JC Felicioni from “Las Raíces” neighborhood in Ushuaia

Julio Cesar Felicioni from “Las Raíces” neighborhood in Ushuaia, Argentina exhibits at the Habitat Network Conference.

I wanted to make a mention; we were in Ushuaia last month. I want to thank all of those who were in Ushuaia… Jessica, Maryluz, Sonia and Eme who collaborated for the video of the network campaign we made in “Las Raíces” neighborhood. Let’s go ask the members of the “Las Raíces” neighborhood in Ushuaia to please come here…

Hello, how are you? My name is Julio Cesar and the issue in Ushuaia is quite complicated, why? Because in the 90s, towards the end of the 90s, many people either left the country or sought the last alternative to go out of town. The problem is that Tierra del Fuego’s government invited people to go there, they made promotions and told people to come to live in Ushuaia, in the same airport people put up signs saying “I need this, I need that”, builders, mechanics… It was a city that was being formed, the city was forming, the problem is that the government did not give it form and that is the problem. I live here. I live in Campana, with my 22 years old I said “I am leaving”. I was just speaking with the railway man and I experienced it firsthand. I found myself at the door of Campana and was all empty, I want to keep it simple because I don’t want to make anyone bitter but I don’t know when we got to this because the Argentine citizen doesn’t ask for anything strange but just live in peace, have his own house, have his job and nothing else. Nowhere in the world people ask for so little so we neighbors of “Las Raíces” neighborhood, who represent “Las Raíces” neighborhood and sometimes also all of Ushuaia because in Ushuaia there are more than five thousand families that live in settlements and that have jobs but have nowhere to live. In other words, that is up to the state and its reasoning. They invited me to go to Ushuaia, I work in the water plant, water it’s an essential service and I have nowhere to live and the other neighbor works let’s say at the airport, the other at the hotel. The state never cared where that person lives, what matters to them is if that person provides a good service so the city can be one of the best tourist cities and we continue doing tourist promotions and incidentally we also invite people to come live here.

And do you know who takes over afterwards? The Settlements, so there is something wrong. I am not paid to design a neighborhood, I am not paid to build houses, I do it with pleasure perhaps but I see that the state delivers forty houses per year. If there are more than five thousand families waiting, there are more than seven thousand families renting because it is not easy to live in a settlement in Ushuaia. You have to live under the snow and now I am in a full sun and the boys there are cold so I am very grateful that I got invited. Unfortunately I had to leave my activities in the neighborhood, since each neighbor in the neighborhood should choose an activity, that is to say, I do the cleaning in the neighborhood, another person to the workshops, and another one to another thing, so there is when the neighborhood moves. If the state does not give us a hand, it does not help us… There is no problem, we keep doing it ourselves because we are intelligent and capable people and we can do it.

We had a meeting in Tierra del Fuego and I was thinking… Wow!!! The truth is that I never imagined that we were going to be able to do it but everything can be done, we ask for help, they don’t give it to us so we start alone. That is what bothers the government the most that people still work the same and the objective is achieved. I congratulate you for coming here and I hope that in the next meeting at least we will have a minimum solution, and this is my personal opinion, what I am going to say, I no longer want them to give a house to me, I want them to give it to someone, to someone… Yes because I am thirty-eight years old and I see twenty-year-old boys who are from Tierra del Fuego and they have to go back. It is a double uprooting, I uprooted myself there and my children are going to be uprooted here.  When they all went to live in Ushuaia, they went to give their children a better future, which is the future that unfortunately we are giving them thanks to the state, it does not matter if it is provincial, municipal or national, this is not politics, it is the national state. The boys nowadays from Tierra del Fuego have to go, just like we had to go. Thank you and let’s share a great day…

Conference organized by the Argentine Habitat Network in the former «PADELAI» -Children’s Board- on the occasion of World Habitat Day in 2013 and the opening of the important event which was led by Mr. David Smith, director of the «CINU» -Information Center of the United Nations-

SOCINCE -News Agency for the Americas-