Constitución: The Neighborhood that Houses Cristina Kirchner’s Prison, with Drugs and Prostitution Amidst French-Style Buildings

For weeks, the attention of Argentines has been focused on Constitución. In this middle-class and lower-middle-class neighborhood, at 1111 San José Street, there is a French-style building that has been the prison of Cristina Kirchner since Tuesday, June 17. The former president has exhausted all her legal resources and had no choice but to serve a six-year prison sentence for corruption. The vigil of television trucks, photographers, and supporters waiting for the former president to wave from her second-floor balcony has altered the neighborhood’s idiosyncrasies. In front of Kirchner’s apartment is a corner bar and the headquarters of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires. A few blocks away is a subway station and the busiest train terminal in Buenos Aires. The Obelisk, an icon of the Argentine capital, is just a few streets away. But Constitución also has a hidden side, revealed just 300 meters from Kirchner’s home. Here, news does not reach, and the presence of the new neighbor matters little. The neighborhood is different.

Taiel has been in his mother’s womb for seven months. He doesn’t know it, but he is surrounded by two of his aunts on a corner of Constitución. It is noon on a Thursday, and the workday has just begun for these prostitutes. Waiting around this spot is like playing the lottery: violent clients can approach, or those looking for traditional services who leave happy and in love, or those who hire them for company in a local hotel while they use drugs. The latter are their favorites because they don’t touch them. Tamara, the soon-to-be mother, is 32 years old. Her sister just turned 30. They call each other “love,” are mothers of two boys, and arrived at the corners of Constitución in 2013. Neighbors, addicts, transvestites, drug dealers, and other prostitutes walk along the sidewalk. A few steps away, the police arrest three young men accused of stealing a mobile phone.

The two women show their resumes because they are looking for work. One of them is still in high school. “I’ll work anywhere for 700,000 pesos ($580). Anything is better and nicer than this. You can make money here, but you’ll end up destroyed,” says the younger sister. Tamara adds, “Sometimes, guys come high on drugs, or drunk. More and more women are coming due to economic necessity and addictions.”

“Prostitution has always existed,” says a local shopkeeper who prefers to remain anonymous. “I came to the neighborhood in 1962, when I was 10 years old, and they were already here. But they didn’t bother anyone. Each had her family, her home, and would go out at night with her little bag. The problem started with the issue of falopa (drugs). It was towards the end of the nineties. They squatted houses and established the drug dealing business,” he says.

At a gas station on an avenue where addicts cross back and forth quickly, the neighbor opens Google Maps. He points out a reference a few meters from his home. “Sale of fafafa,” he says. It is one of 56 bunkers identified by neighbors fighting against what happens on this side of the avenue. “There comes a point where everything that happens drives you crazy,” he reflects. “There’s no economic activity or movement. Yesterday, I sold nothing. Look at the number of businesses with their shutters down. My family has an apartment for sale. A few years ago it cost $120,000; today they can’t sell it even for $50,000. The neighborhood has gone down with these guys. They stole a tire from me, the fiber optic cable, they broke a car window.”

Constitución used to be a wealthy neighborhood. In 19th-century Buenos Aires, the south was the most chosen option by the local aristocracy. The situation changed during the yellow fever epidemic of 1871, which killed 8% of the population at the time. Southern residents moved north, and nothing was the same. According to the City Government, there are 42,000 residents in Constitución, spread over little more than two square kilometers. Today, it could be called a kind of “Latin barrio of Buenos Aires.” In their homes, longtime porteños coexist with Peruvians, Dominicans, Paraguayans, and Venezuelans. It is also one of the main transit centers in the city: nearly a million people pass through the train terminal in Constitución every day, connecting with the subway and dozens of bus lines. That’s why hundreds of people also arrive every day to buy and consume.

“What is different about Constitución from other places where drugs are sold? Here it’s drugs and sex. And there are transvestites,” says one of the women offering her services in front of a hotel by the hour. Like others, she must pay 30,000 pesos (about $25) daily to a “collector.” “They see you enter with a man and wait to charge you. If you don’t pay, they beat you up and tell you not to come back,” the woman remarks and cuts the conversation to record a video for a client she is texting on WhatsApp.

The cocaine sold in Constitución is among the cheapest on the market and its purity is minimal. Just walking down one or two of its streets reveals the type of clientele frequenting the area. They are the so-called “people in situations of consumption”: addicts who have lost their jobs and ended up on the street or those coming from other neighborhoods who stay for days in the vicinity. The cycle is steal, buy, consume. They are everywhere. They smoke evaporated cocaine in homemade pipes made from metal tubes. Their food is provided by various churches and social organizations.

Some of the situations experienced daily and recorded by neighbors and shopkeepers are posted on the Instagram profile “Neighbors of Constitución.” A woman accompanies the tour. The first stop is at Garay 1269. It is the front of a boarded-up house. As the police investigate, raid, and the next day another gang moves in to sell, neighbors feel relieved when the property is sealed with cement. Thanks to their reports and the joint work they do with the police, they have recovered houses that had been squatted for sale and consumption. “I even got into an unmarked car with the Gendarmerie to accompany them tracking a drug dealer. We live things out of a movie,” the woman recounts.

Derlis Villalba is Paraguayan and knows the stories of many “people in situations of consumption.” Every month, at his hairdressing academy, he offers 200 free haircuts. “Recently, three of them came wanting to pay for the haircut. They had recovered and found work. For us, it was a relief, but the most common are relapses,” he laments. Villalba’s next project is a YouTube channel. He plans to call it Constitución TV. “We want to show the positive,” he says, “because YouTubers only come for the bad. This place is full of hardworking people who want to get ahead, and of people who came from Europe with nothing and bought shops where their children and grandchildren now work. That is Constitución too.”