And climate change?

Protect green spaces; put an end to indiscriminate felling of trees, take care of afforestation…

07.18.22.- My name is Natalia Beatriz Choque, I live here in the Andorra neighborhood in Ushuaia. I wanted to suggest that in my case I presented a nursery project to the government during Roxana Bertone’s government and it was approved, but it was interrupted by the municipality. They didn’t let me do it at that time and currently I still can’t because they say they have to build streets and other things and don’t allow me to carry out the project right now.

The project consists mainly of beautification, also I put specifically to take care of the green space because many people enter, break and cut down a lot of trees; and in the space where I am there are still trees, there is still afforestation, so I said I will make it more beautiful, I’ll put tulips that grow here so they are from here, Ushuaia. Moreover, I suggested the fact of being able to give seedlings to beautify Ushuaia so that they could see it too, but they tell me: “No, because we have to prepare the streets and people”; people who are not here today and people who they want to place in very small spaces, all piled up where we don’t have sewers, where we don’t have water, where we don’t have gas… And the truth is that I don’t understand, because they always told me you have to take care of the green space, you have to take care of it. I took care of it; I am one of the neighbors that took care of it, and what happened today? Nothing.

The only thing they think of is to break because they broke a lot of trees, they began to break streets, streets that actually look obsolete because they have no exit and they are very short stretches. The truth is, I don’t know how they are doing an urbanization like this, crowding people together because that is what they want to do, give small spaces and crowd people which is also very dangerous because if there is a fire in a house, all of the houses will burn that is what is going to happen here in Ushuaia.

Although these days that is happening in other areas of Ushuaia, houses are being burnt. Why? Because they don’t have gas nor water network, or sewers, or any of that, people try to survive and to survive they go through these fires, horrible things happen, people are left on the streets and the municipality doesn’t protect nor help them when their houses burn down they don’t help them to start over.

Are you homeless? You stay homeless… You know, I can solve it… I’ll send you to a soup kitchen and they’ll feed you there but who buys me or my children clothes? And people are living like this; currently Ushuaia is going through this…

By Dina MaldMend, Fernando Ojeda for SOCINCE -News Agency for the Americas-