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Journal of Heritage Tourism

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Urban heritage, gentrification, and

tourism in Riverwest and El Abasto
a b
Geoffrey R. Skoll & Maximiliano Korstanje
a
Department of Criminal Justice, Buffalo State College, Buffalo,
NY, USA
b
Department of Economics, Palermo University, Buenos Aires,
Argentina
Published online: 15 Apr 2014.

To cite this article: Geoffrey R. Skoll & Maximiliano Korstanje (2014): Urban heritage,
gentrification, and tourism in Riverwest and El Abasto, Journal of Heritage Tourism, DOI:
10.1080/1743873X.2014.890624

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 Journal of Heritage Tourism, 2014
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1743873X.2014.890624

RESEARCH NOTE
Urban heritage, gentrification, and tourism in Riverwest and El Abasto
∗
Geoffrey R. Skolla and Maximiliano Korstanjeb
a
Department of Criminal Justice, Buffalo State College, Buffalo, NY, USA; bDepartment of
Economics, Palermo University, Buenos Aires, Argentina
(Received 1 June 2013; accepted 20 January 2014)
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Heritage has played a pivotal role in configuring the sustainable economies of many
communities. However, if the process is not duly planned, serious problems may
surface. Although the adoption of a new heritage and heritage tourism has been
broadly examined by tourism-related scholars, less attention has been given to the
notion of gentrification as formulated in social geography. What would be interesting
to debate here, beyond the Marxist logic, is to what extent heritage is not only an
invented construction, but also how it regulates conflicts or subordinates other more
reactionary social movements as art. Comparing two neighbourhoods, Riverwest and
Abasto, shows two alternative effects of heritage construction. One refers to the fact
that art does not always preserve the structure of economic forces; the other
conceptualizes patrimony and heritage as justifying material asymmetries.
Keywords: gentrification; urban heritage; tourism; public art; Tango; politics;
Riverwest; El Abasto; Argentina

Introduction
One of the most troubling aspects of cultural studies is the lack of comparative cases to
expand the horizons of micro-sociology. The process of gentrification has been studied
in terms of the urban decline based on the legacy of the Chicago School of sociology.
Art plays a pervasive role in gentrification, usually as a wedge to introduce it, but under
some conditions configuring symbolic resistance to the alienation of market. The
Chicago School tended to neglect art in its studies, and instead focused on demographic
variables such as race, age, and income. An interesting point of discussion is to what
extent art is conducive to gentrification?
Chicago’s studies were done in Chicago as an urban exemplar. Other cultural environ-
ments not only were ignored but also the adoptions of their premises were applied out of
context in other cities and countries than the USA. Based on this gap, the present paper
explores the effects of gentrification in two neighbourhoods: Riverwest in Milwaukee, Wis-
consin, USA, and Abasto in the borough of Almagro, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Each neigh-
bourhood had diverse dynamics and experienced substantial changes in its urban design.
While in Riverwest arts played a crucial role in configuring an instrument of resistance, in
Buenos Aires, the expansion of capital pushed some ethnic minorities to abandon their

∗
Corresponding author. Emails: maxikorstanje@fibertel.com.ar, maxikorstanje@hotmail.com

# 2014 Taylor & Francis

 2 G.R. Skoll and M. Korstanje

homes. The main thesis here is that tourism, as a cultural industry, commoditized Abasto to be
consumed by an international clientele. In contrast, Riverwest not only exerted considerable
resistance to incorporating tourism as a main industry, but maintained many associations of
artists, which led to a neighbourhood with high social solidarity and resistance against com-
moditization. Abasto employed the biography of Carlos Gardel to sell to an international
market. The observations made here consist of two anthropological ethnographies conducted
in Riverwest and Abasto over two-year spans. The method was participant observation in
both cases. Ethics standards preclude further details about interviewees.

Conceptual discussion
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Marsha Meskimmon questions the influence of globalization on arts. She accepts the repli-
cation of capital with serious ramifications for individuals, but she also sees positive aspects
of globalization such as tolerance, and open dialogue with otherness. Arts are of paramount
importance to forge a cosmopolitan view of culture, “a cosmopolitan imagination”:

Imagining ourselves at home in the world, where our homes are not fixed objects but processed
of material and conceptual engagement with other people and different places, is the first step
toward becoming cosmopolitan. Art is specially able to convey the intimate relation between
the material and the conceptual that this requires, invoking the contingency of home by posi-
tioning us at the nexus of the real and the imaginary, while using the sensory force of object,
image, and spaces to engage memory, desire, and cognition. (Meskimmon, 2011, p. 8)

Art plays a pervasive role in modernity, because it articulates the cosmopolitan imagination so
that people gain further understanding. At the same time, it is replicated to anesthetize the
critical consciousness. The philosopher Benjamin believed that art was subject to a mechan-
ical reproduction where the technique of copying replaced authenticity. More interested in
deciphering the ideological power of arts, Benjamin argued that modern knowledge affects
art in many ways. Art may be used to mobilize the masses for fascism and to anesthetize
the critical gaze (Arendt, 1969). From the Frankfurt School onwards, social scientists ana-
lyzed the relationship between art and economy. Arts not only represent economics, but
also economic results. This means that the role of arts in a society will depend on previous
forms of production. In capitalist societies, art would be copied on a large scale to create a
one-sided ideology. But in artisan communities, art would serve as a dialogue among people.
Timothy and Ron (2013) claim that tourism fosters identity and ethnic pride for national
symbols. People seek credible and authentic experiences that reside in interpretation by
tourists. This opens a complex linkage between heritage, tourism, and identity. Preliminary
studies suggest that forced migration, such as diasporas, shows the construction of strong
liaisons between homeland and their respective destinations. Keeping a double connection
to their present and ancestral destination, migrants weave new negotiations into the
meaning of places. Intergenerational disconnection from original cultures is evolving at
time the migrant’s children are assimilated by the hosting culture (Kaftanoglu &
Timothy, 2013). For some specialists, travelling is a form of art making.
David Harvey (1989) submitted a convincing argument on the role of art in economies.
The discovery of new worlds, conquest, and advances in technology were pivotal for
European culture, creating a profound revolution. Every nation, since the Industrial Revo-
lution to contemporary, digital times was marked by substantial changes in the arts and
science. Those changes contributed to the imperial expansion of Europe worldwide.
Among other functions, the arts legitimate the spirit of the status quo. Urban centres
 Journal of Heritage Tourism 3

were designed according to the forces of economics. In times of Fordist mass production,
cities followed patterns of centralization; populations settled around central financial and
manufacturing placements. With the advent of postmodernism and radical defragmentation,
there ensued an ongoing dynamic of decentralization. Segmentation invaded the minds of
architects and painters. Quite aside from this, Harvey’s account sheds light on the connec-
tion among arts, the status quo, capital, and economies. Harvey provides an insightful and
all-encompassing model to understand the real effects of economies in social relations over
centuries.
The literature on heritage tourism recognizes the importance of sustainable develop-
ment to respect the interests of all involved stakeholders. The problem, as in the Abasto
case, is that in practice this does not happen. Heritage is a political invention, and as a fab-
ricated construction, it is conducive to protecting some interests and negatively affecting
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others (Aguirre, 2007; du Cros & Jolliffe, 2011; Guidotti-Hernandez, 2011; Korstanje,
2012a; Olsen, 2003; Olsen & Timothy, 2002). The notion of gentrification, less developed
in tourism fields, has explained the dangers of stimulating tourism and real-estate specu-
lations, but gentrification does not work without an attraction, a sign to exploit. These
studies demonstrate that real estate supported by law exerts violence against minorities.
Heritage paves the pathway to creating a new more subtle discourse to reduce the conflict.
Unless amortized, investments can backfire because of local attacks. Many of the studies in
this field also focused on the benefits of adopting heritage, but the problem of gentrification,
and it effects on the already existent inhabitants remain unstudied. It seems gentrification
theory is well used by geographers, sociologists, and anthropologists interested in cultural
studies, but few tourism-related studies have utilized it.

The semiotics of tourism

The concept of staged authenticity, originally coined by MacCannell (2003), exhibits in part
a concern for the change in sites according to market-driven interests. Capitalism has mono-
polized the meaning of what we see on television, or in packaged tours. Subject to a life of
alienation and depersonalization, the urban consumer looks not only for real experiences
but also for new sensations. The combination of novelty and authenticity is a key factor
that determines mass tourism. Unless otherwise resolved, tourism leads travellers to an
encounter in nowhere. The history and heritage of sites are selectively designed according
to the logic of capital, highlighting what may be sold at one time while other aspects or
negative points are made invisible. Hedonism based on the trends of consuming environ-
ments is a way of counterbalancing the alienation and frustration human beings suffer in
their daily lives (Korstanje, 2012b; MacCannell, 2003).
Unlike Barthes (1997), who considered tourism an alienable activity and industry, Mac-
Cannell acknowledged that tourism, as a form of leisure, plays a crucial role in entertaining
modern workers, and therefore it is very important for the mental health of citizens. Tourism
has a specific function. The class struggle creates many psychological problems and depri-
vations, which tourism can help moderate. Nonetheless, in the politics of class struggle,
there is a combination of some disciplinary powers that mix silence, violence, and ethnicity,
while power is a negotiation between two or more groups. If we refer to “Black or White
power” involuntarily we are speaking of two factions: the victors and the vanquished.
Ethnic minorities have sometimes accepted the hegemony of their masters and did not
display much resistance. By means of writing, the European powers systematically exter-
minated non-white resistance in the world they conquered (p. 214).
 4 G.R. Skoll and M. Korstanje

Wise (2012) sheds light on how the image of a tourist destination is portrayed by the
media according to invented conceptualizations to impose stereotypes, identities, and a pol-
itical discourse. If a site has a history of conflict, or any interesting tale to tell, it gets
recycled according to a current political discourse, fixed by the state or private business
interests. This discourse would be the official narrative of the site. Discourse construction
uses three clear tactics: landscape remembrance, fading memory, and replacement memory.
Through these, the site becomes a tourist destination whose attractiveness suffices to attract
additional investments. Since tourism is globally a mechanism to change sites or economies
that are facing problems, landscape remembrance refers to a broader process of integration
where the discourse is socialized and internalized by tourists. To some extent, tourists are
educated by giving them certain reflections based on fabricated facts. Fading memory is
characterized by the recognition of facts, while the discussion is put in terms of remember-
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ing and forgetting history. The facts are presented not as they really occurred, but as
they should be remembered. At this stage, the media plays a crucial role in creating a
re-signification of destinations. In doing so, replacing memory involves eliminating
negative aspects of historical protagonists so as to draw a new image of place to be
attractive for consumers.

Heritage and gentrification

As a multifaceted phenomenon, gentrification presents a diagnosis of our times, or a con-
nection between social pathologies, economy, and demography. The demographical eco-
logical formula, proposed by Palen and London (1984), argues that when housing prices
rise, demand goes up too. Depending on household compositions, and if the couples are
child-free, a more affluent white-collar population would displace blue-collar workers.
Additionally, since a skilled workforce would need a more urban-centric style of housing
than low-skilled workers, a conflict about common resources arises. In some cases, a popu-
lation is moved and pushed to other, peripheral zones by the intervention of states, or by the
market. Other, additional explanations of this issue were provided by Marxism, which
argues that political and economic factors influence the revitalization of the city and its
spaces. Also, gentrification should be defined as a process which may come from other
mechanisms of social control such as discrimination or exclusion. Basically, it occurs
through a combination of private and state policies such as urban refurbishment, tax regu-
lation, real-estate speculation, private investment, and tourism that encourages the heritagi-
zation of spaces
In this vein, Herzer (2008) argues that gentrification creates the necessary conditions in
environment and the market to increase the average income within an urban space, district,
or neighbourhood, but at the same time, it counteracts rising income with negative actions
such as exclusion and social discriminatory practices. As a result of this, sentiments of
resentment and conflict arise. Some scholars insist on defending gentrification because it
revitalizes the infrastructure, helping neighbourhoods and expanding community well-
being. Nonetheless, the fact is that financial loans that facilitate access to property are
not affordable to lower classes of working people. They are pushed out to live in peripheral
zones, and sometimes they are moved by the use of force. If the space is rich in tradition,
Herzer adds, it becomes a fertile source to be patrimonialized. In doing so, the process
opens the doors to investment by capital stakeholders, many of whom come from
outside the area. The more impoverished workforce is displaced by the regulation of
taxes and other fiscal instruments. The cycle of decline is accelerated by crime, social path-
ologies, and drug-abuse that make housing cheaper, but when it is marked as important
 Journal of Heritage Tourism 5

urban heritage, heavy investment moves in. As a result, the undesired populations which
contributed to the depreciation of lands, sometimes ethnic minorities or migrants, are
deported from their homes so that more attractive neighbourhoods can be developed.
Rodrı́guez, Bañuelos, and Mera (2008) validate Herzer’s viewpoint by saying that
Buenos Aires’ reinvention was accompanied by the exploitation of a fabricated cultural
imaginary where patrimonial restoration was very important. There is a clear link
between capital, consumption, heritage, and conflict. Today, built patrimony is globally
accepted as a social asset, but first of all it seems to be a positive aspect of social life in
the community. The argument of patrimony is that communities are more resilient if they
embrace their past and traditions. The problem is how and under what interests that heritage
is recognized and recreated. Similar conclusions are made by Redondo and Singh (2008),
who explore the historic changes of La Boca, San Telmo, and Barracas in Buenos Aires
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South. Witnessing a mass migration from 1880 to 1930, Buenos Aires embraced a signifi-
cant influx of migrants from Europe (desired migration) who originally settled in the south
of the city. Urban growth and recycled structures (conventillos) provided housing for these
immigrant workers. Although this type of migration was planned and encouraged by the
state, there were some other migrations in subsequent years from neighbouring Latin Amer-
ican countries to the same locales. In the last 40 years, since the 1970s, La Boca and San
Telmo suffered decline, partly a product of years of a combination of government interven-
tion and inaction. They now have become areas housing migrants from Bolivia, Paraguay,
and Chile. Unlike the mass migration from Europe encouraged by the state in the early
twentieth century, more recent migration is often deemed undesired. The concept of
cultural patrimony is based on selective characteristics of history. It highlights only part
of desirable migration. Other ethnicities are often silenced or disciplined by coactive policies
(Di Virgilio, 2008; Gómez-Schettini & Menazzi 2011; Guidotti-Hernandez, 2011).
In her study of the district of el Abasto, Traps of Culture (2006), Carman explains
the pervasive goal of heritage in the process of gentrification. There are two ways of
life in the city. One is a dark side, which is not shown to the public. Its urban space
embodies a dynamic of hierarchies where populations face discrimination directly and
indirectly. While Tango and the singer Carlos Gardel remain eloquent ambassadors of
culture, there are others, strangers who live between the wall and blue sea. They lack
formal access to land, they have no rights, no voice. In Buenos Aires, a considerable
sector of housing is illegally occupied by immigrants and ethnic minorities. These
groups have no voice, nor does the state see them; they are invisible. Squatters’ lack
of status as legal residents, and therefore their claims are not met. The tactics of com-
moditizing the site consists in blurring the boundaries of what today is popular with
other tales, imported from the past. Traps of culture lie in the tergiversation of patrimo-
nies and their meanings given to citizens. Since some in-group identities are exalted,
others suffer a progressive deterioration. The refurbishment of Abasto appeals to a
broader discourse, designed by elites, whose interests are not representative of all habi-
tants of Abasto. The invention of patrimony gives further legitimacy to practices that
otherwise would be neglected. Gentrification does not create patrimony, but it takes
advantage of its declaration to operate. Important to understand is why in some cities
arts exert resistance to the process of gentrification while in others it is conducive to
it. In addition, there is a connection between patrimony and the arts which merits discov-
ery. The literature discussed here reveals two things. The first and most important is that
in Buenos Aires, a selected archetype of “good migration” is linked to whiteness and
Europeanness. The second signals the belief that arts are conducive to replicating this
ideology in social fabric. At one time, Tango and the arts promoted the European
 6 G.R. Skoll and M. Korstanje

migration of the nineteen century, while silencing other, neighbouring migrants. One
question in this debate is what the role of tourism is in this process.

Methodological discussion
Positivism is based on a glaring error, that asking people is the only way to learn the truth.
As anthropology has shown, there are many methods and means to get part of what epis-
temologists call “the truth”. Seeing, hearing, and writing are some of them. The information
discussed in the next sections is part of two major ethnographies in the neighbourhoods of
Riverwest in Milwaukee and Abasto in Buenos Aires. In both cases, the observers garnered
more evidence than the summaries presented here. The authors are unable to give further
details on the names of informants, or the verbatim of interviews. Professional anthropol-
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ogists recognize that serious conflicts of interest may surface whenever the interviewees see
their statements published. Since the security of interviewees was never put at risk, their
privacy was not violated. We have articulated two clear diagnoses of the problem based
on some 20 interviews and visual fieldwork.

Riverwest
Riverwest is fairly centrally located in an upper Midwest former industrial city: Milwaukee,
Wisconsin. The city comfortably fits the “rustbelt” reputation. The city reached its popu-
lation apex in the early 1960s, topping three quarters of a million. It had declined to slightly
more than 600,000 in 2010. Riverwest is a former industrial and residential neighbourhood.
Today the heavy industry that once interspersed housing, mainly duplexes and small tene-
ments, has largely, although not entirely, disappeared. The neighbourhood, like the city, and
the entire upper Midwest went through deindustrialization following the 1970s. For most
such neighbourhoods, deindustrialization resulted in deterioration in the quality of life of
their denizens. With the loss of the industrial economic base came a host of urban problems:
a shrinking tax base, flight by long-term residents to suburbs, depopulation, racial and
ethnic segregation, concentrated poverty, and increased interpersonal predatory crime. Riv-
erwest did not experience these ills.
Riverwest has reflected the ethnic makeup of Milwaukee, which by the 1920s had a
German-Italian-Polish character. By the 1940s, a small Puerto Rican contingent along
with a smattering of other ethnic heritages made the neighbourhood one of the more
diverse in the city. It remained ethnically stable until the 1970s, when African-American
residents began to populate its northwestern quadrant. The workforce also reflected Mil-
waukee’s traditional composition: about one-third skilled workers, one-third semi-skilled,
and the remainder clerical-sales, managerial, and a few professionals. Among working-
class neighbourhoods, Riverwest also boasted relatively high levels of education.
Art entered, and the neighbourhood abided. For a while it looked shaky with a declining
population, declining home ownership, a shift in racial composition from white Americans
to various minorities, and the closing of small businesses. This was most noticeable in the
1980s and into the early 1990s, but eventually it stopped declining. Now there are a few
new businesses: a large hardware store adjacent to an older lumber yard, a furniture man-
ufacturer, a coffee roaster and café, and several new restaurants and bars. The population
has not soared, but it has stabilized. There are a few condominium units made from remo-
deled factories, but they fail to dominate the neighbourhood.
Art entails artists, of course, and there are many different kinds, including painters,
poets, sculptors, musicians, ceramicists, and wood workers. Riverwest has all of them. In
 Journal of Heritage Tourism 7

fact, Riverwest has always had them – working-class artists, at least since 1940. They did
their art in addition to their day jobs, or night jobs in the days when factories ran three shifts.
Riverwest was not the gilded Paris of the 1920s, or Greenwich Village in the 1940s and
1950s, Harlem in the 1920s, Chicago in the 1930s, or Weimar Berlin. Riverwest is not
home to world famous artists, writers, or musicians. It always has been working artists:
school secretary artists, tofu factory poets, and the housekeeping photographers.
The art and the artists are not important for Riverwest because of their renown, because
they have very little of that. The effectiveness of arts to take social forms lies in making and
sustaining the neighbourhood for three or four generations, at least, depending on how one
counts generations. It comes from an old Chicago School discovery – cultural transmission.
Cultural transmission operates despite changes in populations, because the artistic cultural
tradition is passed from one generation of residents to the next. The secret to Riverwest is
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art, vernacular or workers’ art. It is the art of everyday people creating something unique in
times of economic and political difficulties.
A certain homology can be seen at different levels of abstraction – the mental, the inter-
actional, and the social structural levels. Consequently, artists’ imaginaries, their creation of
art works, and their social interactions come to be reflected in social structures – that is,
urban social formations. There followed particular institutionalizations in Riverwest, and
these homologies only form sensible and analyzable patterns when viewed from the
correct theoretical perspective. Art institutions are visible in Riverwest: an artists’ associ-
ation with a gallery, a small press bookstore that stages writers’ public presentations,
avant-garde galleries, artists’ workshops and studios, or cafes and taverns that display art
works and hold public readings. In addition, there are informal, often ephemeral, writers’
and artists’ group meetings. The neighbourhood boasts a history of regular publications,
including a neighbourhood newspaper published since 2001, and many short-lived publi-
cations representing literary and artistic works or focusing on the arts. The neighbourhood
contains probably the highest concentration of such institutions in the metropolitan area.
Moreover, its members and influence suffuse the neighbourhood, its residents and visitors.
Another aspect of Riverwest’s salience as an art centre is how it differs from surround-
ing neighbourhoods. From about 1940 to about 1980, Riverwest had few artistic institutions
and establishments such as studios, book and writers’ centre, and the like. It had working-
class artists, but so did many other neighbourhoods in Milwaukee. The critical period of
Riverwest’s differentiation emerged from its period of de-industrialization in the 1980s.
The other surrounding neighbourhoods largely succumbed to the expectable urban
decline and decay; Riverwest did not. In its crisis years a number of civic organizations,
with varying degrees of formality, fought against decline in a variety of ways, ranging
from political movements and pressure groups to attempts at a cultural renaissance.
Some of these efforts promoted art.
Significantly, the kind of art promoting movement that anticipates gentrification fell flat
and its entrepreneurs gave up after a few years. The alderman who represented both the East
Side and Riverwest, tried to convert a space formerly occupied by a co-op grocery and a co-
op natural foods store – two separate establishments next to each other. On the contrary,
some of what became institutions – the Riverwest Artists Association and Woodland
Pattern Bookstore, most prominently – had no such gentrifying goals. Moreover and
more importantly, they were indigenous efforts, not primarily aimed at enhancing real-
estate values. These and similar efforts earn the “grass roots” sobriquet. They were indigen-
ous, working class, and oriented towards production rather than consumption of art. River-
west also did not adopt tourism to boost the economy of the city, neither did it appeal to an
exogenous demand to consume arts.
 8 G.R. Skoll and M. Korstanje

Last but not least, the region of the city on the other side of Riverwest’s eastern bound-
ary, the Milwaukee River, known as the East Side, seemingly would offer more genial con-
ditions for an artistic neighbourhood. With its major university, and relatively upper
bourgeois character, it had a historical claim to a bohemian, avant-garde pedigree, some-
what on the order of Paris’ Montmartre. There are many reasons why this happens. First,
it is and has been a high rent district which most artists and their studios could ill afford.
Second, its bourgeois character had two consequences. The bourgeois subculture of Mil-
waukee exploits strongly its German heritage, which remains culturally conservative,
even when, as in its history of socialist city government, promises a more left leaning
and liberal atmosphere. Also, the bourgeois character might encourage the consumption
of art but fail to permit much in the way of conditions for production. This is where it
stops resembling Montmartre.
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El Abasto
Unlike Riverwest, El Abasto, in Buenos Aires, suffered the most blatant kind of gentrifica-
tion. Built around a shopping mall, it was founded in the 1880s in the borough of Almagro,
situated in the core of the city. Originally, the name was linked to the old market that served
as the central wholesaler of vegetables, meat, and fruits. This market was associated with
Tango dancing, but also directly to Carlos Gardel, one of the most famous singers of Argen-
tina. The Abasto Shopping mall adjoined a new underground station to the subway and con-
tained many other financial projects from banks to small, medium, and full-size tourist
establishments. In almost one decade, this borough was completely refurbished, changing
from a blue-collar working-class borough fraught with street crime to a growing attraction
that created a strong tourist demand. The Abasto case may be typified as a clear example of
how the unintentional gentrification process works. In the next section, we examine and
describe how terms such as tourism, patrimony, and safety are conducive to the capital
expansion. At the same time, the old dwellers were obliged to move to other, less central
boroughs by the imposition of new higher taxes or by the coercive forces of the state
and its police.
At first glance, business and real estate played a vital role in investing considerable
money in Almagro. Its architecture was altered over several years; the houses were sold
by the original owners at the cheapest prices, thanks to the climate of conflict and crime
which affected the image of this borough. Soon thereafter, many buildings were renovated
and re-built according to new styles and patterns. Office buildings, skyscrapers, and other
structures of more than 20 floors were accompanied by shops, tourist establishments, hotels,
and so forth. Of course, the rates of crime and robbery did not decline, but neighbours to
some extent seemed to feel safer than in the immediate past. This begs a more than troubling
question: to what extent are our perceptions of risk real? How is the social imaginary about
a place formed? What is the role of art in such a process?
In contrast to Riverwest, in el Abasto, art represented a deep-seated transformation of
the neighbourhood in two senses. First, Tango was of paramount importance for the gov-
ernment to establish Almagro as a patrimony for all Argentines. Second, but most impor-
tantly, some restaurants, walls, and streets were decorated and painted to emulate the 1930s
atmosphere of Buenos Aires. Following this, tourism and the invented patrimonial tradition
brought many businesses, but not less conflict with the old dwellers. The climate of inse-
curity that predominates today in Buenos Aires, and many other larger cities, is not new.
It does, however, likely serve real-estate interests. For example, in 1970 a square meter
in Almagro was worth USD 50, but today it costs approximately USD 1800. Just before
 Journal of Heritage Tourism 9

gentrification, many companies that invested in the project bought extensive land holdings
at low prices, pressuring the old inhabitants to sell. Once the infrastructure was developed,
the buildings were sold to the highest bidders. The state aided the process by imposing high
taxes on those who did not want to sell their homes and move. The sort of art there did the
same by appealing to a social imaginary of Tango, a romantic pastime of porteños (the citi-
zens of Buenos Aires). The pervasive nature of claims to patrimony and the tourism it
entails showed a dark side with respect to the former, poor inhabitants, especially the
many undocumented immigrants from Paraguay, Bolivia, and Peru. They did not have
enough money to own property, and many of them occupied the area illegally, squatting
in houses, known as conventillos. Although the financial pressures and proactive measures
by the state, such as intensified policing, were largely sufficient to push these immigrants to
peripheral areas, some remained. First through police harassment and second by the
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requirement of a fee of ARS 1500, they were driven from Almagro. What is important
to discuss here, in contrast with the Riverwest case, is the role of art as a commonly
shared past, to promote an image that is conducive to the interests of the market. Patrimony
as a social construct not only refers to an invented self-image created according to capitalist
logic, but also it is inextricably linked to the state and its promotion of the arts.
In Buenos Aires, the borough of Almagro is fourth in size of residential concentrations
with 4.6%, only superseded by Palermo at 13.6%, Caballito (10.10%), and Villa Urquiza
(8.1%). This concentration of population and buildings contrasts with other districts such
as La Boca (0.3%), Villa Soldati (0.1%), and Villa Lugano (0.6%). This gap exhibits not
only a difference of opportunities in one side of the city with respect to the other, but it
also shows how tourism contributes to gentrification. Almagro is the most densely popu-
lated place of Buenos Aires.1
If in other situations the arts critique the status quo, Almagro is the exception. The con-
flicts between immigrants and property owners with real-estate businesses are covered over
in favour of a broader imaginary of Tango, more polished and made for export according to
European tastes. It is important to remember that Argentine Tango was originally a musical
genre that originated at the riverside, south of the city, at the end of the nineteenth century.
As noted above, Carlos Gardel and others were among the principal figures in its inception,
but basically the genre was danced by the lower classes and/or criminals – much like
southern French Apache dancing or the Spanish flamenco. Over the decades, Tango was
not only exported to Europe, but it also captivated the elite. It was transformed into a
tourist attraction that characterized, but did not determine, the life of Argentines, since
Tango is only one rhythm among many others in the country. Nonetheless, thousands of
tour agencies promoted Argentina on the basis of this Tango stereotype. These conceptual-
izations correspond with a biased, fabricated, and romanitzed image of past which has
nothing to do with reality. Since immigrants from other Latin American countries did not
fit these stereotypes, they were silenced and subordinated to the imaginary racial order.
This means porteños, inhabitants of Buenos Aires, ethnically reflected only European
immigration in the nineteenth century.
In Abasto, all this is replicated by the mediation of art. On the one hand, although some
Peruvian restaurants keep their identity by offering traditional dishes along Corrientes
Avenue, the demand does not come from tourists or Argentine locals. These restaurants
receive daily influxes of Peruvian or Bolivianim migrants who hope to bolster their heritage
connection with their homeland. Argentines and international tourists somehow avoid these
places in favour of patronizing other establishments linked to Tango and Argentine flash.
Here, we see how the tourist demand corresponds to a previous imaginary discourse
fixed by capital and tourism companies. A visual inspection reveals popular artists who
 10 G.R. Skoll and M. Korstanje

devote considerable effort and time to painting some walls along the streets, but these art
works do not reflect the experiences of immigrants. Rather, other icons and figures are
emphasized, such as Carlos Gardel, European mass migration, and Tango. All these stereo-
types are associated with a much broader discourse, stated and designed by the state to
promote some parts of Buenos Aires to the world, where strangers (like the African-Amer-
ican and Latino/a ghettos in some American cities) are excluded. This does not mean immi-
grants do not exist in Abasto. They represent almost 9% of local residents. Most important
here is that their culture is not significant for nourishing the tourist discourse of the moment.
Five art galleries were inspected and 15 places of popular painting and graffiti. Tango and
the face of Gardel were the most common artistic expression in all of these places. Was
Carlos Gardel an immigrant? Yes at some level, although his birthplace is still disputed
between Argentina and Uruguay, there is agreement that he had French origins. Abasto
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reveals the negative effects of manipulating the discourse, to boost a borough for commer-
cial purposes only. In this process, art was conducive to the exploitation of people instead of
representing an act of resistance. The invention of fabricated heritage in El Abasto is con-
ducive to commercial exploitation by real-estate agents. The biographies and stories of
thousands of immigrants are buried under the imposition of an ideologue where a European
Argentina prevails over other minorities.

Conclusion
Two neighbourhoods present two different responses to urban decline and two different
ways people have used art. In Riverwest, public art is an organic and continuous creation
of its inhabitants. By making art, they resisted urban decay and resisted imposed gentrifica-
tion. In Abasto, elite forces, property owners, and controllers of capital used their influence
together with the power of the state. In Abasto, Tango was transformed from an organic art
form of the commoners into a tool of the elite. With this tool they re-made the neighbour-
hood of Abasto and removed those they deemed undesirable. Like all inventions of human-
kind, art can be a tool for manipulating power or resistance to power, the force of capital,
and the might of the state. To paraphrase Marx, people make history, but only within the
confines of the forces and powers mostly outside their control. Elites never targeted River-
west to be a profit-led commercial zone as the elites did with respect to Abasto. Conse-
quently, the inhabitants of Riverwest had the geographic, social, and political space and
wherewithal to resist gentrification and conduct urban life in their own way, so that
urban renewal could occur organically. The inhabitants of Abasto, however, were not as
lucky. Theirs was a story of commodified and alienated art being thrust upon them for
the commercial gain of the upper classes.

Note
1. Source 2001– 2011. The Construction in Buenos Aires City. Secretary of Infraestructure and
Planning of Buenos Aires. Retrieved from http://www.ssplan.buenosaires.gov.ar/news/
construcci%C3%B3n_10anios.pdf.

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