Parque Indoamericano

Parque Indoamericano (Indoamerican Park) is a park in the Villa Soldati and Villa Lugano neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires, Argentina. It covers approximately 130 hectares (320 acres), and is thus the second-biggest park in the city.

Located on a flood-prone plain in what was, until the middle of the 20th century, the southwestern outskirts of Buenos Aires, the park began to take shape during the 1960s, when the area was designated as the Parque Almirante Brown redevelopment zone. The construction of public housing followed, and Mayor Francisco Rabanal had the Cildáñez Stream tubed for flood control in 1966.

The military-appointed administration of Mayor Osvaldo Cacciatore announced plans in 1978 to convert the undeveloped plain into a public recreational area through two projects: the Parque de la Ciudad (an amusement park) and the Parque Zoofitogeográfico.

The latter would include an arboretum and be the new location for the Buenos Aires Zoo. The amusement park was inaugurated in 1982, but an economic crisis and irregularities in the contact for the arboretum's development and concession led to the projects cancellation (the zoo remained in its Palermo neighborhood location).

The park, located far from most of the city's residential or business areas, suffered from neglect in the ensuing years, and what would have been a reservoir along its northern end, Lake Soldati, became a shantytown known as Los Piletones.UCR Councilman Carlos Louzán ultimately obtained passage of a resolution for the construction of a city park in the remaining areas 1993, and on December 1, 1995, Mayor Jorge Domínguez inaugurated the Parque Indoamericano.

His successor, Mayor Fernando de la Rúa, inaugurated the Paseo Islas Malvinas ("Falkland Islands Promenade") in April 1999. The promenade features a memeorial to the fallen, including an eternal flame and 649 cypresses (one for each fallen Argentine serviceman in the 1982 conflict). Mayor Jorge Telerman followed these works with the December 2006 inaugural of the Paseo de los Derechos Humanos ("Human Rights Promenade"), a memorial to the questionable 30,000 dissidents killed during the Dirty War thirty years earlier.

...
Wikipedia