Stir up the past in the face of the danger of the present. Alternative reflections on the cultural and environmental heritage of Corrientes, Argentina

Abstract

In this work I persue to reflect on some cases belonging to the riverside cultural and environmental heritage of the city of Corrientes, rescuing historiographic fragments that focus on the subjects and forms of production that become invisible behind the materialities and reviewing the current urban conflicts unfolded by the implementation of new criteria of spatial transformation. These have been constituted for many in times of danger, where new mechanisms of privatization, restructuring, accumulation of economic benefits and differential distribution of socio-environmental costs are promoted from the urban agenda (from coalitions between governments and businessmen). The threat is sustained against the possibility of relapsing into a history of great injustices and of losing the places where the memory or the possibilities of inhabiting (in a broad sense) of the most disadvantaged are located. As in a marginal thread where the events of the present open questions about the past, I argue that the current moment calls for recognizing the forms of enunciation of disagreement in order to cast doubt on the future of these differentially valued spaces.

In this exploratory research, based on archival work (documentary and journalistic sources) and field work that followed the events of struggle of different groups that resist transformations or promote other forms of valuation of the riverside spaces, three cases were selected that they allow me to investigate the historiographic traces and the current disputes.