The transformation of the urban landscape along the Riachuelo in Buenos Aires, shaped by industrialization and state intervention. Through instrumental literacy, the study analyzes the material, cultural, and symbolic traces of how human and political actions have used “nature” as a pretext to impose changes that have caused spatial and social disconnection, displacing communities and disrupting ecological balance.
It begins with a visual analysis of the riverside’s past, integrating images, paintings, and urban projects carried out in the area. It proposes a method for visualizing the social, economic, and environmental conflicts embedded in the territory, linking history, art, and politics. The Riachuelo has long been treated as an undesirable edge of the city, hosting polluting industries and control institutions such as power plants and asylums—turning it into a marginalized and stigmatized space.
Following the 2008 Mendoza ruling, an environmental cleanup plan was implemented, which also involved the forced relocation of families. These actions were presented as ecological recovery efforts but often masked processes of eviction. Simultaneously, an aesthetic of the area emerged, celebrating industrial structures as icons while concealing persistent issues. The sublime component of the landscape—seen in modern photographs of the site and evoked by massive infrastructure—generates visual awe but contributes to the dehumanization of the area, where neighborhoods lose their scale.
This inspired technocratic and beautifying initiatives targeting the once-precious, now-rotten water mirror that reflects bridges and cranes. No one truly knows the contamination levels of the water, yet it appears “clean.” This semantic dismantling invites us to reconsider the Riachuelo not as a polluted border to be sanitized, but as a living entity deeply intertwined with geosocial struggles where nature and humanity are not opposites, but co-creators of the urban space and the stories that shape common imaginaries of the place.
Riachuelo
Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2022.
Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2022.