Moving house with the entire neighborhood: the new life of Katherine, Marcelo and their neighbors

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Katherine de la Cruz's red string bracelet came off sometime in the early morning.

She says that she didn't sleep all night.

She stacked boxes, she tried to keep the rain from getting the mattresses wet, she covered the closet she inherited from her mother with nylon.

She drank mate until 3 and then continued walking around the house.

In the middle of that bustle, she dropped the ornament that she had been wearing on her wrist for a long time.

“She means that the dream came true,” explains Ella de la Cruz, 32 years old.

It is 8 in the morning and the sky is overcast in the Kennedy settlement, the oldest and most emblematic of Punta del Este, the most luxurious resort in Uruguay.

Katherine and her family have everything ready to move and start life in another house.

“I came here when I was two years old, I'm going to miss the neighborhood,” she confesses with her eyes alight in a chat with América Futura.

Her partner, Marcelo Teliz, 42, looks at her and silently contemplates how the two decades he has lived in the Kennedy settlement are being dismantled.

Teliz arrived with everything he had from Treinta y Tres, a neighboring department, to work on the construction of the spa buildings.

In 2013, she learned mechanics and set up a workshop in front of the house she and Katherine built in different stages.

First they filled the land with rubble, then they built a room with concrete blocks and roofed it with metal.

When her daughter Milagros was born, 10 years ago, they built a smaller one.

“Don't spend money, look, they're going to get us out of here,” Teliz remembers what his neighbors told him when they saw them fighting the underground water, the rain water, the water from the cesspools, which relentlessly flooded their houses. home, over and over again.

Military personnel are in charge of carrying out the move for the Teliz-de la Cruz family. NATALIA ROVIRA

The time to leave came for the Teliz-de la Cruz after a few years.

They move within the framework of the relocation plan undertaken by the departmental government of Maldonado to relocate, between February and December 2024, 500 families (around 2,000 people) living on these municipal lands.

For this purpose, the administration built a new neighborhood on a property located just over a kilometer from the current Kennedy, where almost 400 houses have already been built.

The complete operation—expropriation of the land, urbanization and construction of homes—reached 55 million dollars, of which 28 million correspond to a loan from the CAF-development bank of Latin America and the Caribbean and 7 to the Bank of the Republic.

The request for this credit, granted in 2022, was supported by all political parties, from the left and the right, that make up the Departmental Board.

The new neighborhood in which the inhabitants of the Kennedy settlement will be relocated.NATALIA ROVIRA

The process began in 2015, when the local government (National Party, centre-right) carried out a census and survey in the settlement.

“98% said they were willing to relocate as long as the new location was close,” Alejandro Lussich, Maldonado Housing Director, told América Futura.

The location was essential, Lussich highlights, but also providing the new neighborhood with a full-time school, an early childhood care center and a public polyclinic.

“The most significant thing is the integration of these families into the urban fabric of the city,” he adds.

At the time of receiving the home, Lussich specifies, the neighbors agree not to sell, rent or transfer it.

And when the neighborhood is complete, they will begin to pay a monthly fee of 3,300 pesos ($84) for 10 years.

Once the payment is completed, you will receive the final deed.

Katherine de la Cruz and Marcelo Teliz accepted the agreement without hesitation, excited about the idea of ​​leaving behind a life spent in water.

They only asked to keep Marcelo's mechanical workshop and Katherine's used clothing sales business in the back of the new home.

This was contemplated in the planning of the relocation: the family businesses will continue operating, as well as the popular library, the picnic area and the chapel.

“There is a lot of anxiety about leaving,” says Juan Manfrú, while he works at Carnes Kennedy, a store that has been in the settlement for 17 years and will have a location in the brand new neighborhood.

“He will have all the services, we will have to take care of him,” he adds.

In front of him, a customer frowns.

Do you not agree? We ask.

“I'm leaving for my children, we'll have to start over,” he responds, somewhat resigned.

Juan Manfrú in his store, Carnes Kennedy.NATALIA ROVIRA

The discordant neighbor, who asks not to be identified, came to these lands to work in 1966, in the middle

of the construction

boom in Punta del Este.

In that decade, the current settlement was born as a working-class neighborhood and was named after the former US president, John F. Kennedy, because the president had supposedly donated the land within the framework of the Alliance for Progress.

The version of that gift dates back to 1961 and still circulates in the neighborhood groups.

“False from all sides,” says Housing Director Lussich.

There was a donation, he admits, but it consisted of a drinking water pump.

Ownership of the land, he emphasizes, has always been municipal.

For his part, the discordant neighbor goes further and assures that “a few blocks” of the Kennedy were donated by past administrations.

“But there are no documents, they disappeared,” he slips.

An abyss between street and street

Kennedy is not just any settlement, although it has similarities with many of the 600 irregular neighborhoods in Uruguay.

It is located in one of the most sought-after areas of Punta del Este, a stone's throw from the Golf Club and the Convention Center.

Its 15 blocks occupy 34 hectares valued at (at least) 10 million dollars.

It is surrounded by mansions with enormous gardens, many of which were built or cared for by men and women who came from different corners of the country and built their lives in the settlement.

“There is an abyss between one street and another,” sociologist and anthropologist Daniel Cajarville, professor at the Eastern Regional University Center, tells América Futura.

Between extreme opulence and poverty, the area synthesizes the contradictions of Maldonado, one of the most prosperous departments of Uruguay.

“The neighborhood is the opposite side of the development and expansion of the spa,” says Cajarville.

The golf club that borders the Kennedy settlement.NATALIA ROVIRA

A man walks through the Kennedy settlement.NATALIA ROVIRA

The skeleton of the Teliz-de la Cruz house before being demolished.NATALIA ROVIRA

Quartermaster brigades carry out the demolition of a house in the Kennedy settlement. NATALIA ROVIRA

Military personnel helping in the relocation walk through the new neighborhood.NATALIA ROVIRA

Before leaving, Katherine de la Cruz asks her brother to take a photo of the house they built with Marcelo, because it will be reduced to rubble as soon as they begin their journey to the new neighborhood.

In this way, the local government wants to ensure that the land will not be occupied again and can sell it when the massive relocation has concluded.

“I hope God gives me a lot of life to enjoy it,” says Teresita Medina, a 56-year-old neighbor, who is looking forward to moving in the coming weeks.

She says that she arrived 30 years ago from the Cerro Largo department and worked as a domestic worker, during the summers, in the resort's chalets.

A few steps away, Delio Díaz, 82 years old and a native of the department of Lavalleja, maintains that he built his house—robust like few others in the neighborhood—because the authorities on duty assured him that this land would be for the workers.

“Now they tell me I have to go!” He complains.

The local government maintains that these versions have no basis.

“Among the 2% [who disagree with the relocation] there are older people, the first inhabitants, who consider that there was a donation, but the land belongs to the State,” says Flavia Corbo, a psychologist who coordinates social work with the neighbors.

“That's part of the process,” she adds.

With the approval of 98% of the population, she explains, the new neighborhood was shaped in community workshops and contemplated the expectations raised in personal interviews.

From there arose the need to maintain the neighborhood networks of the settlement, exemplifies Corbo, to preserve lifelong neighbors.

“We built the neighborhood with them,” she says.

Will it be called New Kennedy Neighborhood?

The name of the place, Corbo points out, will come from the community center that is already in operation.

The rubble of the Teliz-de la Cruz family house, after being demolished. NATALIA ROVIRA

Katherine de la Cruz bought a broom and threw away the old one.

“New house, new broom,” she says as she walks with Marcelo and Milagros through the two rooms, the kitchen, the living room, and the bathroom.

In the front, a rose bush and a jasmine will grow, says Marcelo.

In the background, an open space of 100 square meters, an anacahuita and a loquat already have their place.

There he will set up his mechanical workshop with the prior consent of Juliet, Princess and Iago, the trio of family dogs.

Recently installed, Milagros asks permission to go play at the house of her friend, a lifelong neighbor.

Katherine thinks out loud about the colors for the living room walls, about the arrangement of the furniture, about a rug to wipe her feet at the entrance.

She looks at the ceiling, excited: “No water is going to get in, not a drop is going to get in.”

Milagros Teliz de la Cruz in the family's new house.NATALIA ROVIRA