Last July 8 we had our first meeting with one of the communities with which the community mediation department of the
Fundación Museos de la Ciudad
of Quito (FMC) collaborates. We were accompanied by
LabQuebradas
, and the subsequent exhibition at Yaku, represent a first approach by the community mediation department to the curatorship of the permanent exhibitions of the FMC museums. Here is a brief summary of our experience:
«Who tells the story?» Sandra López, a member of the Alianza Solidaridad housing cooperative, asks us while we visit the Quebrada Ortega. A cooperative housing, community and housing project promoted by neighbors against the municipal urban plan Quitumbe in the south of the city of Quito.
Being located in the foothills of the Andes mountain range, Quito is crossed by the ravines that carry water from the snowy massif of Pichincha to the valley. Fabián Melo tells us about the stigma that weighs on the space of the ravines, places that since the colonization of the Spaniards have been relegated to those excluded from the centrality —political, social, cultural, economic…— thus, while in the plains the Spaniards built the administrative centers of their cities, the orography of the ravines functioned as a defense of the city, hindering access to possible attacks, and the indigenous, mestizos, cholos and blacks were being displaced and relegated to inhabit these spaces that have dragged the stigmatization of marginality until today. Of the more than 100 ravines that are part of the city of Quito, many have been covered, many others, as was the Ortega ravine, have been converted into dumps of the metropolis. Fabián asks us another question: «What would Venice be without its canals? So… What would Quito be without its ravines?»
The origin of the citizen initiative to recover the ravines is located in the 90s with the creation of the Asociación de Cooperativas Solidaridad, so land was bought south of Quito, parceled and equipped with water, electricity… The Salvador Allende, Simón Bolívar, Monseñor Óscar Arnulfo Romero, Unión y Fuerza Obrera cooperatives were created among many others —today the territories where other housing complexes were later built still retain those names, inscribing an ideological framework on the territory—; but the step towards the housing construction phase was not finished, and the cooperative members began to sell their land in the face of advantageous offers that announced the revaluation of the land. In this context, the Municipality (the City Council), interested in the project, offers 6 hectares of land between the Quebrada Ortega and the Quebrada del Carmen (which together could add 12 additional hectares of land), before this the initial idea pushed to reproduce the colonizing model: cover the ravine and gain land for construction. But a dissenting proposal appeared: «What if we recover the ravine?»
With the work of 10 years of mingas —a Kichwa word that designates the days of collective work done in favor of the community— tons of garbage accumulated for decades by the use of the space as a landfill were removed. The bike path is also the result of self-management, a pioneering model that is now replicated in many places in Ecuador.
The construction company Andino & Aso. began the construction of the first housing project, as the neighbors say: «The first housing complex was the result of imposition and we never show it», the second, third and fourth already reflect the voice of the people who were going to live in them; in them the usual architectural models were modified in response to the demands of its inhabitants: thus, for example, the kitchen went from being a residual and hidden space to being part of the social area of the house; the location of the laundry room was modified, or the concept of a closed and isolated housing complex from the city was broken —a model that has led to the construction of authentic bunkers in the urban area—. Another peculiarity of the complex is that the houses do not turn their backs on the ravine but quite the opposite, so their facades face a recovered natural space where you can find more than 130 different species of plants, 20 of them medicinal. A small oasis in the middle of the asphalt.
Housing and the habitat in which it is inserted are part of the concerns of this community, which are expressed in the question: «How do we want to live?». This question opens in parallel a path of continuous training of the neighbors to collectively work on the rules of coexistence of the community or to assume new challenges such as the debate on spaces for their cultural development or to transfer their experience and knowledge and train new communities within the parameters of a social and solidarity economy.
Fabián knows L’Hospitalet, he was there to make contact with the work and operation of the
Fundació Catalana de l’Esplai
. His objective was to be able to know experiences that would help them imagine a model of community and cultural equipment for the area: a community development center that they are considering from self-management —among other reasons because the community’s leisure hours do not coincide with the working hours of the officials—. The neighbors launched an initial proposal to the Municipality that it, in the opinion of the neighbors, «misused». The Alianza Solidaridad cooperative is still working to build its common spaces, equipment and squares, which place citizens as sovereign in the construction of the city, an impressive experience of self-management with which we will share next Saturday, July 25 the questions that have arisen during the process of
Bellvitge rol en vivo
and from which we want to continue learning.
*Photos: José Manosalvas (FMC community mediation department)