An article on Villa 21, one of Buenos Aires's "villas miserias", by Sammy Loren, links to my visit of Villa 21 on July 17 of this year

I visited Villa 21 in the southern Buenos Aires barrio of Barracas with the aap's summer immersion group on July 17 of this year. It was both sobering and inspiring. Sobering in the that many of the villeros -- some of them making up a part of the army of cartoneros that stroll Buenos Aires's streets every day looking for cardboard to recycle -- literally live next to one of the city's massive garbage dumps in humble houses of tin and adobe. Inspiring in that some of them, like Claudia Zerda, have radicalized and organized and are making a better world for themselves and their neighbours, mostly against daunting odds, infernal class divisions, and within an indifferent cultural and political system.

Sammy Loren, a filmmaker and writer currently living in Argentina, recently met up with Claudia and writes about Villa 21 and his conversation with Claudia in an Aug. 30 article in Upside Down World.

The same Claudia, together with MTD Teresa Rodriguez organizer, Franco, took us on a tour of Villa 21 on the 17th of July. Here's a snapshot I took of them both before we set off on the tour as they explained to us the history of Villa 21, the MTD (unemployed workers' movements), and their involvement in both Villa 21 and the movement: