COMMUNICATIONS-ARGENTINA: Paper Gives Homeless Take on News

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Jun 25 2000 (IPS) - For the past year, homeless men and women in the capital of Argentina have been producing and selling a newspaper, with the help of professional journalists and church group volunteers.

The project, unique in Latin America, has pulled a number of people off the streets, while giving others the means to scrape by. It was modelled on successful experiences carried out in the past decade in Europe, the United States, Canada, Russia and a few African nations, like Gambia.

Since January, the Argentine newspaper has been a member of the International Network of Street Papers (INSP), which held a global conference that month in Budapest. The leader of the network’s publications is Britain’s ‘Big Issue’, with a weekly circulation of 300,000.

The members of INSP have a combined monthly circulation of 1.5 million in 23 countries worldwide.

The Buenos Aires paper, ‘Diagonal’, does not focus on the lives of the homeless, but rather on issues of general interest like politics, economics, culture and society “from a homeless perspective,” José Sidders, social coordinator of the project and a member of a network of churches, told IPS.

Increasing numbers of people are living on the streets of the greater Buenos Aires, home to around 12 million. Many of them once belonged to the middle class. “On our staff we have professionals and very cultured people who due to employment and family troubles ended up on the streets,” said Sidders.

‘Diagonal’, whose slogan is “cutting the distance between the disenfranchised and society”, works out of the soup kitchen of an Anglican church with 10 journalists — seven of whom came from the streets — another 30 homeless who sell the papers on street corners, as well as social workers and fundraisers.

The idea was hatched in the soup kitchen itself, where a group of homeless suggested that the organisers help them create job opportunities for themselves.

The newspaper grew from eight to 16 pages and from a circulation of 2,000 to 5,000 in just one year.

The homeless keep 70 cents of each dollar — the cost of the paper — while the rest goes to the foundation.

“The aim is not to vindicate their condition, but to help them put together an employment scheme, and to once again find meaning in life, which they have generally lost way back,” said Sidders.

The homeless “say ‘the street trapped me’ — their way of explaining the chronic situation into which they have fallen almost without realising it, after six months living on the streets.”

The most common scenario that catapults people onto the streets is the loss of a job, followed by a rupture of family ties, which were generally already weak.

“Later, alcohol and drugs are readily accessible, and without a job, with no family, without a home or a telephone, dirty and almost always lacking papers, it is very difficult to emerge from the situation of marginalisation,” said Sidders.

The programme arose as part of an initiative of the Inter- Parochial Mutual Aid Service, which observed the rising number of people ending up on the streets. Later, a group of Anglican, Catholic and Lutheran churches joined forces in a common project to help the homeless.

“It doesn’t matter if they are Argentine nationals or foreigners, men or women. The only requirement for participating in this programme is that they live on the streets,” said Sidders.

Since the project’s formal launched a year ago, surveys carried out by the foundation have found that 40 percent of participants come and go, while 14 percent have left the streets and are living in pensions and working regularly.

One of them is Yolanda Cisneros, who told IPS how at the age of 59 she found a job that she enjoyed — selling newspapers and explaining to her clients what it was all about — and that she earned enough to afford a boardinghouse.

Another 34 percent scrape by with what they earn selling newspapers while continuing to live on the streets, having lost all hope of any other lifestyle.

Lastly, a small percentage work for a while and simply vanish one day, with no explanation, said Sidders.

“By selling 10 copies a day, they can afford a five-dollar pension while getting their meals free in soup kitchens,” said Sidders. “The most highly-motivated sell as many as 30 a day, but most of them don’t have that kind of willpower.”

Although the homeless themselves are not the main focus of ‘Diagonal’, each edition contains a life history or profile of a person living on the streets, as well as a section in which the homeless offer to work in a variety of jobs.

The latest edition contained an interview with First Lady Inés Pertiné, the wife of President Fernando de la Rúa, who agreed that those in power should use their positions to help the needy.