By Alfredo Dillon
Translation: Guy Simpson There was once a time when twenty trains a day passed through Mechita. Seven went to Buenos Aires, thirteen went to the city of Bragado. Only two make a stop in the village nowadays. 60% of the village is over 65 years old. The Argentine census of 2001 showed a Mechita of 1,850 inhabitants: almost a third of the 5,000 who were living there around 1950. Mechita is one of the 602 Argentinian villages in danger of eradication. If to this figure one adds those which don't appear in the 2001 census, the number rises to over 800: no less than 40% of all rural villages. The NGO Responde (Social recovery of national villages under threat of disappearing), set up in 1999 by Marcela Benítez from CONICET (Argentinian government's department for scientific and technological research), is doing what it can to help these villages to recover and avoid their extinction. MYRIADES 1 spoke to two of its members, Alberto Chajet and Rubén Parasporo, about the organization's objectives and how it works. –What kind of structure does the NGO have?
A. C.: The organization is a non-profit civil association. We call ourselves a "development NGO" because our philosophy is to create development projects in rural villages at risk of disappearing. The aim is for the villages to develop their own resources to overcome that risk.
R. P.: Responde came out of an academic study by Dr Marcela Benítez, who founded the organization is now its executive director. The project had its origin in the context of research by CONICET, which had looked at the census and identified villages that were dwindling: people were leaving and the villages becoming abandoned. This was an academic study. Marcela then backed up the study by fieldwork, which took her to more than a hundred of these villages. She subsequently decided to take her academic findings and put them into a plan of action, believing that programmes could be set up to reverse the reasons people had for leaving. That's how Responde came about. –How do you work?
A. C.: Once we are made aware of the interest of a community to be helped in an attempt to change its fate, we make a diagnosis of the community's resources and of the programmes that would need to be implemented to produce a solution to the problem that is preventing the community from developing. It may be a lack of employment, transport, communication, education.
R. P.: We devise the programmes in terms of diminishing each individual problem. Often the economic causes are fundamental but not the only ones. And it is always necessary for the projects to embrace a combination of things. –Once a diagnosis has been made, how are changes put into effect?
A. C.: We diagnose what the problem or problems are, and see if we can find a solution with the means available to us. We talk to the people and explain the plan to them. They decide whether to accept it, and which path to take. Because in the end it is they who will have to put the work in, it's they who are going to have to make the effort. With our assessment and guidance, with us as mentors; but the basis of our work is that the people of the village produce their own development programme. –How do these neighbours contact you?
A. C.: The first step in the process is a request by the village. Normally, someone turns up –a person or a group– acting as a natural leader of the rest of the people who are looking for a solution to their difficulties. Generally, it's not a political leader, but a popular leader. Someone respected by the village, someone with a somewhat wider vision. –Who are these "natural leaders"?
A. C.: In general, it's some well-educated person from the village, with a somewhat broader vision. If to this vision we add a refusal to give up and a desire for change, that's when the leadership emerges. Often the proposal comes from getting together in some meeting place, the village bar or club, where someone says: "Hey, I heard there's this association that helps villages at risk of disappearing." Then some kind of leadership process leads to us being contacted by phone, e-mail or letter to request our collaboration. –When is a village considered to be in danger of disappearing?
A. C.: A rural village is defined as one with less than 2,000 inhabitants. Amongst these, we consider to be at risk those whose populations have decreased between the censuses of 1991 and 2001. There are populations that have gone down 2% and others that have been reduced by 50%. It's normal for a village to grow organically, not for it to remain at the same level or to decrease. If it decreases, irrespective of whether it's a little or a lot, it means that something's wrong. Because people don't normally leave their village. –What causes produce this risk?
A. C.: When you start to see the reasons why a population is diminishing, you find the same panorama nearly everywhere. The train service stopped and wasn't replaced with a viable alternative. So you get transport problems. When there's no railway any more, work possibilities dry up, together with a number of connected services. That's when you get communication problems, because no telephone company is interested in bringing a line 30 kilometres just for two phones. There are no projects that make financial sense. The children finish primary school but have no secondary or technical school to go on to. So they migrate and the village turns into a community of children and old people. –What does putting the development in the hands of the village itself mean?
R. P.: Our way of doing things is the exact opposite of "charity-giving". We take a project to the people that can produce a structure that they themselves can develop.
A. C.: This corresponds to a philosophical vision. We are convinced that propping up with charity is no solution to the problem. It's bread today and empty stomachs tomorrow. I always remember that when I joined up as a volunteer, it was precisely because the protagonists of change were going to be the villagers themselves. At that time I met Marcela Benítez and I said to her: "If you give a person a fish, they will eat today; but if you give them a fishing rod, they will eat every day." She replied: "We go further than that: we show them how to make the rod." More information:
Responde http://www.responde.org.ar/ |
