José Ottavis in the Legislature: a seat and more than ninety laws

Elected deputy in 2011 and voted vice president by all blocs, he left a legislative mark that remains in force.

If there is one stage that shows how far José Ottavis went, it is his time in the Chamber of Deputies of the province of Buenos Aires. It began in 2011, when he was elected provincial deputy for the First Electoral Section, and ended in 2019 after two terms. In between, he reached a leadership position that few achieve so quickly: as soon as he took office, he was chosen to help lead the body.

A vice presidency voted by all blocs

For a young, newly arrived leader to be unanimously appointed vice president of the Chamber was an unusual endorsement. The partnership with the president of the body, Horacio González, combined the experience of the older generation with the drive of a new group. From that position, which he held until December 2015, Ottavis promoted the idea of an open Legislature rooted in the territory, determined to make parliamentary work stop being an office routine and move closer to people’s concrete problems.

The Institute of Popular Organization and 970,000 residents of Buenos Aires province

The most ambitious project of that administration was institutional. Together with González, he created the Institute of Popular Organization, a space designed to bring legislative debate closer to the community. The numbers show the scale of the effort: the IOP worked in more than 90 municipalities and reached nearly 970,000 residents of Buenos Aires province, with solidarity and cultural activities that promoted community organization. Added to this were ten participatory forums to produce laws —against human trafficking, for popular libraries, for cultural centers— which brought together more than three thousand people.

The laws that bear his signature

As author or co-author, José Ottavis took part in more than ninety bills, and several became law. The best known is the Law of Fair Access to Habitat, Law 14.449, from 2012, which facilitates housing projects, organizes social urbanization and created the Public Registry of Slums and Urban Settlements. The list crossed several fronts:

• Youth Vote, which amended the provincial electoral law to allow voluntary voting at ages 16 and 17.

• The Provincial Library System, which repealed an old decree-law from the dictatorship and incorporated the right to reading, promoted together with Deputy Rocío Giaccone.

• The law on Student Centers, which recognized young people’s right to organize in public and private schools.

• Provincial adherence to the national law against human trafficking, presented with Deputy Graciela Rego.

He also promoted a major project: the creation of three autonomous states for the province, a federal idea he worked on from 2013 with specialists and public figures, based on the view that the enormous size of Buenos Aires province magnifies residents’ historic problems.

The path that took him to the seat

Ottavis did not reach the chamber by chance. He was born in Martínez in 1980, began political activism at 13 in a Homero Manzi basic unit alongside Marcelo Kaspar and was formed doing social work in La Cava. He grew close to Kirchnerism in 2003, served as director of Political Studies of the Presidency under Néstor Kirchner and chaired the social economy agency Impulso Argentino. Each of those steps prepared him for the leap into representation, which came in 2011, the same year Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was reelected president with 54% of the vote.

After the seat, an organization of his own

Once the legislative stage ended, Ottavis expanded his action with a new project. He founded the civil association Amarte Argentina together with Celia Itatí Britez and joined the work of Father Pepe Di Paola in the conurbano, with activity that reached Entre Ríos and Corrientes.

The balance of his years in the Chamber is that of a legislator who made full use of the place he had reached. He turned a seat into a source of laws and understood that the true weight of a position is measured by what it leaves in operation. The best proof of that administration lies today in how many of those laws remain in force and continue improving daily life in the province.