For most tourists who visit Buenos Aires, their only contact with Buenos Aires’ river (the Rio de la Plata is actually a bay) is during a quick visit to La Boca, where the river plays second fiddle to the colorful drama of La Caminita.

But La Boca (the mouth) is precisely what it sound like —the point at which the once mighty Matanza—Riachuelo River spills into the sea. Yet if one steps away from the art and music of the La Caminita and heads to the riverfront, it is obvious even to the un-trained eye that something is wrong.

The River is sick. It has been inundated with chemical and biological contaminents, and has exceed its capac-ity to clean itself.

WHO THIS AFFECTS

The Matanza-Riachuelo River Basin is home to 4.5 mil-lion people, one third of the population of metropolitan Buenos Aires, and 13% of the entire nation of Argentina.

The river is the border between the Federal Capital District and the conurbano, the suburbs that are part of the Province of Buenos Aires. The working-class residents who populate both sides of the river tend to be poorer than their wealthier neighbors to the north, one of the many factors which have led political leaders over the years to promise to clean up the basin, without actually delivering.

The basin, and especially the Riachuelo, play an important part in the history of Buenos Aires. It is where the thousands of boats ferrying new immigrants from Europe landed. From its role as a conduit for the pampas agricultural production to the petrochemical plants of Dock Sud, the river basin is the heart of Buenos Aires’ industrial and manufacturing base. As it is one of two major dumping grounds for Buenos Aires’ sewage (the other being direct dumping into the Rio de la Plata), it is severely impacted by the city’s inadequate sewer system.

WHAT HAS (NOT) BEEN DONE

To many residents of Buenos Aires, it is simply known as the “limpieza”. Whereas the wealthy of Buenos Aires began fleeing the flood- and yellow-fever prone basin 150 years ago, politicians have flocked to its side in recent years, with leader after leader promising to have the basin cleaned up within a certain timeframe. To date, no one has been able to deliver on their promises, and the state of the basin remains perilous at best and a significant biohazard in parts. In an effort to document the condition of the river basin and to develop ideas to fix it, Associacion Vecinos La Boca worked with local and national NGO’s (Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales & Poder Ciudadano), a local university (the Universidad Technologica Nacional) and various government agencies to produce a comprehensive 284-page report, Informe Especial sobre la Cuenca Matanza-Riachuelo, on the current state of the basin, including recommendations for cleaning it up.

WHERE YOU COME IN


There is also a strong connection between the pollution of the basin and the relation-ship of Buenos Aires to the world. Many of the large-scale polluters are either multinationals or are involved heavily in Buenos Aires’ export-based economy; additionally changes in economic
policy and the growth of neoliberal thinking and menenismo have had a profound effect on the health of the Basin.