In March of 2024, a small group of us from GSAPP went to Paraguay to work with a local community in La Chacarita, an informal area of Asunción.
Our focus was to preserve Indigenous knowledge and to help advocate for the community’s deep rootedness amidst perennial flooding
and looming threats of for-profit development. Our team visited a myriad of cultural sites, from archival libraries to people’s
private homes, in order to better understand Guaraní tradition – needless to say, our learnings were limited and the sheer volume
of anthropological and ecological history was humbling.
The above collage shows both the temporal and spatial legacy of various Indigenous groups as they navigated the Paraguayan landscape using the Paraguay River as an eternal guide. Many such Indigenous descendants still live in what is now called La Chacarita, but what was once a bed of fertility has been turned into a poisoned urban peripherality.
The above collage shows both the temporal and spatial legacy of various Indigenous groups as they navigated the Paraguayan landscape using the Paraguay River as an eternal guide. Many such Indigenous descendants still live in what is now called La Chacarita, but what was once a bed of fertility has been turned into a poisoned urban peripherality.
The above rotating display shows digitized archival maps of La Chacarita overlaid on downtown Asunción from 1885, 1922, and 2024. Notice
the Laguna channel to the upper right that disappears after 1922.
What was a free-flowing detour of the river was concretized in the 20th century, making way for La Costanera highway, which is now visible as the northern border of La Chacarita. This act choked the informal neighborhood off from its environment. Now, frequent flooding traps stormwater in La Chacarita's built environment. This creates toxic living conditions and destroys living spaces and crucial infrastructure like schools.
What was a free-flowing detour of the river was concretized in the 20th century, making way for La Costanera highway, which is now visible as the northern border of La Chacarita. This act choked the informal neighborhood off from its environment. Now, frequent flooding traps stormwater in La Chacarita's built environment. This creates toxic living conditions and destroys living spaces and crucial infrastructure like schools.
Our visit culminated in an on-site participatory workshop that we
organized in the heart of La Chacarita, where children were invited to collectively draw a cognitive map of home. The childrens'
maps were shown next to satellite imagery of the areas they represent, as a juxtaposition of the personal with the impersonal. Place
is a real patch of green, a barber shop, a bike path. Place is not an aerial representation of purported objectivity.
While the forces at play that insidiously continue to dispossess the people of La Chacarita are frighteningly large, there is hope in reclamation. Our group was concerned with the inherent power dynamic of running a workshop in an informal area of a city we were largely unfamiliar with. We thus left all artifacts with the community while sharing peoples' stories more broadly back home. What has stuck with me was the response of La Chacarita's children when we invited them to show us their home. They were proud and welcoming.
Our message to the authorities and corporations in Paraguay working to dismantle informality to the ends of capital development - these are people, not unfulfilled financial instruments. If you come in good faith, help communities rebuild and improve their infrastructure, but do not level neighborhoods. The age of traditional urban renewal should remain dead.
While the forces at play that insidiously continue to dispossess the people of La Chacarita are frighteningly large, there is hope in reclamation. Our group was concerned with the inherent power dynamic of running a workshop in an informal area of a city we were largely unfamiliar with. We thus left all artifacts with the community while sharing peoples' stories more broadly back home. What has stuck with me was the response of La Chacarita's children when we invited them to show us their home. They were proud and welcoming.
Our message to the authorities and corporations in Paraguay working to dismantle informality to the ends of capital development - these are people, not unfulfilled financial instruments. If you come in good faith, help communities rebuild and improve their infrastructure, but do not level neighborhoods. The age of traditional urban renewal should remain dead.
* these visuals were my contribution to a larger group effort by myself, Benedetta von Palombini, Nyadeng Mal, Charlotte Boulanger,
Arimbi Naro, Anisa Chandra, Reina Dissa, William Fainaru Callahan, Saumil Sanghavi, and Mateo Alexander.
Our work was supervised by Ryan Devlin and Jose Luis Vallejo. Many thanks to every contact who connected us with archives and
oral histories. An extra special thanks to Gurú of Chacatours.
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