“Cavachera passion”, two words that wrote a page in the history of the city of Neuquén for the rescue of the cultural and the spontaneous mobilization of neighbors and self-convened artists who resisted the onslaught of a municipal State that sought to demolish an emblematic and historical place from the capital of Neuquén in pursuit of a profitable business.
It was the freezing night of April 22, 2012, when the municipality’s bulldozers threw debris from previous works into the Central Park amphitheater that is located next to the Gregorio Álvarez museum and the Molier tank, a sector declared by ordinance, the city’s historical heritage.
At that time the destinies of the capital were governed by former mayor Horacio Quiroga, who had maintained that “the passion for covachera had to end,” that is to say, make hidden and abandoned places that only collected dirt or were used as improvised bathrooms disappear. But behind that there was another issue. Planning was underway in that sector to open a new street that will connect San Luis with Irigoyen and build a parking lot that would be run by a private company.
But what the communal chief never imagined, that this time it was not going to be so easy for him to see his intentions materialized. The “first” cover occurred at dawn. The first? Yeahbecause there was a second intention to disappear that space.
That morning, the news spread like wildfire. Neighbors and artists called themselves together to stop the advance. Seven days later the Collective of Self-convened Artists and Neighbors to define a strategy in defense of public and cultural space. Today marks 12 years since the first assembly held by the group.
“At first we had thought of a symbolic uncovering, but we never imagined that we would be in the Central Park with shovels and wheelbarrows removing all the rubble,” recalled Pablo Frizan, one of the members of CAVA.
The uncovering lasted almost a month. When removing the last debris, Nobel Prize winner Rodolfo Pérez Esquivel was present, that was in sight in the city. During that time, a camp was set up in the place, especially to prevent a second attack by the municipality. And that was when they found a black cat among the rubble that managed to survive and gave the amphitheater its name.
The task was finished and the place was sustained in the following days with cultural festivals. But the good news was short-lived. On July 30 of that same year, at dawn, the municipality again covered the amphitheater with rubble. and again the CAVA returned with shovels to uncover it. Meanwhile, projects were presented to the Deliberative Council that were later transformed into ordinances, to preserve the space to which the name “Black Cat” was imposed by ordinance.
And there it is today, in the heart of the Central Park. But it still needs a little more to be what the artists and neighbors thought.
The people of Neuquén in defense of their places of belonging
What for the history of the city could be defined as a historical and cultural feat, undoubtedly applies to the case of the amphitheater. “Black cat”. It was the second time in almost 120 years of capital that the city experienced a self-convened social movement with the intention of preventing the destruction of its historical and cultural heritage.
The first time was in the 1980s, when a project by the capital’s mayor’s office attempted to demolish the railway engine shed located in the Central Park, next to the amphitheater, to build an apartment complex there. A group of neighbors and self-convened artists put up a fight and over time managed to have that emblematic place become what is now the Gregorio Álvarez museum and become part of the capital’s heritage.
It is clear, with these two popular demonstrations, that the town of Neuquén He was not and is not willing to have his historical and cultural assets taken away from him.
