Apor Declaration against evictions in the Haven of Neptunia, anywhere On Tuesday October 25 2010 at the Haven family of Neptune are initiated eviction from their homes, which are located on land held from 3 to 12 years earlier as an alternative to their own means to alleviate the problem of homelessness. The December 22, 2010 coming from the Atlantis Magistrate's Court to evict the cedulones some of these families by making cash Neptunia SA's claim, real estate company in the year 1947 (when buying these lands) makes total abandonment also creating a tax debt that remains unpaid to date.
Why not evictions?
10 years ago the first houses built in these areas, where the notorious depression in the ground involved a series of previous works for their construction.
For over 5 years we have been building the current defendants, along with our homes, bonding and cooperation in what is part of the coexistence of people. Thus share the care of children and they share toys and play areas which we build as well as adults do with space and tools necessary to develop the work that each performs.
decisions on the common spaces we inhabit are conversational and treated collectively.
maintain compatibility of standards and practices in the construction of our homes-wood and mud-and sanitation-dry bath.
We decided to enter our homes do not have fences and barbed wires.
Here in this land we inhabit, we understand that it is essential and we like sharing food that is in each house and the space where they grow and harvest some of these foods, as well as medicinal herbs.
With this criterion of priority of the commons, some share in the home and neighborhood radio building, other Escuelita are part of the Community and all at various times participated in social activities to promote the neighborhood.
understand that an adequate quality of life rather than the housing ceiling is understood as an intimate space and time as part of a group inhabiting the soil.
The uprooting, exile other exerted on evictions is and will cause the collapse alternative practices to those still trying to sustain life.
why we say no to evictions and not the disuse of this small project of life here.
For these reasons we know it's absurd the possibility of relocation, which would cause the breakup of a reality existing:
- The healthy social integration in the territory of a neighborhood.
- The effort and cost of foresight and planning that we have been spending on the problem of the lack of our homes that we have been building for 6 years.
- Sustainable development has been achieved with the use of natural technologies, applied in time and space specifically: live here until today.
- The value of knowledge and wisdom so far learned collectively in the construction practices of habitats also means the rational use of natural resources of the place, a value which is completed in circulation Open this knowledge. And this requires a process of understanding care practices and their meanings.
- We are not objects or artifacts are people, cultural beings to recreate and create culture in this space. That is, we recognize the territory as necessary and only to further deepen in the alternative that we intend to continue in this precious place.
According to Elinor Ostrom 1 in his criticism of "the view that considers groups unable to make efficient use of resources from an economic and ecological ¨ 2, and also with the aims proposed in the Housing Act of 1968 (Model F ucvam ) 3 when he recognizes that "in America America has long called Homebuilders are trying the same [as Elinor] Nobel Prize-no-(...) [while] most housing policy emphasizes the market as a generator of resources " 4 .
; now insist on something as fundamental and obvious perhaps is being forgotten:
; Human beings exist to have a direct and indispensable to the Earth; our life chances necessarily depend on their life chances. It is an atrocity to accept the mediation of capital-master for the transformation of the Earth and life into a commodity. However, these are the codes of the system in which we live. With the capital over the life there never will be social justice.
Uruguay has 176,215 2 km and does not reach 3 million and half people with "a housing deficit of 80,000 homes, with about 150,000 families in total destitution, with 150,000 homes in the settlements and the more crowded one in the formal structure of society " 5 . "In Montevideo there are 55,000 uninhabited houses, about 500 homes in ruins and about 80 unfinished buildings" 6 . Keep empty homes is one of the ways that real estate groups manipulate the supply and demand, and hence the price rents.
The concentration of land in the hands of economic groups is a trend that is increasing in spite of the social policy discourse.
While this company does not reach a state human scale development 7 will continue to protect speculative practice over the territory to the detriment of the life of the people.
For all this we say: no to evictions both Haven and in any other territory inhabited.
Apor (Permanent Assembly of Remanso squatters) April 4, 2011
asambleapor@gmail.com
1 - Elinor Ostrom: Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009, shared with Oliver E. Williamson, for "his analysis of economic governance, especially the shared resources."
2 - www.fucvam.com.uy
3 - Idem.
4 - Idem.
5 - Ibid.
6 - "El Pais, Montevideo, October 31, 2010.
7 - Manfred Max-Neef, "Human Scale Development."