Old and New Cirujas. Temporo-Spatial Constructions in the City of Buenos Aires

Abstract

What is known as cirujeo, cartoneo or informal collection acquired visibility with the increase of this activity towards the end of the 1990s. During the first years after the 2001 crisis, as the cartoneros were a “novelty”, investigations mainly tried to understand the new structure of the activity. Since then, they began referring to two groups: structural and new cirujas. Focused on the experience of the latter, this article seeks to complicate this difference. I will argue that these people’s identifications were gradually constructed in the interaction between the two groups (and the outside). This was generated not only by changes linked to the growth of activity, as was stated in large part of the research, but also by the re conceptualization of La Quema and the street as the temporal and spatial place of cirujeo.