IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 6 ENGLISH | Page 92

historically inhabited by Afros, due to its
socioeconomic profile. The reason for
this “anomaly” stems from the fact that
these births occurred at Maternidad
Pardo, which was located there and was
the usual institution to which poor
women went to give birth, even from as
far as Villa Soldati. The overwhelming
majority of Afro-porteños (74.11%) can
be attributed to the process of
gentrification
to
which
they’ve
historically been subjected. The presence
of 112 people who were polled in
Matanzas does not prove that their
elderly lived there since colonial times
(Agostino 2012a and b). According to
oral history, they arrive at the IDB
(Inter-American Development Bank)
neighborhood when the housing
complex (pavilions) in Villa Soldati, on
the outskirts of the porteño area, they
called Villa Cartón (Cardboard Town)
due to the materials used to build their
walls. It was a flood-prone area next to
the municipal dump. The land (19
hectares) belonged to the Municipality
of Buenos Aires, which ceded it to the
National Government in 1967, according
to a Plan for the Eradication of Villas de
Emergencia (Shantytowns) to build the
Soldati Urban Complex in 1971. The
eradication was carried out in stages and
was concluded by 1973. Around the
1950s, evictions from communal
housing
in
central
porteño
neighborhoods like Monserrat had
begun. The acronym IDB was the name
given
another
neighborhood
for
working-class people in the Conurbano
Bonaerense’s constant process of

urbanization. Some Afro-porteño homes
in other Matanzas locations are the result
of IDB neighborhood families having to
move due to the housing shortage. The
data regarding those who work reveals a
high number. There are two soccer
players, two sanitation workers, four
cooperative employees, and one
employee at the National Congress.
Afro-Argentines
are
traditionally
employed in these sectors, but this is not
stated in the only scholarly work on the
subject (Colabella 2012). In adding the
percentages of formal, informal, and
independent workers, etc., the highest
number of all is that of the unemployed
(35.86%), which is evidence of the
extent of the group’s economic
vulnerability. The coincidence in the fact
that 100% of those polled were not
registered as Afro-descendant in the
2010 Census has an antecedent that was
partly revealed in the 2005 Pilot Study’s
results (Stubbs and Reyes 2006). The
chapter “Selección de las Áreas para la
Aplicación del Operativo” [Selection of
Areas for Application of Instrument]
explains that the Monserrat and Santa
Rosa de Lima neighborhoods were
chosen from a large group of areas
proposed by the involved NGOs, among
them La Matanza. We were able to
clarify this issue when interviewing
Lucía Dominga López, President of the
Casa de Cultura Indo-Afro-Americana
“Mario Luis López” (Santa Fe), because
her entity worked on the Pilot Study.
Although the IDB La Matanza
neighborhood was proposed, and might
have been chosen, the INDEC decided to

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