Eduardo Elena
 
 
 

I.  Introduction

II. Public Housing in the 1910's and 1920's: Directing Private Interest

    The Conventillo and Early Housing Reform

    The Founding of the Compania de Construcciones Modernas and

    Comision Nacional de Casas Barratas

    Ideological Justifications for Public Housing

    Architectural Characteristics of Projects

III. The Limits of the Market: Public Housing and Planning in the 1930's

    Poor Track Record of Public Housing

    Financial and Tenant Problems of Projects

    New Wave of Housing Reform in the 1930's

    Ambitious Architectural Plans for Public Housing in 1930's

    Failure to Achieve Objectives by 1940's

IV. Housing the New Argentina: Peronism and the Planning of Comfort

    Rapid Expansion in Public Housing Under Peron

    Transition of Housing Advocates and Architects to Peronist Regime

    Barrio Presidente Perón as a Model Neighborhood

    Housing Propaganda and the Significance of Comfort

    Limits of the Peronist Vision of Public Housing

V. Conclusion
 
 
I.   INTRODUCTION

"This house of study has been supplied with every "confort," as the lady [Eva Perón] has noted; many have argued that there might be too much luxury here and that it is not wise to accustom the people to such "confort" and such luxury. I think in a diametrically opposed way; they speak in the name of sordidness and misery; we speak of splendor and abundance. We speak from another point of view. We speak another language."

^{These examples add to the already bursting folder of outrageous anecdotes about Juan and Evita Perón that keep historians, and a good number of novelists and playwrights, in business. But these housing projects and others like them represent more than evidence of the locura Peronista or proof of Juan and Evita's devotion to the people. The Peronist projects belong to a larger history of public housing that suggests much about the evolution of the state and social policy in 20th century Argentina. In particular, the story of public housing sheds light on the emergence of technical strategies for planning and regulating resources. "Technical" in this sense refers to forms of knowledge or expertise -- ranging from architectural design to civil engineering -- employed by state officials to manage society. Under Perón, technical planning, combined with the populist rhetoric that accompanied it, helped reformulate the bonds that linked those in command of the state with popular constituencies.(2)}

^{A small, but vocal community of "reformers" or "experts" (social scientists, public officials, architects, urbanists, etc.) played a key role in this process. Housing advocates looked abroad, mainly to Europe and the United States, for progressive strategies that could help solve the problems of a rapidly expanding metropolis. Yet the history of Argentine public housing is not simply a case of mimicry -- a story of how modernism, urbanism and state planning were imported to South American shores. Domestic political and economic conditions were instrumental in shaping the story of Argentine public housing, how it developed, when, and the meanings ascribed to it.(3)}

^{The issue of public housing between 1910-1955 has received scant scholarly attention. Two reasons may explain this historical lacuna. First, historians of the 1920's and 1930's have stressed the failure of public housing -- that is, the limited number of units produced and their ineffectiveness in altering housing conditions. In truth, housing efforts did fail to live up to the high promises of their supporters. Only about 5,700 housing units were built during the interwar years. This was certainly not a particularly large or impressive collection of structures in international perspective, although it probably constituted one of most extensive efforts in Latin America during this time. Secondly, historians of the Peronist period, the period in which public housing took off, have kept their plates full with other issues: the popular bases of support for Perón, the role of organized labor, the figure of Evita, and changing definitions of social rights and citizenship.(4)}

^{Post-Gino Germani discussions of Peronism have emphasized the "populist" nature of the regime and the charismatic power of its ruling couple, perhaps at the expense of a more detailed examination of the practical ways Juan and Evita secured popular support. Only recently have historians begun to treat the issue of social policy more carefully and begun to examine the mechanisms by which the regime sought to implement its populist slogans.(5)}

^{This paper will bridge the common historiographical dividing line of 1946 to examine the links between the public housing efforts of the 1920's and 1930's with those of the Perón years. The interwar period was crucial in the formulation of designs and ideas regarding public housing that would take on increased significance post-1946. In this sense, the story of Peronist "success" in public housing can only be understood fully in comparison to the "failures" of earlier decades. Under Perón, plans and ideas that had been circulating during the interwar years were finally transformed into concrete and steel -- although not always in the manner or with the political valence their designers had intended. By ending abruptly in 1955, this paper runs the risk of furthering triumphalist understandings that culminate in the "rise" of Perón. This work is by no means intended to extol uncritically Peronist housing achievements, but rather to examine the ideologies that underpinned the crafting of domestic spaces to political ends.}

^{II.  Public Housing in the 1910's and 1920's: Directing Private Interest}

^{Public housing policy grew out of a liberal tradition of limited state interference in the workings of the market. Late 19th century liberal reformers established health and safety statues setting minimum standards over the use of privately-owned housing in Buenos Aires. In the first decade of the 20th century, a chorus of social experts -- mainly, medical hygienists, social scientists, and Catholic activists -- grew louder in their criticism of Buenos Aires's overcrowded housing. In their view, the transformation of Buenos Aires wrought by massive levels of foreign immigration threatened the health and morals of city workers and empleados ("employees").(6)}

^{In particular, the conventillo or tenement house attracted the reformers' most intense ire.(7) To critics, the conventillo was a sinister debaser of the health, morality, and productivity of working-class families, a "fetid pig sty" and the "home where all feelings are corrupted, all affections lost due to the lack of all good examples."(8)}

^{The sheer size of conventillos, housing often hundreds of workers, made them particularly visible (and feared) by observers. In contrast to the shantytowns at the city's edges, the conventillos were located near the center of the city. In addition to serving as breeding grounds for vice and disease, these dangerous spaces were thought to foment anarchist radicalism. Indeed, the 1907 Tenant Strike originated among anarchists in the Cuatro Diques conventillo, leading to a three month conflict between the police and an estimated 100,000 persons. For these reasons, housing reformers set out to eradicate the conventillo. Yet, unlike governments in Rio de Janeiro, London, or even Haussman's Paris, national and municipal authorities in Buenos Aires opted not to engage in slum clearances. Instead public officials pursued policies that tread more lightly on property rights, including even those of the maligned slumlords. Through a mixture of public housing and private cooperation, housing authorities hoped to rid the city of the conventillo.}

^{By the early 1910's, reformers succeeded in convincing national and municipal governments to take more direct action. In 1913, the municipal government contracted the Compañia de Construcciones Modernas (The Company of Modern Constructions or CCM), to privately construct and manage 10,000 homes with public funds supplied by the city. Two years later, Argentine lawmakers passed Law 9677, also known as the Cafferata law for its chief sponsor Juan Cafferata, a Congressman active in Catholic outreach efforts. This legislation created the Comisión Nacional de Casas Barratas (the National Commission of Low-Cost Housing or CNCB) to build public housing.(9)}

^{Argentine policy makers did not simply abandon the liberal tradition. In the view of Cafferata and other supporters of Law 9677, the state would never substitute for the market. Rather, public housing would serve as a model to guide private interests toward greater involvement in social projects. The national Commission had a dual mission: 1) to build public housing; 2) to support and further encourage the initiatives of the Church and "intereses privados," defined as charity organizations, credit unions, cooperatives, and other private sector groups. It was only a matter of time, argued Commission member Eduardo Lanús, until businessmen realized it was in their interest to invest in their workforce as they would in capital goods.(10)}

^{The city government similarly deferred to the power of private interests in its own public housing projects. Municipal officials pushed the concept of "public" housing to the limit by contracting a private company to build and manage its projects.}

^{These public housing strategies may seem a clear indicator of backwardness in Argentina's social policy. To be sure, mainstream politicians clung to liberal laissez-faire ideas long after European governments were well on the road to the welfare state. The Argentine government's enthusiasm toward private initiative and market forces places the South American nation in closer company with the United States than Europe. In both "New World" societies, the conventional wisdom held that opportunities for social mobility precluded the need for European-style statism in housing. Conservatives balked at the need from public housing in a nation with limitless open spaces and opportunity.(11)}

^{From the opposite pole of the spectrum, Argentine socialists and anarchists also objected to the expansion of state welfare. Socialist congressmen like Nicolas Repetto and Enrique Dickman criticized the Cafferata Law and advocated a continuation of private efforts to establish worker housing cooperatives like the Hogar Obrero ("Worker's House"). Similarly, the syndicalist-dominated labor unions focused more on gaining government intervention in specific workplace disputes than lobbying for an expansion of government housing programs.(12) If popular support existed for public housing, it remained unorganized. Within this ideological context, the initial impetus for public housing in Argentina came from Catholic activists and social scientists with moderate approaches toward state intervention in the housing market.}

^{The question of which type of housing to build proved a vexing one for these reformers. In protracted debates, the national commission's directors weighed the merits of collective (apartment) housing versus single-family houses. The Commission chairman (and future president of Argentina) Marcelo Alvear argued collective housing was a quicker, more cost effective solution to house needy city residents. His opponents claimed detached houses were in more demand by workers and empleados. Commission member Juan Ochoa argued that houses would "stabilize the worker, creating in him habits of saving and order, which will withdraw him from rebellion and make him fraternize, instead, with others." In Ochoa's view, houses would satisfy the Cafferata Law's goal of teaching workers respect for property and self-discipline. Respectable domesticity and family would, in theory, counteract radicalism. In the end, these debates on the social purpose of public housing remained unresolved. National and municipal authorities constructed a mixture of collective and single-family housing.(13) In their attempts to shape the habits of city workers, planners experimented with social engineering designs from abroad.(14) The National Commission's Barrio Cafferata copied the British vernacular style of garden-city projects such as Letchworth with its rows of two-story, white cottages topped with shingled-roofs; the orderly blocks of houses were clustered around a central public green. The city commission employed similar, if more stripped-down, two-story designs in its Barrio Segurola and Barrio Mitre. In these cases, the architecture was modeled more on the domestic quinta design with whitewashed houses separated from the street by a small yard and low wall or fence. As critics noted, these houses were clustered even closer together than in typical neighborhoods, forming tight, monotonous rows with little provision for open spaces.(15) The commission's architects achieved greater success in the construction of collective housing. F.H. Bereterbide's casa colectiva Los Andes (1925) divided a city block into a series of eleven four-story, apartments of different shapes surrounding a central garden. As Juan Molina y Vedia has suggested, Bereterbide adapted ideas from OttoWagner, Hermann Muthesius, and housing projects outside Paris in developing his plan.(16) Combined with vernacular forms and Bereterbide's own stylistic touches, casa colectiva Los Andes' balance of innovative design and low-cost marked a high point in interwar public housing.}

^{These projects should not overshadow the modesty of public housing achievements in the 1910's and 1920's. Despite their familiarity with social policy elsewhere in the Atlantic world, Argentine officials and experts continued to work within a strict liberal model the state and market. Planned and unplanned factors ensured that public housing remained limited throughout the 1910's and 1920's. Lawmakers set low initial funding levels and restrictive financial rules for the national public housing commission. Seventy-percent of the Commission's subsequent funding came from the receipts at the municipal horse track's Thursday races. The Commission was subject to the whims of the market. During the lean years of World War I, gifts from the Jockey Club and other charities were necessary to keep it afloat. Trade disruptions during the war in Europe caused Argentina to slide into a depression, raising construction costs and producing shortages of necessary imported building materials. The impact of the depression and unforeseen expenses raised rents in national and city housing projects out of the reach of even skilled workers and petty empleados.(17)}

^{As Colin M. Lewis has shown in the case of social insurance, the chronic financial problems of municipal and national governments presented a high barrier to "welfare" projects like public housing. The state's traditional reliance on customs house receipts as the main source of revenue further restrained social spending. Radical party and conservative regimes alike were unwilling to alienate urban middle- and upper-class supporters by creating a comprehensive income tax system, which might have increased reserves in state coffers for public works. Policy-makers and experts remained -- either by choice, political opposition, or economic limitations -- committed to small-scale projects and fomenting private initiative.(18)
 
III. The Limits of the Market: Public Housing and Planning in the 1930's}

^{The track record of public housing in Buenos Aires was less than inspiring. The national Commission failed to live up to the hopes of Cafferata and his followers. As a result of delays, funding restrictions, and cost overruns, the CNCB in 1926 had built only two neighborhoods and two apartment complexes with a total of 398 homes; by 1939, this figure had increased to just 677 units.(19) Even more discouraging, the organization's members were forced to recognize that "intereses privados" had failed to improve housing conditions. For instance, the Union Popular Católica produced only 213 homes before it disintegrated in the early 1920's.(20) The Commission acknowledged that private, cooperative, and philanthropic initiative had failed to materialize, owing in part to the perplexing "idiosincracia de nuestra populación" -- at least those with deep pockets.(21)}

^{The municipal government encountered a more troublesome set of problems with private sector involvement in public housing. After a three-year investigation, the city finally seized control of the 4,993 houses built by the Compania in December 1929. At 85 pesos as month, rent was too high for skilled workers and empleados to afford. Low-quality construction materials and design flaws in the houses required frequent repair by tenants; houses were packed too close together without proper allowances for green public spaces.(22) In essence, the privately run CCM acted much as conventillo owners did. It exploited the intense demand for housing by building units as cheaply as possible and charging rents as high as the market would bear.}

^{In both the national and municipal cases, housing officials were stymied by economic depression, inexperience, and a flawed assessment of the private sector. Ironically, the tenants of the public projects also contributed to the unhinging of these early efforts.(23) Tenant organizations in public neighborhoods lobbied the city government to investigate problems with shoddy buildings and mortgage policies. Complaints ranging from price gouging to peeling paint eventually led to the revoking of the city's contract. Similarly, residents of Barrio Cafferata requested that the national commission review its mortgage plans, which increased payment rates for those switching from renting to buying their houses to astronomical levels. The Commission directors became infuriated when faced by tenant demands, claiming that public housing was not a handout for those with little respect for contracts or property. In response to eviction notices, tenants lobbied the Congress for relief. Congressional leaders intervened by reducing mortgage rates in Barrio Cafferata, thus putting an end to a conflict that discredited the national commission.(24)}

^{By the mid-1930's, housing experts began exploring alternatives to the national and municipal experiences. The largely amateur reformers of the 1910's -- many of them Catholic activists -- were replaced over the 1930's by a new generation of professionally trained experts, such as architects and engineers, that sought to apply more systematic forms of knowledge to urban housing problems. This shift in the community of reformers constituted a transition more than a rupture; professionals and social scientists had been central to earlier efforts and previous concerns with hygiene, social stability, and the dreaded anarchic conventillo continued into the 1930's and 1940's. The technical planners of the 1930's were anything but a uniform group; they ranged from architects trained in Bauhaus modernism (Wladimiro Acosta) to public park designers (Benito Carrasco) to military civil engineers (General Augustín Justo).}

^{Unlike earlier critics, reformers developed in their writings a more comprehensive critique of Buenos Aires' market-driven pattern of urban development.(25) Arturo Goyeneche, the mayor of Buenos Aires in the late 1930's, claimed that the housing problem was part of a larger failure of the state to plan the city's growth. The enemy was, in the most abstract sense, the unregulated market: the real estate developer who continued to subdivide the city into small, crowded lots; the worker who built his own home without proper materials or design; the capitalist who refused to supply well-built, low-cost housing. Viewed from this perspective, the mayor argued that public housing should be considered simply another service, such as gas, garbage collection, or water, which the city was responsible for providing to those in need. Private architect Antonio Vilar went even one step further than Goyeneche, claiming in a speech to the Rotary Club that housing "cannot be nor should ever be a business." Instead, the state should take the lead in regulating this precious social resource.(26)}

^{This shift in social policy corresponds partly to the trans-Atlantic emergence of city planning and urbanism. In Argentina, planning belonged to a tradition stretching back at least to the avenue-building and beautification projects of Torcuato de Alvear in the 1880's. In the 1930's, city planners (often trained as architects or engineers) occupied positions in newly-created branches of government, such as the municipal Oficina Técnica Asesora and Dirección del Plan de Urbanización. Conferences, publications, and architectural societies created contacts among the new urbanists and helped keep experts abreast of domestic and international developments. The city government's Boletín and architecture magazines provided illustrated articles on housing projects throughout Europe; in these pages, architects contrasted their own efforts in Argentina with those in Radburn, New Jersey or Letchworth, England.(27) Le Corbusier's 1929 visit to Argentina and his plan to reconstruct Buenos Aires further intensified local interest in modernist architecture. The asymmetry of this Atlantic social policy community must be stressed. By and large, information flowed only in one direction across the Atlantic, as Argentine planners looked abroad for cutting-edge social policy.(28)}

^{Argentine architects rode the wave of enthusiasm in state-managed urban development by proposing ambitious projects. Bereterbide, designer of the casa colectiva Los Andes, broke with his traditional preference for smaller apartment and housing projects. In 1935, he offered his Barrio Jardin de Flores plan for a massive project housing 16,000 persons, composed of 10 high-rise apartments and 800 houses on a 60 hectare plot near the city's southern edge. Based on a modernist tower-in-the-park design, Bereterbide's project made a priority of supplying residents with ample air, light, and open green spaces. The proximity to workplaces would allow workers greater leisure time to spend with their families. In turn the government would provide this diverse group of residents with additional services typically offered by the market: schools, shops, sports fields, clinics, social centers, etc.(29)}

^{A similar "total" neighborhood design was applied to a 1939 proposal by the municipal Dirección del Plan de Urbanización. This plan called for a series of three-story, six-unit apartments on a 23-hectare plot. Like Bereterbide's design, the state would provide other services in addition to housing, including a day-care center where female workers could leave their children with specially trained nurses.(30)}

^{Architect Wladomiro Acosta explained that such large-scale collective designs would result in greater well-being and comfort for workers. Instead of isolating individuals in their homes, collective housing would allow technical experts in nutrition and childcare to manage the health of residents; workers themselves would enjoy more time for recreation and recuperation from work. In his 1936 book Vivienda y Ciudad, Acosta applied lessons from European modernist architecture -- and the disciplines of hygiene, sociology, and what he called biometrics -- in his plans for massive collective housing towers that would place work, domestic, and leisure spaces in close proximity.(31)}

^{These projects and others like them were never built in the 1930's. For all their conferences, plans, and writings, public housing experts saw their efforts result in few new constructions.(32)}

^{Multiple economic and political obstacles that kept these designs on the drawing board. The city government, a center of activity for housing reformers, remained mired in chronic fiscal debt that prevented the funding of mammoth projects. The lingering consequences of the 1929 depression and a heavy debt to foreign bondholders kept the city in a state of near insolvency. Beginning in 1930, a series of military and Radical party regimes created an inhospitable climate for progressive causes. Presidents Justo, Ortíz, and Castillo warmed to the idea of state technical planning -- General Augustín Justo was himself a civil engineer -- but focused their efforts on highway construction and infrastructure not on low cost-housing for urban workers. Military involvement in public housing would take off after the 1943 coup and in the reconstruction of the earthquake-damaged city of San Juan.}

^{Nevertheless, reformers continued pressing for an expansion of public housing throughout the 1930's and early 1940's. Architects and planners drew up grand proposals while newly established policy organizations, like the Instituto Bunge, documented the merits of public housing in managing the nation's workforce. This persistent activity in the face of very few concrete opportunities should not be attributed to architects flights of fancy or the mesmerizing effects of Le Corbusier. However unrealistic or fantastic these projects may appear, housing advocates presented themselves in their writings as realists employing sound, universally-accepted, objective technical strategies. They offered detailed economic calculations to prove the state could build projects at minimum cost and maximum social benefit.}

^{Social policy experts remained convinced that the state, and not just the market or private interests, should shape and plan urban space. Architects and public officials approached the problems of worker housing with a new faith that their expertise could reorder the chaotic social conditions of urban life. Bereft of powerful political allies in national politics, reform-minded individuals continued their labors in conference halls and studios. Without their knowing, they were laying much of the groundwork for the emergence of public housing in the post-World War II years.}

^{Housing the New Argentina: Peronism and the Planning of Comfort}

^{Juan Perón's electoral victory in 1946 marked the beginning of era in Argentine history in which state welfare and the expansion of social rights would dominate the political agenda. In just six-years after taking office, the Perón government had surpassed in total number of units the public projects of the preceding fifty years, constructing ten new housing projects in the greater Buenos Aires area alone. The largest neighborhood, Ciudad Evita (located outside the city near the Ezeiza airport), contained nearly 5,000 fully-furnished houses. Both Perón's first and second Five-Year Plans, which established the regime's basic economic and social policy, called for massive construction projects. The Second Plan (1952) offered the ambitious claim that through a combination of low-cost mortgages and public housing, the government would supply 300,000 new houses by 1957. Historians Gaggero and Garro estimate that the regime fell short of this goal, although it achieved an impressive record of home construction. The evidence suggests that the Perón government's home loans and housing projects resulted in approximately 358,000 new housing units between 1946-1955. Although precise figures are unavailable, Peronist planners built around 10,600 public apartment units and homes in the greater Buenos Aires area by 1955.(33)}

^{The sheer quantity of housing built in these years was matched by a diversity of designs. In greater Buenos Aires, the state built housing in a range of styles: Barrio Evita was a sprawling collection boxy, single-story houses stretched out across the flat plains; the 960 unit low-rise apartment complex of Los Perales stood as a rows of stark, white monobloques (thin, rectangularity-shaped buildings); the winding street plan and public spaces of Barrio Presidente Perón were patterned on garden-city designs. Other neighborhoods, such as Barrio Lacarra, provided modest "emergency housing" for the most needy in 252 metal-roofed barracks made of wood. In the more ambitious projects, the government supplied everything from swimming pools and soccer fields, commercial establishments and cinema houses, clinics and schools -- even state-built Catholic churches. Through this feverish effort to build public housing, the regime leant credence to its propagandistic promise, "Cada familia en su casa y una casa para cada familia" (Every family in a house and a house for every family).(34)}

^{In actual projects built and official attention devoted to housing, Perón's government broke with the legacy of the preceding forty years. Peronist propaganda to the contrary, certain features of the regime's policies represented a continuation and adaptation of earlier efforts. At a design level, many of the Peronist neighborhoods and complexes show a remarkable affinity to ideas circulating in the late 1930's. In 1939 the municipal government had already purchased and made plans to develop the plot on which the Barrio Presidente Perón would be built. The municipal plan for a complex of "monobloque" worker apartments, discussed in the previous section, closely resembles the Barrio Los Perales. The concerns with managing labor and controlling its movement in space can be seen in the placement of neighborhoods like Barrio Perón and Los Perales next to the highway Avenida General Paz. Ciudad Evita was designed to house the laborers employed in the construction and operation of the Ezeiza airport. Under Perón, public housing advocates finally saw their visions of "total" neighborhoods become a reality. As with the late 1930's designs of Acosta, Bereterbide and their contemporaries, Peronist architects developed projects that integrated labor, transportation, and housing within a larger vision of the state directing social resources rationally and efficiently.}

^{Peronist planning caused disruptions within the architecture community as well. The center of activity shifted from studios and professional journals to municipal, provincial, and federal governments. Bureaucracies such as the Ministerio de Obras Públicas, Administración Nacional de la Vivienda, Ministerio de Asuntos Técnicos, Banco Hipotecario Nacional, and the Fundación Eva Perón assumed many of the planning responsibilities previously in local and private hands.(35)}

^{In the city of Buenos Aires, the Dirección de la Vivienda de la Secretaria de Obras Públicas designed key projects such as Barrio Los Perales and Barrio 17 de Octubre. In the first few years of the regime, control over public housing design and management was distributed among these various branches of the government -- explaining perhaps the range of housing designs employed in the new projects. By the mid 1950's, the Banco Hipotecario Nacional consolidated its role as the central public housing authority, assuming control over projects previously held in provincial and municipal hands.(36)}

^{Given the available sources, it is difficult to discuss in much detail how individuals managed this transition.(37)}

^{Some housing experts with leftist sympathies recoiled from the fascistic overtones of Peronist social policy and fell into displeasure with the regime-- Bereterbide was even imprisoned for a short while. Other policy experts like Guillermo Borda lauded the regime's development of comprehensive, technical plans that would help Argentina catch-up with the rest of the world. The Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones y Estudios Económicos disagreed, claiming that Peronist plans were unrealistic and failed to address the underlying problems of overly-expensive construction materials and urban congestion. Certainly, the rapid expansion of state projects must have created a tremendous demand for individuals with technical skills to design and build public housing. Limited evidence suggests that the Peronist government consulted with U.S. and European architects on their plans and even commissioned some of their projects to foreigners. Ortiz and Ramirez claim that the regime contracted the U.S. architects Allen, Currie, and Holsteen in 1947 as consultants for low-cost housing projects. Despite the autarkic rhetoric surrounding the regime's social policy, Peronist officials traveled within similar Atlantic social policy circuits as their predecessors in the 1920's and 1930's.(38)}

^{Perhaps the most significant change lay in the manner the Perón regime redefined the ideological assumptions behind public housing. Reformers concerns with hygiene and morality in the 1910's gave way to preoccupations with technically managing labor productivity and leisure in the 1930's, with later views never completely replacing earlier ones. With these basic concepts in mind, Peronist leaders added a new element to the public housing mix: comfort. As illustrated in the failure of the interwar projects, however, public housing constructed in the 1920's was often cramped and cheaply-made. Late 1930's architects like Acosta argued large public projects would provide collective services and greater leisure time for workers. Peronist planners intensified the attention to the material comfort, blending consumerist values of the market with ideals of technical planning. Public housing was not only to be rational and economical, clean and well-built. It was also to supply enjoyment, recreation, and even social status-- all courtesy of the Peronist state.}

^{The regime's redefinition of public housing can be seen in the design of Barrio Perón. Located at the city's northwestern edge, Barrio Perón was the flagship of Peronist public housing; it appeared repeatedly in the regime's film and print propaganda, including the official magazine Mundo Peronista, and served as a model for neighborhoods elsewhere in the country.(39) This neighborhood of 427 units (mostly detached houses) was built by the Ministerio de Obras Públicas between 1947-149.(40) Barrio Perón was laid out in horse-shoe shape with a park/sportsfield in the center, which the community's key buildings (the church, civic center, cinema house, clinic, and shops) overlooked. Architecturally, the houses were patterned on a "chalet" design, complete with tiled roofs, white-washed walls, and small yards. Unlike the monotonous housing projects of the 1920's, planners employed approximately eight variations of the chalet style in different sizes. In theory, slightly larger and smaller houses would allow a variety of families and income levels to live in the same neighborhood. More importantly, the architectural style and variety of Barrio Perón simulated the designs of private housing developers. Propagandists took pride in noting how the chalets resembled the "estilo californiano" of housing in which wealthier Argentines had lived only a few years ago (and which had been imported from the U.S. by Argentine architects through magazines such as House and Gardens and American Homes.)(41) In this manner, the design of Barrio Perón sought to rearrange established patterns of space and class, placing working-class families in high-status dwellings worthy of well-off Argentines.}

^{The regime's propaganda constantly reworked the themes of comfort and status enshrined in the spaces of Barrio Perón. Photographs showed children at play in spacious fields, mothers tending to their gardens, male workers relaxing in their living rooms. Articles in Mundo Peronista contrasted the chaotic, rundown working-class barrios with modern, planned neighborhoods that allowed families of modest means to live with "confort" and dignity.(42)}

^{In order to support this ideal, housing authorities supplied Barrio Perón and other projects with institutions to subsidize consumption. The Fundación Eva Perón established food dispensaries that sold food, liquor, and other consumer goods at low cost. House rents were also kept well below market levels. The "17 de Octubre" cinema house in Barrio Perón offered discounted movies, in addition to serving as a meeting hall for political rallies.(43) Of course, through signs and place names the regime made it abundantly clear to whom such benefits were owed. Visits by Juan or Evita brought residents into the streets to show their gratitude and support in visible ways.}

^{The reality of public housing in New Argentina did not match the rosy view of worker comfort and consumption. Barrios de emergencia made of wood and metal may have been an improvement over existing conditions, but were a far cry from the Peronist "chalets" extolled by propagandists. Securing a spot in the new public housing depended on one's support for the regime and political loyalties. State officials offered units in Barrio Perón and other projects to individuals with proven loyalty to the Peronist party. Eva Perón was personally responsible for assigning posts in the Barrio Perón's party headquarters and even the church to her associates. The cronyism toward public employees exhibited in the interwar projects continued under Perón; housing in Barrio Los Perales was designated for employees of the nearby municipal slaughterhouse and meatpacking plants.(44) More importantly, the bulk of housing came not through public projects, but as a result of wage increases for lower-income groups and state- promotion of mortgage lending through private banks and the Banco Hipotecario Nacional.}

^{Although falling short of its overblown claims, Perón's housing policies did result in an unprecedented wave of construction. On a practical level, housing projects rewarded loyal followers and created new ones for the mass political movement. Pockets of supporters in public projects throughout Buenos Aires may have proved useful in mobilizing support for the regime. But public housing should not be reduced to patronage alone. Propaganda about neighborhoods like Barrio Perón disseminated through radio, film, and press underscored the regime's ideals of social justice and dignity. Through these images and words, the state sought to convince popular constituencies of its ability to plan and regulate social resources. In contrast to the efforts of earlier reformers, the regime's planners and propagandists directed the discourses surrounding low-cost housing to a mass audience. Perón's government, both in terms of actual structures built and fomenting public interest in state-provided housing, reshaped traditional Argentine understandings of the relationship between state and citizen.}

^{Like their predecessors in the CNCB and CCM, Peronist housing officials were still concerned with forging links between workers and domestic spaces. The populist rhetoric of Peronism worked within earlier concerns with "domesticating" working-class radicalism through homeownership. Public housing was now presented as a mixture of radical and conservative ideologies. Projects like Barrio Perón represented a break with the political status quo, an amelioration of working-class living conditions delivered the magnanimous state. At the same time, public housing was offered as a means to safeguard and augment the pleasures of domestic spaces and traditional family life. ("Traditional," in this context referring to the ideal family unit presented in the regime's propaganda: a working father resting at home, a housewife mother tending to domestic chores, and multiple children playing with glee.) As before, housing policy still reflected the paternalism of political elites and technical experts who imposed their designs with little concern for public input in decision-making. Though no less paternalistic than earlier policy-makers, Peronist planners gave a decidedly new spin to preceding efforts to rationally direct social resources such as labor and housing. Yet, housing projects like Barrio Perón also presented an inversion of class hierarchies, offering workers both the real and imagined "confort" befitting higher status groups. The regime's public housing projects epitomized its blend of material and symbolic social policy: new houses for the lucky, loyal few and state-directed messages about planned comfort for the wider public.}

^{Under Perón, the paternalistic concern with housing the working-class took on a new set of meanings, ones that exemplified the techno-populist vision of the New Argentina.(45) This vision persisted in the political conflicts that followed Perón's 1955 defeat. The relationship between state, citizen, and housing was central points of contention in the struggles between Peronist and anti-Peronist factions of various stripes -- antagonisms that have continued to the present in multiple, often tragically irreconcilable understandings of nationalism and social rights.}

^{V.   Conclusion}

^{This essay has investigated the development of Argentine social policy and state formation by looking at history of public housing in Buenos Aires. Peronist housing projects and the ideologies they represented, did not descend from the heavens in 1946. They were the product of a longer trajectory of public housing successes, failures, and unrealized dreams stretching back to reformers earliest efforts in the 1910's. Argentine housing experts navigated between European advances in social policy and local political and economic conditions -- "limitations" they might have preferred to call them -- in formulating their remedies for Buenos Aires's residents. Neither a purely international nor domestic (national) perspective can fully explain this historical process. Planners did more than make carbon copies of European models of progress; Peronist policies did not arise solely from particular Argentine political or class structures.(46)}

^{At a general level, the links suggested in this essay between earlier planners and public housing under Perón resemble arguments made by Theda Skocpol and Daniel Rodgers.(47) As in the case of the New Deal in the U.S., social policy ideas of an earlier time laid dormant until a new political conjuncture called them into action. A rupture of the established order by a serious economic catastrophe or sudden shift in political direction sent new leaders scrambling for available experts and strategies. The Argentine reformers of the 1930's seemed to have been in such a position to influence Peronist housing with their technical plans and modernist designs. These arguments are based on limited evidence and additional research is needed to determine if these assertions hold true. In particular, more needs to be known about specific experts and how they managed the transition to Peronist social projects.}

^{Ultimately, the emergence of public housing in Buenos Aires must be understood within the larger story of the urban housing market and its relationship to the state. This essay has only touched upon of few of the key issues: homeownership, suburbanization, neighborhood formation, public and private mortgage lending, etc. -- in short, the politics of class and space in 20th century Buenos Aires. Public housing, even in the Perón years, never came close to replacing private homebuilding and settlement patterns. Mayor Goyeneche, himself an advocate of increase state participation in housing, acknowledged that private sector support was necessary given the city government's financial crisis. Interwar public housing advocates noted the achievements of certain banks, corporations, and cooperatives in providing low-cost mortgages that helped build thousands of houses between 1910-1940. Mortgage loans may not have the drama of public housing projects, but they probably had more of an impact on popular housing conditions in the interwar and after. The market is of course much harder to research than the few and difficult-to-locate documents produced by public housing officials and experts. Yet only by placing public housing in the larger context of urban property can we begin to get a better sense of its impact on the lives of Buenos Aires's residents.}

^{1.   Mundo Peronista, "Uno de mis más grandes sueños," 15 November 1951, 10-14 (My translation). The closet story was recounted by Maria Elena Warner, a longtime resident of Barrio Evita, in a documentary interview: Evita, the Woman Behind the Myth, 1996, prod. History Television Network, H-TV, 50 min, videocassette.}

^{2.  I limit myself in this paper to public housing in the city of Buenos Aires. This choice reflects in part the reformers' nearly exclusive focus on Buenos Aires and other cities like Rosario over rural housing conditions.}

^{3.  For more on this international context of intellectual exchange and technical planning see Daniel Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age, (Cambridge and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1998), esp. chapters 4 and 5. Paul Rabinow, French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment, (Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 1989).}

^{4.  The historiography on Perón is too vast to attempt a summary. For works on public housing before Perón see Leandro H. Gutiérrez and Juan Suriano, "Workers' Housing and Living Conditions in Buenos Aires, 1880-1930," in Jeremy Adelman ed., Essays in Argentine Labour History, 1870-1930, (England: Macmillan Press, 1992), 45-50. Charles S. Sargent, The Spatial Evolution of Greater Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1870-1930, (Tempe: Arizona State University Press, 1974), 83-84.}

^{5.  Finding information on planning and policy formation under Perón is complicated by the lack of government documents and sources. Mariano Plotkin has provided perhaps the best study so far of the technical dimensions of populism. Mañana es San Perón: Propaganda, rituales políticos y educación en el régimen peronista (1946-1955), (Buenos Aires: Ariel Historia Argentina, 1993). Gaggero and Garro have provided the best, and perhaps only, treatment of Peronist housing policy: Horacio Gaggero and Alicia Garro, Del trabajo a la casa: La política de la vivienda del gobierno peronista, 1946-1955, (Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblos, 1996). I regret that I had been unable to consult Adrian Gorelik's remarkable work La grilla y el parque or Anahi Ballent's dissertation on architecture in Peronist Argentina when writing this paper. These works treat many of the topics discussed herein with greater depth and insight.}

^{6. Buenos Aires grew in a matter of decades from a large town of 400,000 inhabitants in the 1880's into one of Latin America's largest cities. The city's expansion continued well into the 20th century, as the population jumped from 1.5 to 3.5 million in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area between 1910-1940. The term empleado or "employee" applied loosely to a range of what we might today consider working- and middle-class groups, including service sector workers, clerks, and lower-level public employees. For more on the liberal state and the origins of reform see Juan Suriano, "El estado argentino frente a los trabajadores: Política social y represion, 1880-1916," Boletín del Instituto de Historia Argentina y Americana "Dr. Emilio Ravignani, (1998):109-136. Eduardo Zimmerman, Los liberales reformistas: La cuestión social en la Argentina, 1890-1916, (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1994), especially chapters 2, 3, and 5.}

^{7.  The term "conventillo" described loosely both a style of architecture and slums or inferior housing in general. Although specifications varied, the typical downtown conventillo had a narrow rectangular shape, approximately 30-45 feet wide and 160-190 feet long. Rooms measuring 10 by 13 feet, and often much smaller, divided this elongated structure. Whether of the single or two floor variety, the conventillo's rooms opened out on a central internal patio. By 1904, the average conventillo housed 56 people in 18 rooms, an average of 3 individuals per room. James Scobie, Buenos Aires: Plaza to Suburb, 1870-1910, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), 146-159. Censo general de la ciudad de Buenos Aires, 1909 (Buenos Aires, 1910), 3-21.}

^{8.  Guillermo Rawson, "Estudio sobre las casas de inquilinato en Buenos Aires," Escritos y discursos, vol 2, (Buenos Aires: Compania Sud-Americana de Billetes de Banco, 1891) 108. Samuel Gache, Les logements ouvriers à Buenos-Ayres, (Paris: G. Steinheil, 1900), 55}

^{9. Carlos A. Niklison, "La vivienda en la Argentina, obra realizada," Boletín del Honorable Consejo Deliberante, 1:6-7 (Sept -Oct 1939), 161-170. Gutiérrez and Suriano, 45-50. Sargent, 83-84.}

^{10.  República Argentina, Comisión Nacional de Casas Baratas, Antecedentes relativos a la construción y venta de las casas individuales construidas por disposición de la ley 9677, (Buenos Aires, Talleres Gráficos M. Moldes, 1927), 9-14. This work reprints the minutes, memoranda, and correspondence of the Commission between 1915 and 1927 (cited hereafter as "Comisión").}

^{11. Suriano, "El estado frente los trabajadores..." 109-118.}

^{12. By 1940, the Hogar Obrero had built a total of 311 houses and 4 apartments housing a total of 2,182 persons. The Socialists would change their minds by the late 1920's and push for an expansion of public housing and state welfare. Arturo Goyeneche and Nereo Gimenez Melo, " Panorama de la habitación en la ciudad de Buenos Aires," Boletín del H.C.D. 1:6-7, (Sept-Oct 1939), 217. Jeremy Adelman, "Political Ruptures and Organized Labor: Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, 1916-1922," International Labor and Working-Class History 54 (Fall 1998), 109-114.}

^{13.  Comisión, 9-11, 101. The demand among city residents for public housing, both single-family and collective, was intense. An estimated 1,727 families applied for 158 spots in Barrio Cafferata and 589 families for 67 spots at the Valentín Alsina apartment.}

^{14.  In their choice of location and design for public projects, officials followed the housing market's lead and mirrored preexisting settlement patterns. The CNCB and CCM selected properties either in districts populated predominately by workers and empleados, or in areas to which these groups were already moving, primarily the southern and south-western zones of the city (especially in Barrracas, Parque Patricios, Flores). Rather than focus efforts on a single, large project, housing planners opted, perhaps due to financial limitations, for smaller neighborhoods and apartments in these areas.}

^{15.  For more on these housing projects and Argentine housing, see Ramón Gutiérrez and Margarita Gutman, comp., Vivienda: Ideas y contradicciones (1916-1956), (Buenos Aires: Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de Historia de la Arquitectura y del Urbanismo, 1988), 30-31. Memoria Municipal (Buenos Aires, n.p. 1937). For additional information on private housing design and neighborhood formation see Diego Armus and Jorge Enrique Hardoy, "Conventillos, ranchos y casa propia en el mundo urbano del novecientos," in Diego Armus ed., Mundo urbano y cultura popular, (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1990), 153-195. Pancho Liernur, "Buenos Aires: La estrategia de la casa autoconstruida," in Diego Armus, ed., Sectores populares y vida urbana, (Buenos Aires: CLASCO, 1984).}

^{16.  Juan Molina y Vedia's biography of Bereterbide provides a rich analysis of his architecture complete with excellent illustrations. Fermín Bereterbide: La construcción de lo impossible, (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Colihue, 1997) 22-47.}

^{17.  Sargent, 83. Comisión 26-35. Honorable Consejo Deliberante de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Memoria Municipal, 1933-1934, (Buenos Aires, n.p.), 241-246.}

^{18.  Colin M. Lewis, "Social Insurance: Ideology and Policy in the Argentine, c. 1920-1966," Welfare, Poverty, and Development in Latin America (Britain: MacMillan Press, 1993), 175-185. David Rock, "Radical Populism and the Conservative Elite, 1912-1930," in David Rock, ed. Argentina in the Twentieth Century (Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press, 1975), 75-81. Other reformers, such as the economist Alejandro Bunge, himself responsible in part for the Cafferata law, dissented from these views and proposed more intensive programs of state-built housing along British or German lines. Alejandro Bunge, Los problemas económicos del presente, (Buenos Aires: n.p. 1920), 232.}

^{19. Arturo Goyeneche and Nereo Gimenez Melo, " Panorama de la habitación en la ciudad de Buenos Aires," Boletín del H.C.D. 1:6-7, (Sept-Oct 1939), 217. Comisión, 101.}

^{20.  For more on the Union Popular Catolica's housing strategies, including their "abortive" efforts at collective housing designed with disciplinary goals in mind, see Anahi Ballent, "La Iglesia y la vivienda popular: la "Gran Colecta Nacional," in Diego Armus ed., Mundo urbano y cultura popular, (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1990), 195-219.}

^{21.  Comisión, 34.}

^{22.  Junta Central de Barrios de Construcciones Modernas, Memoria y cálculos actuariales presentatdos al Honorable Consejo Deliberante con fecha 18 de deciembre de 1928, (Buenos Aires: n.p. 1928). Memoria Municipal, 1933-34, 243-4, 248.}

^{23.  Although in some cases we have their names and even signatures, very little is known about the residents of public housing projects in the period 1900-1955. In the CNCB neighborhoods, selection policies produced a few general characteristics: tenants were typically Argentine citizens or foreigners with 25 years residency (a notable characteristic in a city with a foreign-born population between 30-40 percent in this period) and married couples with many (up to 10) children. Sargent claims that public employees received preferential treatment in selection. High-rents kept most unskilled and even skilled workers away, unless families had multiple income earners. Comisión, 102. Sargent, 84.}

^{24.  Junta Central de Barrios de Construcciones Modernas, Memoria. Comisión, 52-70, 115-116.}

^{25.  The housing experts in the 1930's shared some of their predecessor's targets for reform. The conventillo remained a powerful image of dangerous social "promiscuidad" even if fewer city residents actually lived in tenements. Reformers were particularly outraged that some estimated 124,000 people dwelled in housing made of wood and metal in an urban population of 2.5 million. A 1936 survey indicated that 58 percent of worker housing had only one room and 29 percent two rooms. Camilo Stanchina, "Una lacra urbana: el conventillo en Buenos Aires," Boletín del H.C.D. 1:6-7 (Sept-Oct 1939), 183-185. Goyeneche and Melo, 15-16.}

^{26.  Goyeneche and Melo, 6-7, 50. Antonio Vilar, "Consideraciones sobre el problema de la vivienda económica (1938)" in Gutiérrez and Gutman, 71-75.}

^{27.  For example, issue 6-7 of the Boletín del H.C.D. (1939) contains numerous articles on public housing developments throughout Europe, including Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Austria, and the U.S.S.R. Richard Walter's work provides a solid political analysis of the municipal context in which these new urbanists operated. Politics and Urban Growth in Buenos Aires, 1910-1942, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), especially chaps. 8 and 10.}

^{28.  In one notable exception, Argentina hosted the first Panamerican Congress on Popular Housing in October, 1939, bringing together international experts and showcasing Argentine proposals La Prensa, 2 October 1939, 29; 3 October 1939, 13.}

^{29.  Despite the monumental scale of his Flores proposal, Bereterbide remained critical of Le Corbusier and other modernist architects. He would return smaller project designs in the 1940's and 1950's. F.H. Bereterbide, "El problema de la vivienda popular en Buenos Aires," Boletín del H.C.D. 1:6-7 (Sept-Oct. 1939), 143-160. Molina y Vedia, 66-75.}

^{30.  Goyeneche and Melo, 56-57. This comprehensive neighborhood design was influenced by 1930's British and U.S. ideas of planning public housing around "neighborhood units," refered to in Argentina as the concept of "unidad vecinal." For more on these influences see, Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo, Universidad Nacional de la Plata, Materiales para la historia de la arquitectura, el habitat y la ciudad en la Argentina, (La Plata: Red de Editores Universitarias, 1996), 230.}

^{31.  Wladomiro Acosta, "Vivienda obrera," in Gutiérrez and Gutman, 87-88.}

^{32.  Urban planners finally convinced the city to pass its first comprehensive building code in 1943, but even this measure was criticized by many for merely codifying existing practices rather than enforcing a more rational planning scheme. Molina y Vedia, 126.}

^{33.  These figures are rough estimates at best since the secondary literature often fails to distinguish between planned and completed projects and offers conflicting tallies. The neighborhoods I have used to compute my rough estimate are: in the province of Buenos Aires, 17 de Octubre (1254 units) and Ciudad Eva Perón (5000 units); in the city of Buenos Aires, Presidente Perón (427 units), Primero de Marzo (177 units), Los Perales (960 units), 17 de Octubre (784 units), Barrio Emergencia Lacarrra (252 units), Carapaligue (540 units), Barrio Eva Perón (173 units), 22 de Agosto (704 units), and 26 de Julio (329 units). Gaggero and Garro, 37-40 93. Materiales para la historia... 229-230. Archivo General de la Nación (AGN), Ministerio de Asuntos Técnicos collection, 1953, caja 109, document 160, 184. Mundo Peronista, "Nuevos Barrios de Buenos Aires," 15 February 1952, 22-26.}

^{34.  This slogan is taken from a propaganda film: "El pueblo con Perón," AGN, Departamento de Cine, legajo 1284, tambor 618.}

^{35.  Molina y Vedia, 126-127. Guillermo Borda, "El problema de la vivienda de Buenos Aires en el Plan Quinquenal" (1946); Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones y Estudios Económico, "La Obra Social en el Plan Quinquenal" (1946); Sociedad Central de Arquitectos, "Sobre la suspensión de la ley de desalojos" (1946) and "Momento actual de la constrcción" (1947) in Gutiérrez and Gutman, 96-103, 109-118.}

^{36.  Gaggero and Garro, 46. Materiales para la historia... 229-230.}

^{37.  In writing this paper I regret not having been able to consult Anahi Ballent's work on architects during the Peronist period, which undoubtedly sheds much light on these issues.}

^{38.  Federico F. Ortiz and Ramón Gutiérez, La arquitectura en la Argentina, 1930-1970, (Separata del número 103 de la revista "Hogar y arquitectura"), n.p.}

^{39.  The Cuatro de Junio neighborhood in Jujuy follows a similar layout to Barrio Perón. The regime placed heavy emphasis on building housing throughout the nation and not just in Buenos Aires as previous regimes had done. Perón's brand of nationalism sought to expand the benefits of the capital to the rest of the nation. Although I have been unable to find any statistics on the total number of public projects built, official figures suggest that the percentage of mortgages handed out by the Banco Hipotecario in greater Buenos Aires declined from 63.7 percent in 1946 to 44 percent by 1951. Mundo Peronista, "Cada familia en su casa," 15 August, 1952, 4.}

^{40.  Materiales para la historia... 229.}

^{41.  Ortiz and Gutiérez, n.p. AGN, Photography Archive, caja 42, sobre 40. Mundo Peronista, "Este es mi barrio," 15 March 1952, 21-23.}

^{42.  Ibid. Mundo Peronista, "Nuevos Barrios de Buenos Aires," 15 February 1952, 22-24; "Este es mi barrio," 15 March 1952, 21-23.}

^{43.  Nicholas Fraser and Marysa Navarro, Eva Perón, (New York and London: W.W. Norton, 1980), 130-33.}

^{44.  Ibid. Borda, 112.}

^{45. For more on Peronism, the working-class, and family see Plotkin, 256-296. Alberto Ciria, Política y cultura popular: La Argentina peronista, 1946-1955, (Buenos Aires: Ediciones del Flor, 1983), 66-68, 181, 222-225.}

^{46. Argentine housing policy was more than a "derivative discourse." This fact by no means suggests that Argentine housing planners were above reproach. As suggested in this essay, Argentine reformers fell into many of the same traps as their counterparts in Europe. Knowledgeable of the latest foreign designs, housing experts were ignorant about city workers' own "local knowledge" regarding how to improve social conditions.}

^{47.  Theda Skocpol and Margret Weir, "State Structures and the Possibilities for 'Keynesean' Responses to the Great Depression in Sweeden, Britain, and the United States," Bringing the State Back In, edited by Peter Evans, et. al. (Cambridge and London: Cambridge University Press, 1985). Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings.}