Conflict Over Squatters Divides Argentina

By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
NYT

BUENOS AIRES — It has become a nightly ritual. The residents of Villa Lugano, a scruffy neighborhood on the city’s south side, burn tires and beat drums, while a dozen police officers in fluorescent orange jerseys stand behind a metal barricade, protecting about 90 squatters from the neighbors’ wrath.

The squatters, mostly immigrants fleeing desperate slums, moved onto a soccer field on federal land here two weeks ago, insisting they had no other options. Neighborhood residents, fearing that a crime-ridden slum was springing up in their midst, want them evicted, as a federal judge has ordered.

But the government has refused to carry out the order. The clash, with its fiery street theater, has become a symbol of government inability to resolve one of the worst spates of social unrest in years, and a political test for President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

The Villa Lugano encampment is just one of a series of land invasions by thousands of people in the last few weeks that have pushed the capital to the brink of crisis. The ostensible cause, analysts said, is a shortage of low-income housing that has been exacerbated by high inflation and a boom in immigration.

(More here.)