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25 years after the division of the GBA municipalities: the hidden plot of a plan that was truncated by political pulls

2020-11-10T13:29:43.403Z


The "Genesis 2000" project, in 1995, created the parties of San Miguel, Malvinas Argentinas, José C. Paz, Ituzaingó, Hurlingham and Ezeiza. He proposed many more, but six large municipalities kept them from shrinking them.


Pedro Gianello

11/10/2020 8:31 AM

  • Clarín.com

  • Zonal

Updated 11/10/2020 8:31 AM

The plateau of the 90's was starting. The peso was worth the same as the dollar, the (hyper) inflation was beginning to be left behind by the Convertibility Plan and the Buenos Aires Conurbano, which had 19 municipalities and 7,969,324 inhabitants -according to the Census of 1991-, it was going to be divided forever, in a first stage that would end up being unique and eternal.

The then governor Eduardo Duhalde sponsored

the "Genesis 2000" project

, with which he intended to change the appearance of Greater Buenos Aires.

But the 25-year-old plan was halfway there.

The first stage consisted of the creation of

six new municipalities in the suburbs

, in which furniture stores or corralones served as municipalities.

Some of the new communes had nowhere to bury the dead.

But in addition, the new mayors had to use special items for basic state infrastructure works or to buy machines, while the construction of

the municipal palaces had to wait years.

The scalpel that dissected the old municipalities left curiosities such as the town that "took advantage" of the division to join another district, limits on the hour in the Buenos Aires Legislature, and several subsequent stages planned with details and even names that would never be carried out .

Even so, the protagonists of that moment, the brand-new six parties still today claim that at that time they

ceased to be the "backyard"

of the old capital cities and that with its creation the State approached the neighborhoods.

In the 1990s, the ghost of an internal dispute between Peronism between former president Carlos Menem and Duhalde hovered, and the division also appeared as a tool to cut power to Menemistas mayors and strengthen the weight of the then governor.

In 1993, Duhalde entrusted the then national deputy Carlos Raúl Alvarez with the division of the GBA.

"In his planning scheme for a more balanced province, with projection and development, he had visualized the need to 'Redimension the Greater Buenos Aires. In June of that year I coordinated a meticulous survey and feasibility work as representative of the Province in the Federal Council de Inversiones (CFI) ", Alvarez reminds

Clarín

today

.

Together with urban planners, architects, lawyers, political scientists, engineers, graduates in economics and education, they developed the project with four axes: socioeconomic;

infrastructure;

legal and institutional;

and financial.

"It was aimed at

municipalities with up to 300 thousand inhabitants

and with the beginning of a gradual decentralization process that would optimize local management," adds Alvarez, who is also a neighbor of Morón, one of the districts that was divided.

The truth is that they presented a complete project, which sought

the division of at least 10 municipalities, of which only four were finally reached

.

General Sarmiento, of 652,969 inhabitants, ceased to exist and gave way to San Miguel, Malvinas Argentinas and José C. Paz.

While in the same vote a piece of Del Viso, who was from that municipality, became part of the Pilar Party.

From the Morón of 643,553 residents the new municipalities of Hurlingham and Ituzaingó were detached;

while in 236.81 square kilometers that belonged to Esteban Echeverría Ezeiza was born;

and with the lands of San Vicente and Punta Indio, President Perón was created, but further away from the GBA.

"We can see how the urban infrastructure, the new municipal headquarters, the deliberative bodies, the projection of the school infrastructure, the laying of road networks, the recovery of public spaces, the laying of lights and everything that from the beginning of this strategic decision appeared on the horizon ", evaluates now the former deputy Alvarez.


25 years after the division that was voted in 1994 and carried out in 1995 with the first election of the new mayors, who took office in December of that year, the former governor and former President, Eduardo Duhalde, proudly highlights the divisions (NdR. the interview was prior to his statements about a possible coup in 2021).

"The case with the greatest progress for me is that of San Miguel, which was divided into Malvinas Argentinas and José C Paz. What these two districts have progressed have nothing to do with San Miguel, both in the first administration of (Jesús) Cariglino as in the current one (Leonardo Nardini), they have progressed a lot. There is an issue that politicians, selfish as we usually are, do not realize that

the governments of the neighborhood cannot have more than 200 thousand inhabitants

. Suddenly dividing a district like La Matanza into seven should be divided little by little. Because dividing a district is no small feat. You have to see that there are no new municipalities that have very little chance of progress, "emphasizes Duhalde.

Today the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INDEC) estimates that the 24 municipalities of the GBA live 11,264,104 inhabitants,

3.2 million more than when the "Genesis 2000" was raised in 1994

.

From Belgrano to Malvinas

One of the participants of the group of professionals in the original project of "Genesis 2000", assures that the creation of Malvinas Argentinas as a district was not foreseen, which would have given industrial parks to José C. Paz, one of the municipalities with fewer resources economic of the suburbs.

"The project originally proposed

the division into two of General Sarmiento

, which would give rise to José C. Paz and the residual General Sarmiento municipality under the name of San Miguel", comments one of the former advisers.

Finally, the three municipalities were created with Malvinas Argentinas as the new district, which before was about to be baptized as Manuel Belgrano because the Belgrano Norte railway passes through there;

although they also considered the Falkland Islands.

On October 20, 1994, Provincial Law No. 11,551 was voted, which divided General Sarmiento and the municipalities began to function on December 10, 1995. Photo: Municipality of Malvinas Argentinas.

"The good thing about the division was that the neighbors

began to pay taxes

. People felt close to the Municipality. That made it grow and we reached 72% collectibility", comments

Jesús Cariglino

, former mayor of Malvinas Argentinas between 1995 and 2015 for Peronism.

And he adds: "Malvinas was the backyard of General Sarmiento. The Party had had two mayors who belonged to José C Paz and then there was (Luis) Ortega -brother of the singer Palito Ortega-, who was also José C. Paz's. they put something, they defended that town a lot more than Malvinas. "

According to the municipal Social Progress Index (IPS) of the Province, based on local needs detected by the PBA Social Progress Network (made up of the Government of the Province of Buenos Aires, CIPPEC, the Avina / IPS Foundation and the Grupo of Foundations and Companies) and published in 2018, José C Paz is

the one with the worst socio-economic data. 

Clarín

consulted Duhalde about the poverty of José C. Paz after the division.

"It was the one that made the most progress, it was the one that made the most progress," he repeats. "It is a municipality that made four hospitals, you have to see them. It is the only municipality in the Province that has electric buses. In terms of food, it has a shed of about 100 meters long by 40 meters wide, for the one who buys all the merchandise wholesale and the people of the district divide it into bags and feed the people. "

In 1999, the candidate for mayor of José C PAz, Mario Ishii, was in the caravan through the district together with the presidential formula of Peronism Eduardo Duhalde and Ramón "Palito" Ortega, and the binomial for the Province: Carlos Ruckauf and Felipe Solá.

Photo: Leonardo Zavattaro.

And in support of this idea, Cariglino, the only mayor who shared the ballot with Duhalde in 2011, also spoke out. "Even with bad local governments, they all improved. Because people have the Municipality closer to raise things or to complain. Some grew more, others less, but development was in all of them, for social work, priority public works ".

In the partition, Del Viso became part of Pilar, when it was planned to join Malvinas Argentinas.

"The town of Del Viso had two parts, one in Pilar and the other in General Sarmiento, with Oliden street as a dividing line. But we always had direct contact with Pilar because San Miguel was 20 kilometers away. That is why in the '90s we got 17 One thousand signatures and when General Sarmiento was divided we became part of the Pilar Party, "says Claudio Manassali, one of the residents organized to ask that part of the town change jurisdiction, and who later presided over the NGO" Del Viso Ciudad ".

Mario Ishii, mayor of José C Paz in 16 of the 25 years, usually remembers that when the Party was founded they 

did not have a cemetery to bury the dead

and he boasts of having built the Juan XXIII Municipal Cemetery.

He took office in the district in 1999 and only left power between 2011 and 2015, when he put Carlos Urquiaga in front of the ballot.

In August 1999, before the election that first anointed Ishii, the brand-new Deliberative Council of José C Paz made national news.

A fight between militants of two groups of the local Peronism ended with shots inside the Council before the ordinary session.

Shooting clashes in the Deliberative Council of JosÉ C. Paz in August 1999.

The chronicles portray a menu with revolvers, shotguns, sticks and knives inside the enclosure and seven wounded of different considerations.

Several councilors acknowledged that it was a fight between two gangs.

One that defended the then mayor and former Racing and San Lorenzo player Rubén Glaría, the first communal chief in the history of José C. Paz, and the other Ishii.

The fortress of the South

"In Ezeiza there was nothing. We had no hospital, cemetery, municipal palace, there was no asphalt, sewers. Because this was the bottom of Esteban Echeverría, which was such a large district that is how it always happens to us, the last thing that arrives goes to background".

The statement belongs to Gastón Granados, acting mayor of Ezeiza, when his father, Alejandro, is on leave.

Alejandro Granados is the only mayor Ezeiza had since the founding of the district. 

With the first funds that came in for the creation of the district, Granados recalls that they bought 10 motor graders, 10 retro shovels and 10 trucks to fix the streets.

"My father rented a corral of materials and

the municipality began to operate inside that corral.

He said: 'I am not going to spend the first mangoes that come in because I have 11 thousand streets of mud, in a planned and orderly municipality.' The municipal building was on step 100. And the Palace was inaugurated in 2006 ", recalls Gastón Granados about the first funds and the 6 thousand square meter building that houses the municipal Executive and the Deliberative Council, and has a space for social activities .

Eduardo Duhalde, Carlos Brown and Alejandro Granados announce the construction of a thermoelectric plant in Ezeiza in July 1995. Photo: DYN.

Today Ezeiza has the airport as its main taxpayer and behind it, the companies of the three industrial parks that pay the safety and hygiene tax.

It achieves significant savings in waste collection, one of the main expenses of the communes along with salaries, by a 1995 decision.

"The fact of having started with few employees was very important, and also the nationalization of services. The first day of the mandate was December 10, 1995, and the waste collection company had a contract until the 31st. On January 1, the municipal collection service was started and that helped a lot, "Granados remarks today.

A data that reflects part of its governance in a quarter of a century in Ezeiza is in the Deliberative Council.

After the 2009 election, with the mayor as a testimonial candidate and a mirror list that came second and joined the ruling party, the 2011 elections arrived. With 66% of the votes, Granados was reelected for the fourth time and finally the 20 councilors in the enclosure belonged to the Justicialista Party.

"The success of my father was to have many years in the government to be able to achieve the objectives that in four years cannot be achieved. It is very difficult for a mayor in four years to do something important. To endure over time, and of good In this way, it made it possible for him to think of an Ezeiza at 20 years, "repeats Granados Jr., and highlights that the emblem of the municipality is security.

Running limits

One of the divisions that was most associated with the fight between then-president Carlos Menem and Governor Duhalde was Morón.

The district was governed by the ex-Menemist speaker and journalist Juan Carlos Rousselot.

The truth is that from old

Morón

, as they continue to call him for some issues, two districts were born in which Peronism always won:

Ituzaingó and Hurlingham

.

"Seen from a distance and after so many years of government, the people are much closer to the Municipality and the Municipality closer to the people. There is a connection that did not exist before and it was a wish of the people of Ituzaingó, the people participated a lot in the autonomous movement. We have a health plan, education, schools and kindergartens that we did not have before. 38 school buildings were built during this entire administration, today we have a hospital. Before Ituzaingó was flooded today it is not flooded anymore, they have been built watersheds in different places ", remembers Alberto Descalzo, first and only mayor of Ituzaingó.

In 1995, with the funds it received for the one time from the Province, they cleaned up the Martín Fierro hydraulic basin, which today is a charming avenue that crosses the heart of Parque Leloir.

Four years after it was created as a municipality, on October 13, 1999, the mayor of Hurlingham Juan José Alvarez, inaugurated the San Bernardino Hospital.

The Municipality began to operate in the Swanson furniture store - in the former Ofelia House and then Swanson.

That building was rented first and then went into the expropriation process.

Today it is remodeled and there are decentralized offices of the Municipality that became headquartered in the new building inaugurated by Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in 2013.

"In this case it turned out very well for Hurlingham, Ituzaingó and for Morón himself. Today there are three governments and we are working together, there is a brotherhood relationship, where Morón would be the older brother. There are no borders, because here are streets that separate us and we are working together for the region ", remarks Alberto Descalzo, the only mayor in Ituzaingó with 25 independent history from Morón.

"Ituzaingó was the backyard of Morón, that's how people distinguished it. Before 1995 the only health care facility was the" hospitalito ", a health room on Brandsen Street. There was no education plan, we had no water, sewers. We did more of 2000 blocks of asphalt. The same happened in Hurlingham and in Morón the possibility of planning his own better pays off. I am convinced that the division was very good, very successful ", concludes Descalzo.

The developers of the Genesis 2000 project proposed that a series of neighborhoods in Castelar Sur, including the lands where the former Seré Mansion was located, which was a clandestine detention center during the last dictatorship, belong to the new Ituzaingó Party.

It is an area bordering the VII Morón Air Brigade, better known as the Morón Base, which is cadastral in Castelar Sur.

The tornado of April 2012 washed away the roof of the new Municipality of Ituzaingó, which could only be inaugurated in May 2013.

The urban planners believe that in addition to the historical and cultural parameters of the neighborhoods, it is logical to consider the Air Base as a natural limit because it is based on the fact that this space interrupts the urban fabric and leaves the neighborhoods near Ituzaingó municipality: Seré, Marina , San Juan and Calé.

However, politics twisted the arm of the developers of the project because Blas Parera Avenue, which in a section becomes Provincial Route 21, became the official boundary between the Morón and Ituzaingó districts.

"The limits were moved in the committee discussion, because the mayors press, both in this case and in others," said one of the participants in the design of Genesis 2000. And thus four neighborhoods of Castelar Sur were only in a sketch within of Ituzaingó.

Pe ndent divisions 

The technicians who developed the original "Genesis 2000" project also proposed dividing

La Matanza

into four new parties

;

and they also planned to create two districts in Lomas de Zamora;

two in Quilmes;

two in Merlo;

two in Almirante Brown and another two in Tigre

.

Some protagonists of the politics of the '90s were in favor of the division of districts but they emphasize that there were no public hearings or popular consultations.

Closer in time, the last two times that the proposal to divide GBA communes came back was in 2016 and 2018, with the government of Cambiemos in the Province.

Among other projects, they refloated the proposal of the former legislator of the GEN, Marcelo Díaz.

However, it did not prosper. 


Already in 1993, the ambitious proposal for "Resizing the Conurbano" included the division of La Matanza, which according to the project would maintain that to house San Justo and other towns to remain in 45 square kilometers and 263,145 inhabitants. 

In turn, another district would contain Ciudad Evita, Tapiales, Aldo Bonzi, with a population of 274,357 inhabitants in 49 square kilometers;

and the rest of that division continued with an Isidro Casanova, for 260,530 inhabitants in 29 square kilometers;

and Gregorio de Laferrere, with 323,266 residents in 206 square kilometers.

In addition, Lomas de Zamora was projected with 404,259 inhabitants in 60.5 km2;

and from its partition the new Temperley district was to be born, with 170,071 inhabitants in an area of ​​28 square kilometers, according to the project.

Today Duhalde assures that there was a plan to divide the municipality that he governed into four parts.

In 1993, they also planned to divide Quilmes to create the Municipality of San Francisco Solano.

And from the current Merlo, in the West, the communes of Libertad and Pontevedra, which today are towns, would arise.

In addition, they even studied splitting Tigre to make Don Torcuato independent on the one hand and General Pacheco and El Talar on the other.

At 25 years, Duhalde places part of the responsibility on the

political leadership

and although he believes that in the midst of the pandemic the new divisions cannot be discussed, in the long run they will have to do so.

-With all the political power as governor, why didn't you advance with the second phase that implied dividing Lomas de Zamora, La Matanza, Merlo, Quilmes and Tigre?

-First because it is not easy.

It is not divided and vote the law.

You have to find the places for the new district to work.

The issue is when politicians, as we always are, do not want to have smaller municipalities, it is more important to have a larger district with many inhabitants and they do not realize that the municipal structure is the structure of the neighborhood.

So all the evils come together in those places.

Former Governor Eduardo Duhalde during the act of the dissident PJ for the Peronist Loyalty Day.

Photo Juano Tesone

-In the political world of the '90s it was said that the division responded to a fight between Menemism and Duhaldism.

-The truth is that it is not worth answering.

The truth is that the governments of the neighborhood are for 200 thousand inhabitants, passing that number the idea of ​​neighborhood is lost.

And that is why here it is discussed so much whether the mayor has to repeat or not.

The neighborhood governments in the world are permanent, they are not changed.

Because people know who is ruling it.

But here sometimes they don't even know the name of the mayor.

The issue is governance, how do we make it known.

With these advances in technology, municipalities can control everything.

What happens is that the new mayors, unlike the old ones like me, are very advanced, they can control family by family, who has, who does not have, who has to be helped.

All of this requires small municipalities such as those in the interior.

That is why the municipalities of the interior work better than those of the suburbs.

People know each other.

-Do you maintain that the other municipalities should be divided?

-The first stage has to be between 250 thousand and 300 thousand inhabitants because there is no more in some places.

Over time, it will be necessary to go to municipalities in smaller communes.

I don't know how many communes the Federal Capital has, I think 15, and that's the number.

What happens is that the Communes, including the Capital, over time have to have more power, now they are very dependent, with more autonomy.

But hey, it is not done overnight.

He has a plan that must be carried out little by little and thinking about how the largest are divided.

There are districts where it is easier, Lomas de Zamora is prepared for that.

There are projects but right now you can't think about these things.

Look also

From "Susana's telo" to the dark plane: stories, myths and legends of the Camino de Cintura

Widening of routes, hydraulic works and housing: what is the plan for the post-pandemic in the Conurbano

Source: clarin

All news articles on 2020-11-10

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