Bus-Aula

Bus-Aula1: The School as a Political and Territorial Project2

I. A Picture, One Story in a Thousand Words 

The woman in the fore­ground of the image [ 1 ] can­not tell who took this pho­to that record­ed her dai­ly work as a teacher in charge of about forty chil­dren in the Nue­va Habana población3 in San­ti­a­go de Chile. The woman in the pho­to was a stu­dent-in-prac­tice assigned to the school. It wasn’t a reg­u­lar assign­ment, since the class­es took place in dis­man­tled bus­es in a very poor neigh­bor­hood that had recent­ly formed on the out­skirts of the city. 

Found­ed on Novem­ber 1, 1970, as part of the ​“Unidad Pop­u­lar” polit­i­cal project, it was renamed as ​“Nue­vo Amanecer” after the coup in 1973. In an edu­ca­tion­al and social exper­i­ment, thir­ty-eight chil­dren seat­ed at their desks are accom­mo­dat­ed in a class­room that was once a pub­lic bus. It was part of a polit­i­cal project that, while empow­er­ing cit­i­zens, also devel­oped into an envi­ron­ment where dis­sent, in her own words, could be dan­ger­ous. The pho­tog­ra­ph­er who took the pho­to is unknown, but there is spec­u­la­tion as to whom it may have been. Amy Con­ger, a North Amer­i­can teacher and pho­tog­ra­ph­er, vis­it­ed the cam­pa­men­to from Octo­ber 1972 to 1973, tak­ing more than 150 pho­tographs of the place, and the pho­to could like­ly be attrib­uted to her.4 Pro­fes­sor René Urbina, who at that time was the direc­tor of the Insti­tute for Hous­ing, Urban­ism and Plan­ning (IVUPLAN), was also inter­est­ed in doc­u­ment­ing the expe­ri­ence in the cam­pa­men­to and gath­ered vast mate­ri­als to do so. Oth­ers attribute the image to an Ital­ian pho­tog­ra­ph­er, Romano Cagnoni, who spent time in Chile in 1971 before going to Argenti­na. Cagnoni is the author of canon­i­cal images of Nue­va La Habana such as Fidel Castro’s vis­it­ing to the población.

Formed to the east of the cur­rent Quilín round­about, Nue­va La Habana was made up of a group of about 2.500 fam­i­lies, approx­i­mate­ly 9.000 res­i­dents, who were trans­ferred from three dif­fer­ent land takeovers (“tomas”5 Ran­quil, Mag­a­ly Hon­o­ra­to and Elmo Catalán). Orga­nized by the author­i­ty in charge, their solu­tion was to relo­cate the res­i­dents onto the lands of the for­mer Los Cas­taños farm in La Flori­da. There were many peo­ple involved in the cre­ation of the camp, includ­ing Cor­po­ración de la Vivien­da-Hous­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (CORVI), pro­fes­sion­als and stu­dents from the Uni­ver­si­dad of Chile and Uni­ver­si­dad Católi­ca, and lead­ers of the camp’s res­i­dents who were fun­da­men­tal sup­port­ers in begin­ning the trans­for­ma­tive path from tem­po­rary solu­tions into per­ma­nent hous­ing. The Movimien­to de Izquier­da Rev­olu­cionar­ia-Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Left Move­ment (MIR) had an impor­tant pres­ence and influ­ence, with a high degree of orga­ni­za­tion and self-man­age­ment capac­i­ties among the res­i­dents and visitors. 

Población Nue­va La Habana attract­ed inter­na­tion­al atten­tion, as many oth­er aspects of the local polit­i­cal peri­od in Chile did. The neigh­bor­hood was fre­quent­ly vis­it­ed, pho­tographed and filmed. Teach­ers, stu­dents, polit­i­cal par­ty mil­i­tants (main­ly MIR) and res­i­dents were con­tin­u­al­ly assist­ed and inter­viewed by var­i­ous study groups and the local press, and amid the ten­sions of the Cold War, atten­tion also came from coun­tries as dis­tant as France and Rus­sia. Sev­er­al doc­u­men­taries6 about the camp were cre­at­ed at the time, also attract­ing the inter­est of aca­d­e­mics such as French philoso­pher Hen­ri Lefeb­vre. Espaces et Sociétés [ 2 ], the inter­dis­ci­pli­nary sci­en­tif­ic jour­nal of geog­ra­phy, archi­tec­ture and town plan­ning, found­ed by Lefeb­vre, ded­i­cat­ed its pub­li­ca­tion in April 19757, enti­tled ​“Rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the city” to an arti­cle about Nue­va La Habana. It was writ­ten by Chris­tine Caste­lain, a stu­dent from École Pra­tique des Hautes Études in Paris, who ded­i­cat­ed her the­sis to the his­to­ry of the camp, and sub­mit­ted it in the fol­low­ing year in 1976.8 The Bus-Aula became a case study in which the social appro­pri­a­tion of the process­es in the pro­duc­tion of the city devel­oped along the mate­ri­al­iz­ing of polit­i­cal ideals, con­firm­ing the city as a nec­es­sary space to pro­duce con­crete utopias.9 Caste­lain tes­ti­fies to a process in which MIR worked with the res­i­dents, pro­duc­ing a dia­gram­mat­ic inter­nal orga­ni­za­tion struc­tured by a grid of blocks named with let­ters (A, B, C…), each with its own lead­ers and rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Such a dia­gram was aimed at strength­en­ing the res­i­dents to over­come urban strug­gles such as fight­ing for a piece of land, for their own homes, for their own edu­ca­tion­al con­tent, and devel­op­ing a rev­o­lu­tion­ary but above all col­lec­tive con­scious­ness. Space became a medi­um for pol­i­tics, and the camp became the most direct trans­la­tion of pol­i­tics into ter­ri­to­ry. The his­to­ri­an Boris Cofré describes the expe­ri­ences lived by the res­i­dents in Nue­va La Habana (pobladores) as ​“rev­o­lu­tion­ary politi­ciza­tion”: the process by which prob­lems that were pre­vi­ous­ly per­ceived and solved indi­vid­u­al­ly from 1970 began to be faced col­lec­tive­ly, and as a result impact­ed the con­sciences, iden­ti­ties, rela­tion­ships, ways of life and types of orga­ni­za­tion in the com­mu­ni­ty. In Nue­va La Habana pol­i­tics direct­ly trans­lat­ed into space. Just as polit­i­cal strate­gies and deci­sions impact­ed the spa­tial dimen­sion of the camp, any spa­tial mod­i­fi­ca­tions had ram­i­fi­ca­tions in the polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion as well. 

The anony­mous pho­to­graph of the bus trans­formed into an aula crys­tal­izes that rad­i­cal process at a time when the school was trans­formed into a series of class­rooms scat­tered through­out the coun­try, reg­is­ter­ing the inten­si­ty and coin­ci­dences between the social, polit­i­cal and edu­ca­tion­al explo­rations. The ped­a­gog­i­cal envi­ron­ment installed in decom­mis­sioned bus­es became a place where the school and the city merged as part of the same prob­lem and solu­tion. Despite the fact that the terms ​“city” and ​“urban fab­ric” are used to describe the school as an open field, they do not reflect the mate­r­i­al and social real­i­ties of the cam­pa­men­to. In terms of scale, mate­r­i­al infra­struc­ture, and ser­vices these neigh­bor­hoods can hard­ly be called a piece of city, how­ev­er in terms of their net­works and the orga­ni­za­tion of their inhab­i­tants, they can tru­ly be con­sid­ered urban fab­ric. [ 3 ] [ 4 ]

II. The Bus-Aulas, Ideological Building-Blocks 

The SCEE aimed to address the edu­ca­tion­al needs of the new shan­ty­towns emerg­ing in the city as pilot-camps [ 5 ]. 254 bus­es were decom­mis­sioned from the Empre­sa de Trans­portes Colec­tivos del Esta­do (State Col­lec­tive Trans­port Com­pa­ny). Out of cir­cu­la­tion and aban­doned in a park­ing lot, they had been total­ly dis­card­ed until the SCEE fore­saw their poten­tial. Once refur­bished, they were used as trans­portable class­rooms into var­i­ous shan­ty­towns on the out­skirts of San­ti­a­go receiv­ing about 20,000 chil­dren dai­ly. One of the doc­u­men­taries record­ing the expe­ri­ence describes: ​“Aban­doned bus­es were hot in the sum­mer, cold in the win­ter, but full of chil­dren all year long.”10 It was a response—as is com­mon in Chilean history—engendered from urgency and scarci­ty. The Bus-Aulas syn­the­size a spe­cif­ic social real­i­ty of a place and time, main­ly the ​“do-it-your­self” men­tal­i­ty and sense of close com­mu­ni­ty, typ­i­cal of self-orga­ni­za­tion. At the same time, this was rev­o­lu­tion­ary and caused inter­na­tion­al inter­est in the con­text of the social, polit­i­cal and struc­tur­al eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion that was pro­mot­ed by the Unidad Pop­u­lar under Pres­i­dent Sal­vador Allende. 

The SCEE in those years, had been work­ing with sys­tem­ized build­ings, both at the lev­el of design and con­struc­tion process­es, imple­ment­ing pre­fab­ri­cat­ed sys­tems to allow for easy trans­porta­tion to extend edu­ca­tion­al facil­i­ties across the nation­al ter­ri­to­ry. The best exam­ple of a class­room build­ing sys­tem devel­oped by the SCEE in Chile was a sys­tem named the MC-606 (also called the ​“stamp-plan”) and was dis­trib­uted through­out the coun­try.11 It con­sist­ed of an ordi­nary sin­gle-floor, pre­fab­ri­cat­ed steel struc­ture with a gabled roof that in terms of size and sim­plic­i­ty did not dif­fer much from the space of a bus. How­ev­er, they were rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent in terms of the def­i­n­i­tion of its bor­ders. The MC-606 school build­ings were com­posed on a site as a series of class­rooms along a cor­ri­dor next to a pavil­ion build­ing. The Bus-Aulas oper­at­ed as autonomous pieces of fur­ni­ture with­out attach­ment to a build­ing; they used the city as their edi­fice. The pol­i­cy did not plan for the mobil­i­ty of the bus­es, but indeed saw it as part of their poten­tial. After all, the aulas were dri­ven to the sites where they were installed in the city’s periph­ery. The fact that the aulas were mobile and ready-made, made them ide­al as the emer­gency solu­tion in response to the cre­ation of new neigh­bor­hoods out of infor­mal set­tle­ments. How­ev­er, the autonomous form of the bus did not allow for easy attach­ment of any exten­sions or added pieces to the aulas. [ 6 ] The unusu­al response of using bus­es as class­rooms was also prob­a­bly relat­ed not only to the ease of their dis­man­tle­ment, but also to the indus­tri­al imag­i­nary (based on the stud­ies of air­planes, bus­es, trains and ships) that was already cir­cu­lat­ing inter­na­tion­al­ly and local­ly in archi­tec­tur­al cir­cles, and that were com­mon­ly employed as ref­er­ences for the projects12 with­in the SCEE. The bus­es, despite their tech­no­log­i­cal sim­plic­i­ty, prob­a­bly rep­re­sent­ed the arrival of an expect­ed social progress, embed­ded in the indus­tri­al and social­ist pro­duc­tive imag­i­nary of the 20^th century.

Along with the arrival of the eleven bus­es to Nue­va La Habana, an impor­tant self-gov­er­nance sys­tem was being insti­tut­ed around an ide­al of com­mu­ni­ty life. The orga­ni­za­tion con­sist­ed of a pres­i­dent, sev­en lead­ers, a board of direc­tors and the work-fronts (coman­dos comu­nales or coor­di­nat­ing com­mit­tees) for: health, sur­veil­lance, work­ers, sup­plies and edu­ca­tion. This suc­cess­ful self-man­age­ment strat­e­gy allowed the camp to take shape, and to grad­u­al­ly take on the pobladores’ oth­er demands relat­ed to qual­i­ty of life and ideals beyond hous­ing. The Bus-Aulas were part of the pro­grams beyond hous­ing, whose out­comes were meant to fos­ter activism with­in the com­mu­ni­ty, capa­ble of artic­u­lat­ing polit­i­cal and social forces includ­ing the city in the process. 

Near the bus­es in Nue­va La Habana there was a small booth for the per­son in charge from the School Sec­tor. One of the bus­es became a library, the exist­ing ​“can­cha”13 became the school sports field, and the cul­tur­al space in the mid­dle of the neigh­bor­hood act­ed as a stage for pub­lic events. A for­mer stu­dent of the bus­es remem­bers this peri­od of his upbring­ing with the same intensity:

Beyond adapt­ed machines, the bus­es man­aged to trig­ger a larg­er ter­ri­to­r­i­al sys­tem of social rela­tions: as the school spread in the ter­ri­to­ry it also dilut­ed the phys­i­cal and tem­po­ral lim­its of its teach­ing. Such emer­gency strat­e­gy inevitably car­ried out an ide­o­log­i­cal tac­tic (in this case led by MIR) that can be seen as a lab­o­ra­to­ry of col­lec­tive life where those involved were also gain­ing agency over their own des­tiny. [ 7 ] [ 8 ]

Such new polit­i­cal con­scious­ness and sense of col­lec­tiv­i­ty was pro­mot­ed and trans­mit­ted through edu­ca­tion from the gov­ern­ment to the peo­ple. By the end of 1970, the work­ers of a well-known local pub­lish­ing house Zig-Zag, stopped their activ­i­ties and inte­grat­ed the com­pa­ny into the State (as many oth­er indus­tries also did). Renamed as Empre­sa Edi­to­ra Nacional Quiman­tú, the pub­lic pub­lish­ing house pro­duced books and sold them at low prices, mak­ing cul­ture acces­si­ble to the peo­ple, but also ensur­ing a tool for indoc­tri­na­tion.15 [ 9 ] The comics, for exam­ple, are part of this effort, in which an entire car­toon was ded­i­cat­ed to com­mu­ni­cat­ing and explain­ing the Bus-Aulas to the com­mu­ni­ty. The didac­tic and pro­mo­tion­al strat­e­gy behind car­toons and doc­u­men­taries worked quick­ly. Brazil­ian edu­ca­tor Paulo Freire vis­it­ed Chile twice dur­ing the Unidad Pop­u­lar gov­ern­ment, inter­est­ed in the con­crete ideas of​the class strug­gle as expressed in var­ied forms. He delved into the work of mobi­liza­tion and ped­a­gog­i­cal-polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion devel­oped by MIR, end­ing up in Nue­va La Habana: [ 10 ]

The teach­ing style devel­oped in a dilut­ed hier­ar­chy between teach­ers and par­ents, one of the pop­u­lar forms of dis­trib­ut­ing pow­er which devel­oped in the camp at that time when the tra­di­tion­al school-fam­i­ly sep­a­ra­tion found new def­i­n­i­tions. Teach­ing con­tent was decid­ed joint­ly between par­ents, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the blocks, and the teach­ers who ensured the min­i­mum teach­ing require­ments with a few books that had been dis­trib­uted by the Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion. Chil­dren were taught the his­to­ry of min­ers, peas­ants and set­tlers in Chile, the con­cept of class strug­gle and the idea of pop­u­lar pow­er.17 As one father describes his inten­tions for the program:

Anoth­er teacher from Uni­ver­si­dad de Chile work­ing in the Bus-Aulas recalls his expe­ri­ence from 50 years ago:

At night, the bus­es also received adults in charge of a Lit­er­a­cy Com­mis­sion:20 A strong com­mit­ment to the project ensued . While some teach­ers moved to live in the población, stu­dents also did for a peri­od of time. Urbina, a pro­fes­sor of archi­tec­ture at Uni­ver­si­dad de Chile, orga­nized a ver­ti­cal inte­grat­ed stu­dio (stu­dents from dif­fer­ent lev­els in the same design work­shop) in 1971 that lived in the neigh­bor­hood for a term, and helped the res­i­dents with a mas­ter plan for green spaces based on fruit-trees that was final­ly pre­sent­ed at the Fac­ul­tad de Arqui­tec­tura.21 The Bus-Aula (and the prob­lem of edu­ca­tion) opened up you mean in the con­text of the design work­shop? to the city fab­ric and posi­tioned itself as the build­ing block for the edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem; this was not the case for the con­struc­tion of mod­u­lar school-build­ing as it has been tra­di­tion­al­ly defined by the SCEE. For the SCEE the class­room was the build­ing block of the schools they con­struct­ed: the build­ings were gen­er­al­ly under­stood as a sum of aulas. Togeth­er then, the aulas were more than just a spa­tial con­struc­tion; they were an ide­o­log­i­cal propo­si­tion. This instru­men­tal­iza­tion of the bus became the rhetor­i­cal build­ing block of an ​“open school” for the neigh­bor­hood. [ 11 ]

III. The School, Neither Building nor Institution

The Nue­va La Habana Bus-Aula school was born out of eleven class­rooms set in bus­es, and the need for cul­ture with­in a com­mu­ni­ty, that gen­er­at­ed some­thing new. Togeth­er with the sup­port net­work and the need to appro­pri­ate oth­er spaces in the camp, the bus­es caused a dis­en­gage­ment of the sys­tems that make up a school, dis­rupt­ing the tra­di­tion­al con­cepts of edu­ca­tion and archi­tec­ture. The explo­sion of the basic pieces of a school caused a piece of the city to become a school, gen­er­at­ing a new ide­al of ped­a­gogy with­out phys­i­cal and for­mal lim­its in an expand­ed edu­ca­tion with greater scope.

The bus­es had an impact as soon as they arrived. They gen­er­at­ed a new lay­out, pro­duc­ing dif­fer­ent move­ment pat­terns, and cre­at­ing new invis­i­ble lines with­in the space of the neigh­bor­hood. The bound­ary between school and camp grad­u­al­ly start­ed to dis­solve, form­ing a new ter­ri­to­r­i­al order around edu­ca­tion. As the bus­es pro­vid­ed the min­i­mal means pos­si­ble for an edu­ca­tion­al facil­i­ty, the rest of the func­tion­al spaces that a school would nor­mal­ly need had to be met by the camp itself. The bus­es were part of a con­stel­la­tion of urban spaces, open space, and sim­ple con­struc­tions. Oth­er spaces were dis­persed but always with­in walk­ing dis­tance, com­plet­ing the nec­es­sary and required needs for edu­ca­tion. Thus, the bus­es estab­lished a new archi­tec­tur­al con­di­tion for their con­text, man­ag­ing to rein­vent them­selves and pro­vide a mas­sive edu­ca­tion­al solu­tion to one of the most vul­ner­a­ble sec­tors of the Chilean pop­u­la­tion. [ 12 ] [ 13 ] While the school hours were the same as that in con­ven­tion­al schools, in the Bus-Aulas, the chil­dren were taught an alter­na­tive edu­ca­tion to the insti­tu­tion­al one. In Nue­va La Habana the tra­di­tion­al school build­ing pro­gramme explod­ed into the city as an arch­i­pel­ago of dis­crete sites, where not only the idea of a school build­ing was put into cri­sis but also its image as an insti­tu­tion. Luis Par­raguez, a teacher at the school describes the learn­ing process:

The bus began to be part of a larg­er sys­tem trac­ing yield­ing oth­er net­works with­in the camp. Their edu­ca­tion­al meth­ods dis­solved the con­crete spa­tial lim­its of a typ­i­cal class­room to car­ry out their essen­tial ped­a­gog­i­cal goal: to raise chil­dren who learn from each oth­er, from their par­ents, from work, and from the world out­side the class­room. The school activ­i­ties out­side the bus­es were even more impor­tant, cre­at­ing a new con­cept of school with­out this being its main objec­tive. Such exam­ples of the activ­i­ties out­side the class­rooms were in the com­mu­ni­ty cen­ter and neigh­bor­hood blocks. Each block, num­bered from A to Z, had a chair where deci­sions of the 64 fam­i­lies of each block were dis­cussed. The com­mu­ni­ty cen­ter, locat­ed in the heart of the town, attend­ed var­i­ous activ­i­ties, includ­ing the Gen­er­al Assem­bly, where the entire com­mu­ni­ty met to dis­cuss the most rel­e­vant issues. A stage in the cen­tre of the neigh­bor­hood was one of the most impor­tant spaces for the edu­ca­tion and cul­ture of the inhab­i­tants, where pre­sen­ta­tions and debates took place. On the out­skirts of the camp, the for­mer manor house was left unin­hab­it­ed, and part of the vis­its with the chil­dren. The main cor­ri­dor of the camp, Aveni­da La Higuera, besides being used as a play area for the chil­dren, also became like a patio and an infor­mal meet­ing space to gath­er. Mega­phones hung around the space allow­ing the chil­dren and all res­i­dents to be informed of what was hap­pen­ing in the neigh­bor­hood. Next to the Bus-Aulas locat­ed on one the fringes of the camp were open fields. Anoth­er space with­in this con­stel­la­tion of struc­tures was under­stood as one of the most impor­tant court­yards of the school. One of the bus­es was refur­bished as a school library, and the same latrines that served the com­mu­ni­ty were the spaces that the chil­dren used in their class schedules.

The bus changed its role by being installed as an urban-build­ing with­in the camp, becom­ing acti­va­tor in the com­mu­ni­ty. The school occu­pied a cen­tral place in the pop­u­lar polit­i­cal and social move­ments, part of a self-orga­nized project pro­mot­ed by its own inhab­i­tants that became one of the most rad­i­cal exam­ples of polit­i­cal auton­o­my of its time. [ 14 ]

IV. Nuevo Amanecer

After the 1973 coup the panora­ma in the camp changed rad­i­cal­ly, as in many oth­er towns. The camp was raid­ed on the same day, Sep­tem­ber 11, and its name was changed to Nue­vo Amanecer: New Dawn. The raids result­ed in the arrest of the lead­ers, the resis­tance of its inhab­i­tants and the repres­sion of the State appa­ra­tus. When school life came back weeks after the coup, the School Sec­tor had appoint­ed a new direc­tor. Since then the mil­i­tant res­i­dents of the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Left Move­ment (MIR) had to go under­ground. Some teach­ers dis­ap­peared the fol­low­ing days, oth­ers went into exile abroad over the course of weeks and months, and oth­ers were relo­cat­ed to oth­er schools—and did not return either. Dur­ing 1974, new stu­dents arrived as interns from the School of Ped­a­gogy of Uni­ver­si­dad Catoli­ca to Nue­vo Amanecer School, in a more con­ven­tion­al school work envi­ron­ment. The bus­es were grad­u­al­ly replaced by class­rooms made of light con­struc­tion. In Octo­ber 1973, the planned con­struc­tion of hous­es for the com­mu­ni­ty passed from CORVI to the hands of a pri­vate con­struc­tion com­pa­ny which coor­di­nat­ed the deliv­ery of hous­es accord­ing to a sys­tem of min­i­mum fees for appli­ca­tion. In the process of this han­dover, not all the fam­i­lies of for­mer Nue­va La Habana received their home.23 By 1977, the pri­va­ti­za­tion of the hous­ing for­mu­la meant, in part, the dis­mem­ber­ment of the camp. Some of the lots and sites in the camp were hand­ed over to the mil­i­tary, how­ev­er, through the years and well into the 80s, the school remained as a place where such social and polit­i­cal dif­fer­ences could still dis­ap­pear for the chil­dren.24 By the time of the writ­ing of this essay, on Novem­ber 2020, the Nue­va La Habana cel­e­brat­ed its 50^th anniver­sary of its estab­lish­ment. The Bus-Aula, at the core of the neighborhood’s foun­da­tion, was a pol­i­cy and an emer­gency solu­tion. It above all became an exper­i­ment, which repli­cat­ed through the periph­ery of San­ti­a­go de Chile, irri­gat­ed the urban land­scape and trans­formed, for a few years, the idea of a school build­ing as a series of atom­ized class­rooms into a net­work of social infra­struc­ture. The phys­i­cal impact of the Bus-Aulas was the infor­mal pro­duc­tion of edu­ca­tion­al spaces with­in the cam­pa­men­to, turn­ing the com­mu­ni­ty into an open field of edu­ca­tion. [ 15 ]