In Rural Argentina, the Legacy of Migration

CHOROTIS, Argentina This is an old railroad town, with severed telegraph lines dangling from track-side poles and a depot where graffiti is the one obvious sign of recent activity.

It had been more than a year since a train had stopped here, but one morning last month that same train returned: three rail cars from Buenos Aires full of doctors and dentists volunteering their assistance in Argentina's rural interior, where basic health services can be hard to find.

The last dentist left this town years ago, and the health clinic is staffed only a few times a week by a visiting doctor. The doctors who arrived on the train found that among the most widespread maladies is malnutrition, despite the fact that the country is one of the world's top producers of beef and soybeans.

The sleepy, rustic vibe here suggests a town from an earlier era, but outposts like this one might offer a glimpse of the world's rural future. While modern life has made much of the world seem smaller, rural expanses in countries such as Argentina seem ever larger and more isolated.

The global population is expected to change from mostly rural to mostly urban in the next year, thanks almost exclusively to rapid migration to the cities in developing countries. Latin America has already become the most urbanized region in the world, and by 2030 about 84 percent of its residents are expected to live in cities.

While urbanization brings certain benefits, experts say, governments are already struggling to provide health care for those left behind in the countryside.

"In most cases, the only time a child in those areas sees a medical professional is when our train comes," said Oscar Algranti, director of Foundation Alma, which organizes the trip to Chorotis.

The isolation of small towns has attracted attention in Argentina not merely as a demographic trend but as a human rights issue. Thousands of demonstrators from the provinces gathered in Buenos Aires this year holding signs proclaiming "Hunger Is a Crime." Here in the northern province of Chaco, during a five-week period that ended last month, 11 people died of what local activists labeled starvation. Last month, a nonprofit organization called Responde launched a nationwide program to improve the delivery of food to rural regions where populations are shrinking.

According to that organization, about 800 small towns in Argentina are at risk of simply disappearing.

"The children who live in the remote areas are undernourished, and so are the parents, and what is happening now is a humanitarian tragedy," said Rolando N??ez, director of the Nelson Mandela Center, a nongovernmental human rights organization based in Chaco's provincial capital, Resistencia. "And it is getting worse."

Few Reasons to Stay

The train retrofitted to serve as a mobile clinic churned into this town about 6 a.m. on a recent weekday. Three pediatricians, two dentists, a nurse, a social worker and laboratory technicians sat in the train cars and waited for residents to notice them. The streets were quiet throughout the morning, save for the occasional sounds of a dog barking and a metal ring on a rope banging against a flagpole.

Chorotis is one of many small towns that lost its economic reason for being in 1993, when Argentina sold off its national railroad and passenger trains stopped servicing most of the country. The trains provided jobs for the townspeople and vital links to other parts of the country.