Third Text

Emilce Heredia Chaz

Recently the seaside city of Bahía Blanca, located in the south-west of the Province of Buenos Aires, has witnessed an invasion of seagulls, crabs, flamingos and fish. Marine fauna has burst onto the streets of the city, entered protests and events, occupied the walls through murals, and has even managed to intervene in the local press. A new aesthetic has been shaped around the struggle of the socio-environmental movement that has emerged out of the ecological problems faced by the city. More than anything it is opposition to the project to dredge Bahía Blanca’s estuary, and subsequently to expand the port and industrial complex, that has given life to this movement. Seagulls, crabs, flamingos and fish have opened a crack in the industrial belt that surrounds the coast of Bahía Blanca, saying no to dredging – yes to life and questioning the current model of city development.      

A SEASIDE CITY WITHOUT A SEA VIEW

For decades, the coast of Bahía Blanca was more than merely a port for industry; it was also synonymous with beach, sun, swimsuit, fishing rod, family and friends. Work and recreation were not always antonyms and it was possible to enjoy the beaches in Maldonado, Colón and Galván.¹ Until a few years ago, the port was a popular destination for weekend promenades that offered the opportunity to observe ships and fishing on the docks. But today those beaches have disappeared and few areas for walking remain. Bahía has not only been blocked from the sea; the sea seems to have been forgotten. So what has happened?

While the coastline has been undergoing modification for over a century now, in recent decades intense transformations have produced seaside spaces that are increasingly inaccessible to the public. These changes have come about with the emergence of new actors and dynamics in which local processes reflect global forces. With the introduction of neoliberal policies of economic deregulation and the reform of the Argentinian state during the 1990s, the national government ordered the dissolution of the General Administration of Ports, a state entity that had been responsible up to that point for all national docks. As a result of the decentralization process, in 1993 Ingeniero White became the first autonomous port and was placed under the direction of the Consortium for the Management of the Port of Bahía Blanca.² Overseen by this new non-state public entity, whose board was comprised of mostly private representatives, the port pursued maximum modernization, efficiency and productivity in the hope of attracting a greater volume of ships and new investments. Having under its jurisdiction the management of the seaside area, the Consortium implemented a process of rationalization and the gradual privatization of the port space, which has largely closed off the area to those outside the shipping industry and related corporations. Today it is impossible to move freely on the docks; what remains of the once public space is a small square with a bit of sea view built by the Consortium. The neoliberal 1990s also witnessed a dizzying expansion of transnational agribusinesses, such as Cargill and Toepfer, and petrochemical companies, such as Solvay and Repsol. The port and industrial complex continued to grow, and fences advanced along the coast, leaving the estuary of Bahía Blanca behind the industrial belt and intensely polluted by the petrochemical industry. In this way seaside space was privatized without consideration for other possible uses and the natural environment was irreversibly modified.

The industrial belt, built between the city and the sea, represents an economic enclave that employs few people, because it functions with automatic systems, and exports large profits. And while it generates little impact on the local economy, it produces a great impact on the environment. The industrial complex consumes enormous natural resources like gas and water, pollutes the estuary and the air, damages local fishing activity, and creates health problems in the population. At present the Consortium is promoting further dredging, a new mega project that would intensify the area’s industrial development. With the mud obtained from the dredging, the port would grow into the sea, expanding the port and industrial complex. The plan is to construct two new islands in order to overcome the current geographical limitations of the port and to accommodate new companies and the expansion of the docks. The capacity in terms of physical space would be doubled. Against this development project a socio-environmental movement has risen up, contesting the current city model.      

SEAGULLS IN THE CITY

There are several problems that have given life to the socio-environmental movement: the water crisis faced by the city; the intention of the Vale mining company to establish itself in the local port; the death of a worker at the Petrobras refinery; the difficult situation of fishermen; local health problems; and, mainly, the dredging project. All can be explained by the model of industrialization that may be intensified in the near future. What characterizes the socio-environmental movement is its heterogeneity. Neighbours, environmental organizations, teachers, students, scientists, artists, unions, and various political parties merged into the Environmental Assembly Buenos Aires South (Asamblea Ambiental Buenos Aires Sur, or AABAS, in Spanish) this year in January. Enormous social energies have been set in motion to organize a multitude of activities: lectures, marches, mural painting, bike rides, press conferences, interventions in public spaces, tours around the estuary. The objective of these actions has been to spread awareness of the negative social and environmental impacts of the dredging project. The goal has been to create an alternative message to that circulating in the hegemonic media, which views the expansion of the industrial area as necessary for the economic development of the city and plays down the environmental impact.

The work of the movement has been characterized by vertiginous speed and intense social creativity wherein the aesthetic dimension has played a central role in developing a positive public position and drawing together a proactive group of participants.³ In public events, neighbours and students have burst onto the city streets wearing seagull masks. They have carried flags and banners, including a poster showing a flamingo on a common traffic warning sign, indicating the presence of this animal in a seaside city that does not usually look to the sea. The demonstrations have also had a performative character. Another of the actions has been the printing on the clothing of activists, drawing on a repertoire of slogans and images. As a result, the images move and spread beyond the time and the place of the demonstrations. The movement also participates in carnivals that take place in various neighbourhoods, including the city centre. AABAS formed From The Mud – a murga or musical group who perform a type of popular theatre. This street band played and danced along the streets wearing green and yellow suits. A huge seagull, collectively built, was carried alongside as if flying among the people, accompanied by members of the assembly wearing seagull masks and crab costumes and carrying flags.

At the same time the walls of Bahía Blanca have been occupied by The Crabs. This group is part of Aukan – Asamblea Ambiental del Sur or Southern Environmental Assembly – which has taken an active part in the struggle against the dredging project by creating murals. In their murals The Crabs introduced an image that went on to become a distinctive emblem of the socio-environmental movement: Blinky, the three-eyed fish, adopted from the television series The Simpsons. This character is a mutant fish generated by the toxic waste thrown into the waters of the town of Springfield by a nuclear power plant. ‘Bahía Blanca is half Springfield,’ says one member of The Crabs. In Bahía Blanca, Blinky’s image has been updated by linking it to the pollution of the estuary by the petrochemical complex. The three-eyed fish appears in bright colours on numerous city walls, challenging the residents of Bahía Blanca with slogans like No to dredging – yes to life! and Inform yourself, protect the estuary! Several interventions by The Crabs have been short-lived, for two reasons. Some paintings were made on billboards, using the high visibility enjoyed by those spaces, which, for the same reason, have been contested by other actors. After a time, some murals were covered over with new advertisements. On other occasions, interventions have lasted only a few days, suffering direct attacks by those following orders from the municipal government, which has expressed its support for the dredging project.

With these many interventions, in which the expressive powers of the image and live performance occupy a prominent place, a creative repertoire of images and slogans has grown, whereby the socio-environmental movement registers and visualizes its words and actions. A whole new aesthetic of marine fauna has burst onto the city, provoking a political clash of heterogeneous elements.⁴ Seagull, crab, flamingo and fish are now prominent in the public space of a city that lives with its back to the sea. These images draw together a mix of elements from different areas of experience that are normally thought of as opposites: urban space and industrial space; the city and the maritime environment; society, economy and nature; the visible and the invisible; the ordinary and the extra-ordinary. This meeting of heterogeneous elements produces a space in which the relations between disparate subjects and objects are reconfigured: new actors are brought to the scene, the invisible becomes visible, distant things appear closer and the sea is brought into the city. This space shows a political reality in conflict, and the shock opens cracks in the existing city model through which it becomes possible to think of and construct new ways of life and to establish inclusive relationships between society, nature and economy.    

A PUBLIC AND COLLABORATIVE ECOLOGY

The interventions of the movement have redefined the relationship between art and politics, not only producing alternative messages but also intervening in public space and inspiring collaborative methods. In this regard, the practice of muralism has been key. One of the first murals was made in the town of General Cerri, organized by Tellus, a conservation entity, and Francisco Felkar, an artist born in Cerri. Tellus was one of the first organizations to speak out against the dredging project and to organize different activities as part of the campaign to protect the estuary. Felkar is an artist of local importance who has significant past experience of working in environmental issues. When Felkar heard about the activities that were being organized by Tellus, he made contact and began to participate, helping to organize the creation of the murals. The first was done in August 2011, the second the following month. The Self-Organized Neighbours of Cerri (Vecinos Autoconvocados de Cerri) recently formed as a group against the dredging project, joined Tellus and Felkar for the creation of the second mural. In both cases walls for the murals were offered by neighbours opposed to the dredging.

The animals of the estuary became the protagonists of the murals and were represented naturalistically. Felkar notes, ‘I did not invent anything. Except for the lights and shadows for high contrasts, I worked the murals in a very realistic way.’ In the first mural, two seagulls and a crab appear with a speech bubble that says: Neighbours! Let’s say yes to life and no to dredging! In the second mural, the animals become more dynamic and intense: The crab raises his claws in the air, the seagull puts her wings in the landing position and two flamingos, one with a stern face, say The health of our children is worth more than any enterprise!  

Through these murals, the crab, seagull and flamingo began to speak, or rather, to shout clear and concise messages to the city. The aim of these murals was, in a simple and didactic way, to invite people to learn about, love and protect the estuary that is only a few blocks from their homes. Felkar explains that the muralists wished that:

those animals, which live within a few metres or, in some cases, a couple of kilometres, begin to be everyday animals like cats and dogs, that seagulls and crabs, which live on the coast, are brought to the city centre… A huge seagull starts to walk around the city. ‘What is that thing?’ Those who do not know begin to ask ‘What is that dove?’ ‘No, it is not a dove, it is a seagull.’ ‘And that kind of spider?’ ‘No, it is a crab.’ ‘That pink bird?’ ‘No, it is a flamingo.’ What was not everyday becomes an everyday thing. What was unknown, buried and lonely, comes to the city and reminds us of its existence.⁵

Mural painting in Bahía Blanca is resolutely public. The murals occupy the streets of the city and remain outside the conventional spaces of art exhibition and the legitimacy of art institutions. In this way, the movement defines its own area of intervention based on its own social and political objectives and participative processes.⁶ To paint these pictures, an open call invited people to bring brush and friends. The designs were drawn on the wall by Felkar and Tellus members. During working hours, people of different ages from Cerri and Bahía Blanca filled the drawings with bright, contrasting colours according to the designs.