In Bahía Blanca they voted to rename the park 'Campaña del Desierto' and 'Julio Argentino Roca' won

Gabriel Bermudez

07/19/2021 18:27

• Clarín.com

• Politics

Updated 07/19/2021 6:27 PM

Waiting for what the jury decides.

Or what the VAR dictates.

Thus

, the proposal launched by the municipality of Bahía Blanca to

relaunch a green space

that occupies a privileged place in the city

was on

standby

. 

Located in one of the newest entrances to the city and in an elevated area, the public space of about 74 hectares 

seeks to give it another profile

.

Along with a reforestation with more than a dozen native plants, the idea is to make it smoke and waste free, in a context of

sustainable development

.

However, this central proposal was overshadowed by another initiative launched in parallel to

change its name

.

After the first two weeks of voting, the compulsa reopened an old historical discussion and yielded an unexpected result:

the triumph of Julio Argentino Roca

.

As Minister of War, he was one of the main promoters of the Desert Campaign that allowed the country's borders to expand towards Patagonia.

With this process, the arrival of the train at the end of the 19th century and the port, Bahía Blanca,

born in 1828 as an Argentine Protective Fortress

, in the times of Juan Manuel de Rosas, was forged as a thriving city in the south.

First plantations in the new park that was set up in one of the entrances to the city of Bahía Blanca.

Secondly, to surprise, voters, who had to

register on a platform to comment

, chose to keep the original name, resisted by the aboriginal communities that originally inhabited the Pampas region.

Both the Campaign and Roca are

identified with the dispossession of their lands and the genocide of their ancestors

.

Although the voting was open and did not have pre-defined proposals, it established some limitations on the election.

For example, denominations with "political party, religious, sectorial connotations or that exclude sectors of society" could not be nominated, as established by the ordinance.  

Neither are denominations "with references to xenophobic, racist, sexist or discriminatory expressions, contrary to democratic values, peace and human rights."

Or that mean "a claim of violent acts or an offense to any person or group of people."

These rules could not avoid reopening a discussion that is latent, divides historians and revives every May 19 in Bahía Blanca, where there is a street with that name.

The official calendar recalls on that date

the last indigenous malón

that crossed the city in 1859 ordered by the cacique Cafulcurá and repelled by the military forces that led it.

For revisionism, it was a massacre.

It focuses on the origin of the attack, which would have started from the ignorance of the peace agreements signed by those responsible for the Fortress and in the end, the burning of the corpses of the original troops in what is today the Rivadavia square, full Bahia center.

In third place was the name of Raúl Alfonsín, who appeared in the last days of the compulsa.

Many identified this proposal

in extremis

with the intention of reversing the trend that, defended by historians and fervent nationalists and in the heat of social networks, was already irreversibly consolidating in favor of Roca.

Much further back and with much fewer votes, the

Barranca de los Loros

proposal was left

.

The name is identified with one of the objectives of the relaunch of the park, which seeks to guarantee the natural habitat to this and other birds that populate the area.

It surpassed the regional medical tandem formed by César Milstein and Raúl Favaloro.

While the 1985 Nobel Prize in Medicine was born and studied in Bahía Blanca, the renowned cardiologist established himself as a rural doctor in Jacinto Aráuz, a town located 125 kilometers away in La Pampa.

Behind the monomarcas Libertad and Parque del Mirador, associated with the height of the place that allows a panoramic view of the well in which the city is located,

two names in the original language closed the list

.

Güenaken and Huecuvu Mapu, the latter, a term with which the first inhabitants named the plain located between the mountains and the sea.

It means "Devil's land" or "cursed land."

At the end of the first part of the vote, which ended on July 12, a jury, made up of municipal officials and councilors, had to take note of the results and authorize, according to the terms of the ordinance, a second section of the compulsa.

This was to be extended, between the 13th and this Sunday with only 5 names, but the vote was not enabled.

This Monday, it was announced that the project

will return to the Deliberative Council

, where it had been approved only by the ruling Juntos por el Cambio.

"It is to review some issues before moving forward," argued the official councilman Marcos Streitenberger.

A councilor from the

Frente de Todos

, got off at the last minute of the jury.

That opposition group also proposes to change the name of Campaña del Desierto, but does not agree with the voting methodology, through a platform and limited in time.

"The spirit of this initiative is positive, innovative and democratic, counting on the participation of residents in an issue as important as the designation of the name of a new park," Streitenberger defended the idea.

After the controversy, now the ball will return to the Deliberative Council and

the development of the process will have to wait

.

Like in soccer games, they stop until the VAR resolves.

Video Asisstant Referee, in English, assistant to the referee by video, in Spanish and as Vetar A Roca, as the Bahian controversy seems to indicate.