Once you have bought your ticket and sit comfortably in the coach you are about to make a strange experience. Right after you have left the Terminal de Ómnibus de Retiro, the first thing you traverse is a so called villa miseria. A villa miseria is the Argentinean version of a slum area. These precarious housings belong to Villa 31 which is just across the huge bus terminal. In the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires there are 21 of these slums, according to estimates several hundreds of these "precarious neighborhoods" exist in Greater Buenos Aires. Public authorities tend to euphemistically call these zones asentamientos (settlements). Well, don't let 'em hornswoggle you!
Friday, November 13, 2009
Villa 31 across Retiro Bus Terminal
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7 comments:
Reminds me a lot of the slums I've seen in India, specially the infamous Dharawi, next to Bombay airport, made famous by the Slumdog Millionaire movie.
Saudade de Buenos Aires.
Even the 'slums' are colorful. I love your photos of BA!
And the city "fathers" probably have "good" reasons why they tend to ignore the needs of such neighborhoods!
They do look precarious - like large buildings built on top of small buildings. You have taken a very lively looking and colorful photograph, though.
Three Rivers Daily Photo
I like the higgledy-piggledy look of the houses.
I've seen many instances in which the trains or the buses go by the slums while exiting the city, leaving a lasting impression on the eyes of the traveler. If you come by train to my city you'll see a lot worse. The reality is that slums exist even if some of us have been fortunate enough to not live there.
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