The spring of 1987 loomed when Fidel Veron, at 19 years old, went to look for his first job. When he arrived, he saw five blocks of line waiting for a position and that discouraged him, but he stayed. His hopes fell when the last in line were asked to return the next day. He did so and despite spending hours there again, he managed to get to the interview.
The job he was waiting for was to be a waste collector in the Cliba company trucks, but there was no more space and they offered him the job of sweeper.
“Since I was a child I saw the cleaning workers in my neighborhood from one of the windows of my house and their work caught my attention. He simply saw my destiny there,” he says today, at 55 years old and almost four decades in the profession. Although now he touches the streets of Recoleta, the man passed through other neighborhoods of the city. Proudly, he says that what he enjoys most is sharing his job with Emanuel, his son, who admits: “Being able to share this job with him is priceless.”
Today, Sweeper’s Day is celebrated in tribute to Mauricio Silva, “the Uruguayan Salesian priest and street sweeper, who was kidnapped on June 14, 1977 by the military dictatorship.”
Happy to have managed to have his first formal job, Fidel began to work: he had to walk the streets of the City with the broom, rake and basket that was given to him at the base. He was happy because he was making his contribution with him to make the city more beautiful.
Although he had several, today he fondly remembers his time in Flores, Balvanera and his current route: Recoleta. With 25 years and six of experience, his first child arrived, Emanuelwhom he raised and educated with his work.
“Being able to share this activity with my dad is priceless. It is a pride to see him work and to observe all the effort that this work entails makes it greater,” says the 30-year-old young man excitedly when talking about the sensations he has when sharing everything with his father since 2016, when he started working at the same company. urban hygiene company.
For Fidel, who can’t stop remembering when as a child he watched the street sweepers in his hometown, he feels that perhaps he is awakening the same respect for his work in some children as he did in his son. “He excites me and makes me happy and when I see him reach the base. I feel very proud,” he tells her as he looks into his eyes.
Excited, they say that they usually share every day the moments before and after every day at the base, the place where urban hygiene workers meet, a space they already consider “a second home.” The thing is that there they do not simply go to look for cars with work tools but rather they find the support and listening of their colleagues, with whom they have already formed friendships.
Seconds before starting the tour, Fidel tells his son: “See you when we go out”. And the boy asks him: “If it rains a lot, take care of yourself. “Don’t play the kid.”
Being a sweeper is a key job in a city like Buenos Aires since more than six million people circulate daily and receives millions of tourists from all over the world. This makes them one of the fundamental pillars to fulfill one of the great challenges that the head of the Buenos Aires Government, Jorge Macri, proposed for his current management. But they are also part of the identity of each neighborhood.
“I consider myself like another neighbor,” says Fidel, who is not only in charge of cleaning each road, but often becomes the trusted person for the neighbors. “Some tell me their problems, their anxieties, their sadness and also their joys,” he says and in the search for those everyday scenes, which he defines as a plus of his work, he assures that “The most beautiful thing is getting to know people and their stories”.
Emanuel feels just as comfortable with the neighborhood residents. “In summer, with the high temperatures, they always come with cool drinks,” he remembers gratefully.
Currently, in the City there are 2,700 street sweepers who are responsible for cleaning the more than 27 thousand streets of the 15 Buenos Aires communes every day. That task is in charge of Ministry of Public Space and Urban Hygienewhich determines the work modality: there are streets that are cleaned more frequently than others, depending on their passability since the Government of the City of Buenos Aires is responsible for sweeping the road, but sweeping the sidewalk is responsible for corresponds to each front.
“It is important that Neighbors support the commitment of these workers by keeping the fronts of their houses in good condition., bagging what they collect from their sidewalks and leaving the garbage bags closed inside the containers; always from Sunday to Friday between 7 and 9 p.m., to collectively improve the management of the hygiene system and have a cleaner and more orderly City,” he asks. Ignacio BaistrocchiMinister of Public Space and Urban Hygiene of the GCBA.
In general, the jobs are distributed from Monday to Saturday: during the morning, all the blocks are swept, at least once a day; Sometimes, in the afternoon and sometimes at night, sectors with high pedestrian traffic such as tourist areas, transfer centers, shopping or gastronomic centers are reinforced. In autumn and after strong storms, manual and mechanical sweeping is reinforced, with special emphasis on cleaning the drains and pipes to remove the leaves and debris that have accumulated there and prevent water runoff in order to prevent obstruct the rainwater network and generate possible flooding in the Buenos Aires territory.
Since 2014, Sweeper’s Day is celebrated every June 14 in Argentina. This anniversary, like others, has a tragedy behind it: that day in 1977, the Uruguayan priest and sweeper Mauricio Silva was kidnapped by repressive forces of the military dictatorship while sweeping the streets of the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Villa General Miter.
In her tribute, the Evita Movement deputy, Adela Segarra, signed the law so that this day the work of the sweepers who carry out a selfless task every day which is not always well valued and in turn recognize Mauricio Silva to all the workers who, according to the CONADEP report, were the favorite target of the military dictatorship.
“He was kidnapped here Mauricio Silva IribarnegarayUruguayan, Salesian priest and street sweeper, the June 14, 1977 for state terrorism,” says the plaque that commemorates him at the intersection of Terrero and Margariños Cervantes streets.
Silva was born on September 20, 1925, in Montevideo, Uruguay. He arose from the poor and lived for the poor. His precarious material situation was already anticipated in his birth certificate, where the authorities exempted the child’s family from paying the stamp “for having justified poverty.” That document shows that it was actually called Kléberin homage to a general of the French Revolution that his military father admired.
His pastoral path began in 1948 in the province of Córdoba, when he began his studies as a priest in a Salesian congregation and in 1951 he received the order that made him undertake religious and social tasks in the Puerto San Julián, in Patagonia. Later, he worked in La Rioja with the murdered Monsignor Enrique Angelelli.
In the seventies, he joined the Fraternity of the Little Brothers of the Poor, a brotherhood inspired by the life of the French religious Charles de Foucauld, who dedicated himself completely to the service of the poor. He was influenced by the ideas of Arturo Paolione of the references of that mystical group inspired by the Second Vatican Council.
In 1974, he began his work as a sweeper in the former Municipality of the City of Buenos Aires., in Corralón de las Villas, a time in which he forged a small community with his colleagues in the Malabia 1450 tenement, where he lived. Without neglecting his pastoral work, he collaborated with union activity and supported one of the opposition lists that competed in the union elections against the Peronist right, in a context in which Triple A operated in the shadows.
During the dictatorship, in 1977, two union colleagues disappeared. It was when Adolfo Pérez Esquivel and Paoli warned him that his life was at risk, but the religious man trusted himself. “A priest armed with a broom and shovel is not dangerous,” He said.
In the middle of work, on June 14, 1977, According to witnesses, three men got out of a white Ford Falcon car and made him enter the vehicle. It was 8:30 in the morning: it is believed that he was first taken to the 41st Police Station of the Capital, and that he was later tortured at the Borda Hospital (this is how it is reconstructed in the book “Shout the Gospel with Life”, published by Vázquez) . Some survivors said they had seen him in the clandestine detention centers of Campo de Mayo and the CCD Club Atlético. Silva is part of the large list of 80 Catholic religious disappeared and murdered by State terrorism, as recorded by Conadep.
