Untravelling The Identity Framework In The Soldati Housing Complex, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Abstract

From a socio-spatial approach based on theoretical and methodological references of geography and critical anthropology, this essay aims to address the issues of vulnerability and the identities shaped around marginality in the Villa Soldati neighbourhood, in the southern area of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires. In order to do this, I will first focus on the emergence of the Soldati Housing Complexes (SHC), I will attempt to describe the changes that arose from the planning of the SHC in a specific historical context, and how the development of other factors influenced life in this neighbourhood and the stigma attached to it. In this sense, I will reflect upon the neighbourhood’s social fabric, addressing the ethos of “being from Soldati” and the habitus built over time. My hypothesis is that both developed around a strong sense of internal cohesion, that is the product of an explicit geographical expulsion and marginality, “external” to the neighbourhood. Finally, I will attempt to account for the strong influence of real estate-oriented public policy, gentrification as an objective of the current Buenos Aires city administration and its impact on the SHC in terms of the re-shaping of the identities and sense of belonging within the neighbourhood, as well as the dynamics that shape the relationship with the rest of the city. For this analysis, I will draw upon my experience working at an educational institution and I will use interviews with two residents of the housing complex as well as comparisons between photographs, satellite pictures and maps. In the summary, I reflect back upon my initial hypothesis and I also outline a tension and a contradiction between that identity built upon the idea of an “outside” and the mutual recognition.

Keywords: cartography; ghetto; public policy; segregation.