When the building complex being built by the Government is operational, the new administrative center will function as a great vacuum cleaner for people and vehicular traffic. The ministries of Public Works, Housing and Urbanism, Labor and Social Security, Foreign Relations and the Taxation Secretariat will be concentrated there.
Although today many of the services provided by these government departments are carried out digitally -especially those related to Taxation, which is the most advanced administration-, the rest depend on face-to-face procedures and the consequent presentation of thick folders at service desks.
It is reasonable to expect that the circulation of citizens demanding some bureaucratic step reaches daily levels never before known in the place, except in the times when the Port of Asunción was fully functioning as the main point of entry and exit of the country.
In an environmental impact report known in 2018, the ministry that manages the work guarantees that the new administrative pole “will promote urban health and safety, organize vehicular and pedestrian mobility, open pedestrian spaces and bicycle paths, significantly improving the quality of life of the people who live and/or work in this sector of the city” and more.
The goal is ambitious and remarkable. But it will be the daily reality that will respond when these ministries enter the operational phase and generate an activity that will attract with a magnet all the paraphernalia of informal activity, from the street barbecue to the vendor of recycled items from tax warehouses. There are not enough reasons to believe that the old “franchises” of hacks that surround the ministries like flies will not move to the new headquarters, because their old clients will be relocated there, most of them with accounts receivable at the end of the month.
A new house does not guarantee the abandonment of old habits. The skyline of glittering buildings promises a lot in power point and animated videos. But folklore will pass its account, sooner or later. We see it daily in a historic center turned into a ruin by camps, concentrations and occupations of all kinds.
Who knows. Perhaps the “new ministries” are the starting point for a new style of living in the center of Asuncion. We will have to see it.
