The fragility of the common a decade after the last urban transformation of the Toba neighborhood (city of Resistencia, Argentina)

Abstract

This article addresses the socio-environmental impact of urban and housing transformations on the Qom population of the Toba neighborhood in the city of Resistencia, examining state interventions and the political experience of the inhabitants. From a materialist and socioecological perspective, we first analyze the relationships between the cycles of capital accumulation and construction materials, as well as the tensions between the separations that develop within the highly fragmented contemporary city and the production of the common in community networks. Secondly, we characterize the stages that frame the two urban and housing renovations in Barrio Toba. Finally, we explore the politicizations of the neighbors of Barrio Toba from the struggle for housing, noticing in the last decade its fragility as a way of producing the common. This article is based on the consultation of secondary sources, interviews with state and community actors participating in the interventions and ethnographic observations from tours with indigenous referents in the neighborhood. The purpose of the paper considers the historical link between capitalism, indigenous populations and the operation of multiple separations and dispossessions in urban spaces. As a result, the chapter exposes how during the last decade fragile forms of production of the common were expressed, rather than emancipatory responses, coinciding with the socio-sanitary and ecological crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.