Neighborhood | Lugano
Lugano Neighborhood
 
In some moment the neighborhood was seen with a different landscape.  Hills, bathed, high lands characterized those lands of the southwest extended from La Matanza to the Paso de la Noria.
 
With the first settlers the panorama was modified. Wood houses, sheets and zinc were the neighborhood typical first architectures. It is that the arrival of Armenian, Spanish and Italians immigrants did that the rustic territory was altered, initiating in this way the urbanization of Lugano. Like the great majority of the neighborhoods, Lugano belonged, initially to the San José de Flores municipality next to others like the Riachuelo Village and the Soldati Village in the year 1888, when the Flores municipality became a part of the Federal Capital. 
 
Subsequently, already conformed as a neighborhood, it adopt its stamp of the middle class, with the “El Hogar Obrero” (“The Working Home”) chalets and the monoblocks that tried to eliminate the emergency villages. Actually Lugano I and II is overflowed of people, the overcrowding converted it in an uncomfortable neighborhood  for the neighbors. 
 
Today it counts on a surface of  830 hectares, although the limits were varying with the pass of the time, we can name the principals: Riachuelo Village, Soldati Village, Avellaneda Park, Flores, Mataderos, Celina Village and Madero. According to the law number 26067, its geographic limits are: Eva Peron avenue, Gral.  Paz avenue, Unanue street, Lisandro de la Torre street, Cnel. Roca avenue and Escalada street. 
 
“Lugano was so poor and very sad,
and I did not want it or I want it perhaps,
sometimes, complaining, I showed him my annoyance
and at times, I offer him the caress of a song.
Saying the end of the world was named my neighborhood
That despised the man, but that loved the bird;
Neighborhood where they remained for oversight of the field
an asleep station and a tired train.
<Elegía de octubre. Recuerdos, Fernandez Moreno>
 
 
Its Beginnings
 
Mr. José Fernandino Francisco Soldati, born in 1864 in Switzerland and owner of the English Drug Store of Bahía Blanca, was the one that acquired these lands, in order to sell them afterwards. The land that he bought was located, in which actually would be the Murguiondo street and De la Riestra avenue, zone called Heroica Village. 
 
On October 18th, 1908 it was baptized with the name of whom see in the lands something of what happen around them: the formation of populous neighborhoods. A few days after, it was realized the public sale of the lands, so that gradually it could be populated. 
 
It is worth to emphasize that the first buildings were a school and the Nº 48th Commissary. 
 
On January 20, 1913, the founder died in the neighborhood that he gave life to. 
In the Centennial year “March 23th, 1910”- it was celebrated in the Village, the inauguration of the first airdrome or Aviation Field, with the presence of the engineer Jorge Newbery, who participated of the great proposal. 
 
That day was seen Emilio E. Aubrun piloting a "Bleriot" monoplane. Vicente O. Cutolo, in his book “History of the Buenos Aires neighborhoods” adds an important anecdote to this history:
 
“Seven days after, the same french aviator that had inaugurated the "two-week aviation period", did in Lugano, the first nocturnal flight in the history of the world aviation. 
 
Honors to the native colors
with this infinite glory
and the Argentine aviation
has already its pedestal.
 intelligent mechanic
king of the air, blessed,
the glory came with you
with Olivero and Duggan! ...
 
< Campanelli Tango cancion de Silverio Manco y Margarita S. Gasquet>
 
Here, was formed an aviation school where students, like Jorge Newbery and Florencio Parravicini did their first steps. Osvaldo Fresedo a great of the tango and an aviator lover was graduated from this institution. 
 
He liked the sport aviation, he demonstrated in his tangos “Desde las nubes” ("From the Clouds") and “La Ratona” ("The ratona") that was the name of his plane. 
 
Some streets in the neighborhood, made honor to the aviators that passed and were formed in it. In its proximities, another neighborhood is located: Ing. Alberto Roque Mascías, test that it continues remembering the aviators, like this pilot that participated of the Aero Argentine Club in the 1908. 
 
In 1911, the first great inundation of the stream happened unexpectedly in the neighborhood, to be repeated in 1913 with greater intensity. 
 
But, for that epoch Lugano was growing at great scale, so it was able to overcome the crisis.  The railroad and metallurgic industries attract the new neighbors, and consequently Lugano was extended. 
 
“And thus it was, Argentina gave him valuable aid;
it gave him many works for its coarse hand;
it gave him its anxieties, it gave him flat deal
and the solar for the dream of the house, in Lugano.”
<Baldomero Fernández Moreno>
 
¿What do they say about Lugano?
 
The literature about the neighborhoods was generated with the first magazines “Narrating Lugano”, that honored the 70 years of its existence.
 
The people that saw the neighborhoods in its first times, sure cannot forget  “La Banderita” (“The Flag”), famous retail store located in Roca avenue and Larrazábal avenue. 
 
“…Old wild thick root in a pasture of Buenos Aires”
 
 It was a place that had very little of picturesque, there the men met to drink some glasses of geneva or clamp. It was known also as roosters fights place.
 
“No christian or savage is capable to imagine the cruelty of a gamecock”
<Ricardo Güiraldes, “Don Segundo Sombra”>
 
In the Gilardi novel “La mañana” (“The morning”), it is related the history of the immigrants and his repercussions in the native.
 
“He has the Lugano Village under his hand,
as if he blessed the house and the meadow. 
That it is not little to say…Lugano: the future. 
And he see him growing, spirit and cement,
so proud and happy like his own been”
<Fernández Moreno>
 
The Bandoneon of José
 
José Libertella was the founder in 1973, together to Stazo, of our loved “Sexteto Mayor” (“Greater Sextet”) conformed by the bandoneones of their creators, the Reynaldo Nichele, Luis Stazo, Fernando Suarez Paz violins, the Juan Mazzadi piano, (then Armando Cupo) and the Omar Murtagh bass.
 
He was born on July 9th, 1933 in Italy, but his family arrived at Buenos Aires when he still was a child. He debuted playing in the neighborhoods dances on the outskirts of the capital, at the age of twelve. From 1949 to 1955 he integrated the Osmar Maderna orchestra, and the "Symbol" formed at his death. He later formed his own orchestra and supported with this the singer Miguel Montero. In 1966 he acted as director in the Tango Patio Coffee Store and in the Apollo theater concerts. He recorded for the Odeón seal. In that year he participated of the homage that was done to Alfredo Gobbi in the Buenos Aires Medicine Faculty Acts Hall. The following year he traveled to Japan to support Edmundo Rivero. In 1968 he formed “Quarteto Gloria” (“Glory Quartet”). Among his works we find: “Rapsodia de Arrabal” ("Suburb Rhapsody "), “Sabor de Buenos Aires” ("Flavor from Buenos Aires"), “Bajo Romantico” ("Romantic Low ") and “Universo” ("Universe").
Visionary and creative man, in 1973 he formed the “Sexteto Mayor” (“Greater Sextet”) that knew how to be listened throughout the world for 31 años. 
 
Our tango would not be the same without his bandoneón and José knew how to play it as nobody. 
 
At the age of 71 "Pepe" Libertella died in Paris, consequence of a heart crisis, he was born in Italy, and he grew and lived in a Buenos Aires neighborhood: Lugano Village, but he died in Paris.