Villa 31-Retiro, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Seventy years of urban struggle for the right to housing, land and liberty
Villa 31/Retiro was amalgamated in 1930 on public land near downtown, the port of Buenos Aires and one of the large train stations serving the northern part of the country. At first, it housed the families of dockworkers who lost their jobs in the economic crisis of 1929. In the Forties, European immigrants arrived and worked laying the rail system extension. In the Fifties, the amalgamation was organized as six neighbourhoods with a coordinating committee of neighbourhood delegates.