Where Rivers Meet the Sea: The Political Ecology of Water

7. Neighbors Fight to Reverse Eco-Blind Engineering in Tigre Delta

Stirring the Politics of Chronic Disaster A s concern about the profound pollution plaguing Greater Buenos Aires wells up from the mobilized, they continue to draw in a variety of institutional actors and agendas to their missions. Participant observation in a series of water gatherings allows me to understand how much watershed destruction is a result of downright faulty, not merely unevenly scarce, hydraulic engineering. Once built, no matter how faulty, eco-blind engineering structures become modification resistant; their mass, scale, and persistent toxicity literally dominate and destroy landscapes.1 Moving the scene to the northern jurisdictional boundary between the city and the province, this chapter presents one case, the pollution disbursement power of the Alleviating Canal (Canal Aliviador; the name referring to its poorly conceptualized intention for flood control). I align this account with the perspectives of the Assembly of the Delta and the Río de la Plata, an organization fighting for the life of the endangered delta, one of the world’s most immense and biologically rich wetlands. This chapter is an account of three events: a mass-mediated government event inspired by the assembly’s collaborative work, regular quayside assembly meetings, and a meeting between government lawyers and activists from different neighborhood assemblies. A cautious, urgent, anxious, and optimistic tone permeates throughout. The chapter ends, however, with a disappointing legal judgment, compliments of the federal Supreme Court, that comes down several months after I leave the field. 7 Neighbors Fight to Reverse Eco-Blind Engineering in Tigre Delta Neighbors Fight to Reverse Eco-Blind Engineering in Tigre Delta / 131 Defender of the People’s Report on the Reconquista River Basin I first make contact with the Assembly of the Delta and the Río de la Plata on the day that the federal ombudsman, the Defender of the People of the Nation,2 releases a Reconquista River report that documents how urban pollution pushes up into the delta’s beautiful rivers, islands, and streams. The Defender, the assembly, and the other signatories based their report on a collaborative three-year study with scientists, foundations, university scholars, and an archdiocese.3 Draped in block-lettered declarations on this day, the Defender’s office in a narrow street of central Buenos Aires is easily recognizable as the place where river contamination will be confronted. In front of the bannered wall, activists stand behind a table offering information and photographs of engineered landscapes, a sign-up list, and dialogue. Today’s release follows the Defender’s 2003 report on the Reconquista’s polluted twin, the Matanza-Riachuelo: the two rivers that together compose what one participant inside will call a “transcendental circle of sewers.” The government has not yet responded to that 2003 report, and its stalling mutes the triumphant air of accomplishment accompanying the release of the Reconquista report. Within shouting distance is a march of teachers and their supporters (an estimated thirty thousand strong), protesting the police killing of Carlos Fuentealba,4 which also complicates this institutional attempt to bring national attention to ecological havoc in the delta. As we enter the public building, one woman ushers us over to another with a list. After we identify ourselves, she in turn ushers us into a small room with about fifty seats and six large TV cameras facing a long table behind which important speakers will sit. The size and arrangement of the room signals that this will be a media event rather than a public information or discussion meeting. Indeed, everyone already knows what will be reported. Over the next twenty minutes or so the room fills with government people and activists. One woman cries out enthusiastically, “Un momento glorioso!” Eventually, about ten white men in suits, representing the various universities and NGOs who participated in the report’s creation, squish into seats behind the table facing the TV cameras; another brings a tray with water glasses. From his place in the center, Eduardo Mondino, the federal ombudsman , who embodies the protective authority of the law, uses the display screen behind him only cursorily as he makes a statement. He begins by saying that he considered putting off the meeting because of the possibility that it would be overshadowed by the teachers’ protest march happening down the street. After presenting mostly a collage of facts from the report, he says that since the march was against death—that is, for life—that since there is no greater right than the right to life, and that since this...