective action of occupation of an abandoned public building as the genesis of the creation of the Movement of Occupants and Tenants (MOI). In 1987, 120 families occupied a building located in the center of the city of Buenos Aires. Until the 1970s, in that building had operated an orphanage created by an institution called PADELAI. This CTP was chosen because previous research showed that the occupations of the 1980s and, in particular of the PADELAI building, was critical to the subsequent creation of the Movement of Occupants and Tenants. PADELAI experience was a test case of the take of abandoned buildings developed in the south of the city of Buenos Aires during the 80s and 90s. Also, in the early 80´s, the production of habitat, was marked by the advance of a spontaneous experiences based on the massive occupation of peripheral lands and occupation of buildings in the downtown. During the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina between 1976 and 1983, the popular sectors were limited the possibility of access to housing which caused part of this phenomenon. “The take up of lands in the Buenos Aires suburbs, generated material production of entire neighborhoods with streets and infrastructure, in peri-urban lands, with low quality. In general, these lands were unfit for habitation and suffered frequent flood.” Between 1989 and 1991, the occupants developed a strategy focused on the right to the city (regularization) and to housing (implementation of neighborhoods and housing facilities), through the development of an organizational programmatic proposal. For that, the occupants formed the Cooperative of housing, credit and consumer San Telmo Ltd. This cooperative institution promoted, with other NGOs and the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of Buenos Aires, an ordinance based on 5 principles: a) the regularization (titling of land in favor of a condominium integrated by the Cooperative and the City); b) the definition of a housing program with involvement and impact in the neighborhood; c) the development of technical documentation, architecture, social and legal-administrative; d) implementation of the self-managed housing complex and community facilities; e) Creation of a self-managed fund for the low-income population. In 1990, the Ordinance was approved. Then, the city government and the cooperative signed an agreement and initiated the project preliminary tasks. In 1991, the property was deeded for the cooperative (70%) and City (30%). The Padelai experience was motorizing the approach of families of different occupied buildings, and based in these meetings they created the Movement of occupants and Tenants in 1991.
The PADELAI experience allows to observe a process of co-production between the popular practice of taking land and buildings, the development of new public policies and the creation of new organizations. Also, this process was generated from various exchanges with other Latin American experiences. The regularization ordinance, imposed the basic axes of a new proposal for self-managed policies for the Buenos Aires city. At the same time, “a peer group of popular organizations of our country participated with others from Brazil (Sao Paulo and Porto Alegre) and Paraguay of a meeting commemorating the 20th anniversary of the FUCVAM (Uruguayan co-housing federation)…We discovered the most paradigmatic Latin American experience in self-managed cooperatives: the Uruguayan experience FUCVAM inviting us to share their 20 years of history, then 20 years of construction material, different stages traversed; and especially his generous willingness to share. We also find the Brazilian popular movement that had won the Prefecture of San Pablo and had a decision to carry out a self-managed program ´10,000 Mutirones´. Like our own initial experience, we meet fellow Paraguayan Council of Churches and a nascent NGO (Ceglatino) who was advising organizations occupants of land on the outskirts of Asuncion.” In those years, also was created the NGO Habitat Agenda (Programa de Habitat -PROHA). This organization initiated contacts with commissions of occupied houses in the districts of Villa Crespo, Almagro and San Telmo. This network led the PROHA to the PADELAI and then to the birth of the "MOI". Another important co-production process was the development of new proposals for architectural and urban design based on the recycling of taken buildings. These proposals were developed by teachers and students of the University of Buenos Aires, facing the new phenomenon of the occupation of buildings in the city. Such projects were developed in coordination with occupants organizations, NGOs and the city experts. A critical element in the process of co-production presented was the consolidation of democracy in the country after seven years of dictatorship.
The occupation of abandoned buildings in the 1980s was directly linked to the neoliberal economic policy initiated years ago by the military dictatorship that carried out a coup in 1976. In this scenario, the beginning of the 80s were marked by the exhaustion of the dictatorial experience, which support both international and domestic, collapsed with the military defeat in the Falklands War. In a context of increasing expression of social discontent, he began rebuilding the socio-political plot that foreshadowed the democratic "transition". The 1980s in Argentina was marked by the economic crisis that faced the first democratic government after the dictatorship. The main problems facing the new administration was the deep extern debt inherited from the military government and an inflationary process that increased at the end of the decade. These difficulties worsened the socio-economic conditions of the popular sectors and led to a series of strikes, protests and social conflicts (including lootings). The consequences of this process were the electoral defeat of the ruling party and the early resignation of President Raul Alfonsin in 1989. In this complex situation, Carlos Menem assume the presidency of the country with promises of wage increases and productive revolution. However, once he took the power, he carried out a program of liberal reforms that included privatization of public companies and public spending cuts. Also, Buenos Aires city underwent a profound urban transformation since the development of private estate projects in public buildings of great cultural value as “Puerto Madero”, “Mercado de Abasto” and “Galerias Pacifico” was favored.
The occupations of buildings were installed as the setting for the construction of urban policies for popular habitat. The occupation of buildings in the city, were massive as a whole (about 150,000 occupants are calculated), but interstitials and scattered (a typical "occupied house" had some 20 families and they are in all neighborhoods). The occupants initially sought a "no visibility" strategy, aware of both its violative attitude of "private property" as the value of the land (200-500 US $ per m2, depending on the neighborhood). Organizational processes were initially very limited, restricted to internal and daily organization of families in the building, or linked to defense against eviction proceedings (they were civilian until the amendment to the penal code in 1993). The phenomenon of occupation of buildings set the question of "the city for whom", the right to construction of a democratic city. At the same time and from a more specific view, the heritage recovery and building rehabilitation in fully built urban areas with significant architectural heritage abandoned and/or damaged. Another significant aspect was the recovery of the everyday starting from access to equipment and the existing infrastructure within the city and underpin the plot and the quality of daily relations in the neighborhood environment (health, education, sports, culture). In the early years, with the occupation of the PADELAI building, some groups were already organized to promote evictions. In particular, a movement led by a councilor of the "Democratic Centre Union", a right-wing political party. In this context, there was initial contact between the PROHA and the PADELAI's occupants, they begin to think, beyond resistance to eviction, the possibility of claiming their right to the city and to live in that property. One of the great challenges in the PADELAI experience and other cases of occupation of buildings, was stop thinking in housing problems and start to think in terms of right to the city. Thus, the organizations involved in the occupation of buildings began to intervene in broader urban planning processes.
The process of this CTP was not anticipated, but rather strategically planned because the driving group of occupations then became in the MOI. On the other hand, this social process of production of habitat, massively developed by the popular sectors, was also basis and support the recovery of knowledge and practices from the Public University. This institution was the one that began to visualize the possibility of a massive occupation of abandoned buildings. At that level, the actions (more or less coordinated according each case) occupation were anticipated as a popular solution to the homelessness of a sector of society.
“The occupation in central areas in Buenos Aires City, which along with other types of popular habitat integrated a nearby universe to 500,000 people, compared to the existence of an empty park of 150,000 units, raised in the 1980s, the need to develop policies popular habitat to build a bridge between social demand and physical existence.” The return of the democracy made possible the reconstruction of old chairs and recovery orientation as Architecture-City, which opened causes of redefining professional profiles both proyectuales specificities and urban management processes.
The basic goal of the process of occupation of buildings and land in the 1980s was to make a direct action. That practices involved a temporary solution to the problem of habitat for needed families, but also implied visibility of what is become a movement for social habitat. Also, the plot of organizations involved deepened with the addition of a multi sectoral Commission and a neighborhood newspaper called "Todo Telmo". In terms of learning, the process of exchange and sharing of experiences with other organizations experienced in Latin America was very important. From this experience, emerged the proposal to create a Latin American organization of habitat: the Latin American Secretariat for Popular Housing (Secretaría Latinoamericana de Vivienda Popular - SELVIP). “The encounter between the experience of Uruguayan cooperatives and the Argentinian phenomenon of occupation of buildings, opened a challenging dialogue on some axes for policy building: formality and informality in the world of work (the social base of these experiences); peripheral construction and ownership of the downtown; execution of new buildings vs. building rehabilitation and heritage recovery.” In that sense, another learning process was the interaction between social organizations and academic institutions through the MOI. In this regard, various agreements with the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of Buenos Aires were performed. Moreover, in those years PADELAI building was visited by the architect Enrique Ortiz, who later published in documents of the Habitat International Coalition (HIC) information on the experience; and which he was responsible for Habitat United Nations architect Andrés Necochea, who expressed his enthusiastic opinion in the sense of shaping and promoting an organization of occupants. The creation of the Movement of Occupants and Tenants was the main organizational learning of the social groups occuped land and buildings just 5 years earlier.
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