Written by Raúl Zibechi
Source: Americas Program
Translated from: ¿Ayudar a los pobres o aprender de ellos?
Translated by: Monica Wooters
The ideology that emanates from the international finance organizations maintains that the poor suffer from a “lack” of resources, that poverty is a scourge to be combated, and that the best method of doing so is to “help” the poor. On the other hand, the priests that live among the poor believe that it is more important to learn from them.
The Church of Our Lady of Caacupé is located in the center of the Villa 21 neighborhood—also known as the “Shantytown” (Villa de Barracas) or “Paraguayan Town”—of Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is a small parish on Osvaldo Cruz Street, the main thoroughfare of the town where few cars pass and dozens of people come and go via the asphalted road. However, the first impressions are deceiving: every few meters narrow streets intersect and weave through the neighborhood where some 40,000 people reside.
To one side of the church lies a small shack whereupon are painted large frescoes of the priests Carlos Mugica and Daniel de la Sierra, with arms opened wide in a sign of hope and welcoming. Mugica is a major icon for all of the villa priests, as he was assassinated in 1974 by the Anticommunist Alliance of Argentina (Alianza Anticomunista Argentina) and Daniel de la Sierra was the founder of the parish where he is now buried. In a small room within the parish resides Father Pepe, José María Di Paola, with long hair, casual clothes, 46 years old, and 10 years in the villa.
The parish was founded in 1987 when it became independent from the traditional Sacred Heart Basilica, found just a few blocks from the villa. “The priest Daniel asked the people what they wanted to call the parish and the majority decided on the patron saint of Paraguay,” says Pepe. The villa is located in a shantytown at the southern edge of the city of Buenos Aires where it borders with Riachuelo, a neighborhood filled with abandoned factories.
The neighborhood is composed of 112 acres, however if one adds nearby Villa 24 and the various squatter sites around, the actual size is closer to 216 acres. While Villa 21 is made up of mainly Paraguayans, Villa 24 has a majority of Argentines from the north of the country such as Santiago del Estero and Tucumán. A census taken by the Buenos Aires city government states that the population of both neighborhoods live in three types of housing: 31% in houses with flooring or running water; 32% in houses with dirt floors or without running water; and another 33% live in shanties which are even more precarious. One in five residents are children or adolescents between the ages of 10 and 19.
The Stigma of Violence
Villa 21 was the subject of news a few months ago when five people were killed in shootings. Almost every month the villas appear in the daily newspapers due to similar occurrences: the media systematically associates violence with crime and drugs, as occurs in all of Latin America. But violence and crime also have a political cost, something that the media tends to hide.
Bernardo Kliksberg, adviser to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) for the region, states that criminality and violence are perceived as the major problem facing the people of Latin America as shown in the Latin Barometer. In effect, the rate of homicides for every 100,000 inhabitants grew from 12.5 in 1980 to 25.1 in 2006. In comparison, Norway has a rate of 0.9 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, Denmark 1.1, Canada 1.5, Finland 2.2, and the United States, which holds the highest rate for a developed nation, has reached only 5.5. However Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro have rates of 60 homicides for every 100,000 inhabitants, statistics that are higher than those found even in countries undergoing wars.
In 1980 Latin America had some 136 million people living in poverty. Today there are 200 million, or 40% of the population. This makes it the region with the highest level of inequality in the world. Between the incomes of the richest 10% and the poorest 10% there is a difference of one to 50. In Bolivia that difference jumps to one to 168; in Colombia, 1 to 63; Brazil, one to 58; and in Paraguay one to 73. In contrast the ratio between the incomes of the rich and poor in Spain is closer to one to 10, and in Norway one to 6. “The inequality is the principle reason for the poverty in Latin America,” concludes Kliksberg.
Violence and crime grew in the same period that inequality and poverty jumped. If this is not put into context, says Kliksberg, “it gives this impression that there exists within the society a group of crazy individuals who commit crimes.” As a result, the high levels of poverty and inequality make Latin America “a tense continent with a low level of social cohesion. It is not the same being a poor person in a poor society as it is to be a poor person in the society with the highest rates of inequality in the world. The level of tension that is generated is tremendous and it is heightened when one is poor after not having been poor,” says Kliksberg.
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