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  • General view of one of the main streets of Ocho de Mayo, an informal settlement in the district of General Saint Martín, Buenos Aires, Argentina, in January 2006. The neighborhood is named after the date in which the first settlers moved in, on the 8th of May of 1998. <br />
Today, Ocho de Mayo is home to about 1,500 families, many of them young. Of the 5,000 residents, 3,000 are under 16. About 65 percent of the population is Paraguayan. The rest are from nearby towns or elsewhere in Argentina. This neighborhood does not look very different from the villas miseria —slums or shantytowns— that ring the Argentine capital.
    RO.ARG.2006.01.0225.jpg
  • Residents chat at the neighborhood's community center. <br />
People from Ocho de Mayo point out with pride the progress made since the settlement was created in1998. From the beginning, there was a deliberate planning. The first settlers left space for a community center. Each new family was given a plot of land arranged along wide streets. Planners did not want narrow alleys between houses as in Brazilian favelas. A commission, with a delegate representing each block, made rules. Nearby settlements now use 8 de Mayo as a model.
    RO.ARG.2006.01.0112.jpg
  • Simón Areco (center) and his wife Mari Carmen Espinola (right) are Paraguayan and run a grocery shop in Ocho de Mayo.<br />
About 65 percent of the population of Ocho de Mayo is from Paraguay.
    RO.ARG.2006.01.0157.jpg
  • Siblings Jessica, 10 (left), and Pablo, 8, arm-wrestle at their home in Ocho de Mayo. They are part of a family of seven children.
    RO.ARG.2006.01.0136.jpg
  • Ocho de Mayo is crisscrossed overhead with electric wires tapping power from the few existing streetlights. The neighborhood lacks a reliable supply of electricity.
    RO.ARG.2006.01.0220.jpg
  • Susana Giménez, 34, has two kids from a former marriage and is expecting a third one from her partner, Carlos Tolosa. She works from home, assembling paper bags.<br />
In Ocho de Mayo, 80 percent of the residents earn a small income as 'cartoneros', collecting cardboard and plastics in the street, or doing odd jobs.
    RO.ARG.2006.01.0166.jpg
  • Carlos Tolosa, a resident of Ocho de Mayo, worked in a metallurgic factory until 1989, when the company laid off some of its workers. "We are promised many things but never get anything, only the rich do."<br />
Informal settlements started to appear in the 1980s, coinciding with the end of full employment and the failure of the import substitution and industrialization model adopted by the Argentinean government
    RO.ARG.2006.01.0169.jpg
  • Alberto, 9, plays with other children and looks through a hole in the wall of his home in Ocho de Mayo.
    RO.ARG.2006.01.0205.jpg
  • A family watches television at their home in Ocho de Mayo.
    RO.ARG.2006.01.0119.jpg
  • A boy steps on a puddle as he runs under the rain through the streets of Ocho de Mayo.
    RO.ARG.2006.01.0228.jpg
  • Community leader Lorena Pastoriza drinks coffee and smokes a cigarette at her home in Ocho de Mayo. Lorena was 23 when she moved in, among the first settlers to arrive here on the 8th of May of 1998. They took land in what used to be an illegal dump. The area was heaped with garbage up to 20 feet high. Snakes and rats nested in dismantled cars and scrap piles. "For us, now, this is a paradise."
    RO.ARG.2006.01.0206.jpg
  • Víctor Morel (left) lays bricks for a new construction. In Ocho de Mayo, precarious houses with brick walls stand next to shacks of wood planks and asbestos.
    RO.ARG.2006.01.0149.jpg
  • Noelia, 15, rests on her bed, next to toys, old photographs and a broken telephone. Noelia does not go to school.<br />
For most inhabitants of Ocho de Mayo, dignity is the main goal. Many who have had to live in the streets now focus their energies on providing a better life for their children. They all agree on the need of education to get jobs.
    RO.ARG.2006.01.0195.jpg
  • A dead kitten lays on the mud, tangled on a piece of fabric. Ocho de Mayo lacks a reliable supply of water and electricity. Some residents have perforated a nearby water main. This water supply is highly contaminated, and some people suffer from dysentery, leukemia and other diseases related to malnutrition and environmental contamination.
    RO.ARG.2006.01.0100.jpg
  • Children play in a pool in the backyard of a house at Ocho de Mayo.
    RO.ARG.2006.01.0202.jpg
  • Raúl Moyano (right) and his wife Lidia Barrios stand in front of their home in Ocho de Mayo.
    RO.ARG.2006.01.0173.jpg
  • Mónica ‘Cori’ Jiménez is a single mother with five children. "I grew up alone, in the streets," she said. "I never stole anything and I never took drugs." She survives on government assistance and the community soup kitchen. "If it didn’t exist, I don’t know what would have happened to my life and to the lives of my children." <br />
She used to be a 'cartonera' in downtown Buenos Aires for 15 years. She used to take her children out to beg until, in an argument, her older daughter convinced her that it was wrong. Cori combed trash at the municipal trash dump for three months, but she says she stopped because police beat her often and once shot her in the leg with a rubber bullet. After a childhood of mistreatment, Cori hopes life in 8 de Mayo will offer something better to her kids. <br />
"I am 30 and I already want to die," she told a visitor, slowly and deliberately, with her eyes fixed on the ground. "I want my children to be someone in life."
    RO.ARG.2006.01.0183.jpg
  • Verónica, 8 (left), hands some lemons to her aunt Mónica Jiménez.
    RO.ARG.2006.01.0192.jpg
  • Milagros, 6, sits at the back of a wrecked pickup truck parked in front of her home.
    RO.ARG.2006.01.0131.jpg
  • At the Jiménez family's home, a photograph hanging on the wall shows the past of the building, which used to host the community-run soup kitchen.<br />
In a place ignored by politicians, the community group has taken charge of services that should be provided by the government. Each morning, four people collect the trash with horse carts. The group also organizes training programs, health counseling and micro-enterprise initiatives. Most notably, a community-run soup kitchen feeds children and destitute families. The community center they run also serves as a social meeting point.
    RO.ARG.2006.01.0200.jpg
  • Ariel Barrios (left) solves a puzzle with Facundo, 9 (center), and Alberto, 9. In the background is community leader Lorena Pastoriza.
    RO.ARG.2006.01.0207.jpg
  • Ariel Barrios (right) plays electric guitar while Facundo, 9, looks out of a window.
    RO.ARG.2006.01.0088.jpg
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