Echoing
the area’s inspiring history of autonomous self-organization, a
community of migrant workers in Barcelona now risks being thrown onto
the street.
Photography via Ground Press.
Between
the 19th and early 20th century, Barcelona’s Poblenou neighborhood
became the site of a fascinating transformation. Factories, processing
plants and small stores blossomed as industrialization turned the swampy
marshes on the banks of the Besòs River into a densely populated hub,
centered on the textile industry. They also poisoned that river, and the
living conditions suffered by the new inhabitants were highly toxic.
Defenseless
in the anomic void of structural exclusion, the workers who had
migrated from Barcelona, Aragon and Valencia to find work in the
previously unpopulated area had built their own shanty houses. Hygiene
was a problem, and frequent epidemics of typhoid, cholera and smallpox
produced an atrocious mortality rate. Their working conditions included
unthinkably long hours, low wages, insufficient meals and exposure to
harmful waste. Yet those same workers overcame these conditions through
mutual aid and solidarity, using their autonomy to organize into
cooperatives and associations, as well as under the flag of one of the
most storied unions in the history of the labor movement: the
anarcho-
syndicalist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT).
Today,
the Poblenou neighborhood remains pocked by many of those historic
factories, now abandoned and waiting to be demolished in order to make
way for the lumbering 22@ project,
a massive urban-planning model intended to bring “innovation” to an
antiquated productive base by handing over 3.2 million square meters of
floor space to major construction, logistics, IT and weapons firms. Yet,
just a stroll away from the shores of the Besòs, one of those factories
is far from empty. It is known as Mount Zion, and it is currently the
home and workplace of a community of roughly 800 immigrant workers.
Although
there are people from all over the world living there, the Mount Zion
community is largely made up of West African men who work collecting
scrap metal all over Barcelona. Others are artists, musicians or
intermittent temporary workers in sectors ranging from agriculture to
construction. Just two years ago, most had precarious but formal
employment, rented homes, and their documents in order. Some were even
enrolled in universities. But the collapse of the housing bubble and the
economic crisis that it caused ruined all of this.
“The situation of the migrants living in Poblenou is abominable,” says
Mutuma Ruteere, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on contemporary
forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related
intolerance. “The conditions there are inhumane and degrading. The
hundreds of immigrants who live there have no access to the most basic
services, such as heating, clean water or health care facilities. The
conditions are clearly not suited for housing people.”
The
living conditions endured by the Mount Zion community are not the only
aspect of their situation that resonates with Poblenou’s history. People
are also coming together through a network of autonomous and local
institutions, in a collective effort to defend the rights of all members
of the community, regardless of their documentation status. Local
assemblies, neighborhood associations and even some left-wing city
council members have been collaborating through the Xarxa de Suport als
Assentaments (the Settlements’ Support Network) to put pressure on the
city government to find a fair solution.
The
most striking examples of mutual aid and solidarity are the actions
being taken by the Mount Zion community itself. While it is no secret
that an undocumented status (whether it is due to undocumented entry or
having expired papers) can force people to rely on the riskier work that
characterizes the informal or illegal economy for sustenance, the
workers who live at Mount Zion have taken a different route. In addition
to the work they do collecting scrap metal throughout the city, they
have started a glass recycling project. And while many of the artists in
the community use the objects they collect in their art, others are musicians
in Barcelona’s vibrant dub, reggae, dancehall and African music scene.
All of the work they do is organized horizontally, cooperatively, and
they are currently taking steps to legalize their economic activity by
forming an Integrated Cooperative. They have also expressed that they would be willing to rent the space at a reduced rate.
“There is a political blockade, a marginalization being carried out by the institutions,” says
Sharif, one of the current inhabitants of Mount Zion, “The citizens
support us, but the politicians want to turn us into delinquents.” Until
now, while the city government currently run by the right-wing
nationalist Convergència i Unió party (CiU) has resorted to a soft,
appeasing rhetorical style to discuss the Mount Zion community, the
actual responses by public institutions have been ambiguous at best, and
hostile at worst. In a recent court hearing about the future of Mount
Zion, fifty residents were forced to wait outside as the judge stated
that, despite the “humanitarian crisis that an eviction would create”,
she must rule in favor of the owner’s right to own private property.
Meanwhile the Endesa power company, in collaboration with the Catalan police, made their contribution
to the process by cutting off the power to the building, in a clear
effort to pressure the residents to abandon the only shelter available
to them. Finally, the CiU government rejected Mount Zion’s original proposal, offering a job-training program and 40 day stays in local shelters instead.
Mount
Zion is scheduled to be evicted on July 18th. It seems hard to believe
that, having seen the positive steps taken by the community and their
neighbors in Poblenou, the City of Barcelona will suddenly put 800
people out on the street. The Depression-level magnitude of the economic
crisis affecting Southern Europe is proving too overwhelming for both
public and private social protection services, and even the
mini-Guantanamos that are Spain’s Immigrant Internment Centers are
incapable of dealing with such a massive influx of people.
An
eviction of this magnitude would not only be a massive violation of
human rights and the suppression of a tremendously commendable exercise
of worker autonomy and self-management; it would also constitute the
political fabrication of a social time-bomb. By blocking the
institutional path towards a fair solution, an entire community of
people would be forced to rely on the noxious dynamics of the
underground economy.
One would think it wise for the City of Barcelona to examine the way its
history still resonates in places like Poblenou.
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