The 4,500 inhabitants of Arroyo Cabral passed many times near the town’s water tank without realizing it. without looking at it They did not know that they were facing a work that at least generates curiosity in the rest of Argentina. It was never a topic of conversation for the bars in the town square. ‘Although everyone sees it and the first thing they think of is a UFO. A flying saucer suspended as if it were an image from the series V Alien Invasion.
For example, Candela Rodríguez, a fourth-year student at the town’s secondary school, wrote about the tank for a podcast produced by the Arroyo Cabral Public Works and Services Cooperative. She imagined in her story that during a walk through the lonely streets she was abducted. She thus discovered the truth that she was hiding the tank. A civilization that lived underwater.
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The tank looks at them from above
It has been there in the central streets of the town for 50 years, it turns this April 14. It is the tallest structure, it only competes with some grain silos. And from its dome you can see the contours of the town towards the four cardinal points.
But everything changed during the month of March. The Instagram account @tanques.deagua put together a global competition for this type of structure. The artist Mariana Sanguinetti selected 32 tanks and organized the event from her social network.
The UFO tank passed all the phases and surpassed very popular tanks on the Internet such as the kettle or the moccasin shoe of Tres de Febrero in the Buenos Aires suburbs. Then came the final in which he would face Serodino’s dinosaur tank. And there the town exploded.
Lucía Scarafia is 30 years old and is an Institutional Communications advisor for the Arroyo Cabral cooperative. Born and raised in the town, the young woman explains in a dialogue with Infobae that “in the streets, businesses or bars, nothing else was talked about. Strategies were put together to go viral and get more votes.”
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“I think that the viralization that this tank world championship led to made everyone value the drinking water service provided by the cooperative more,” Scarafia points out.
Before the UFO landing in Arroyo Cabral, each neighbor drew water from wells and cisterns. “Some had their own perforations and others did it from common places.
Land the UFO tank
At the beginning of the 70’s, works began so that the town had its drinking water network. And on April 14, 1973, the UFO-shaped tank was finally inaugurated. The village cooperative was already in charge of electricity since 1947 and was also in charge of the drinking water service.
“There are few photos of the construction of the structure. We were able to recover some with the archive search we did last year when the cooperative turned 75 years old,” Scarafia explains. At that time, the formwork was made surrounded by wood”.
Many times the neighbors or those who see the tank from the road wonder if the shape had the intention of simulating a UFO. “Nothing to do with the shape of the cistern, it was only sought to load the greatest amount of water and be able to distribute it in the shortest possible time,” says Scarafia. It must be taken into account that it is the same structure with which the service is currently provided. At most, some pumps were modernized to be able to supply the entire town”.
To this is added that the cooperative added some solar energy panels that allow to supply all the work of the tank to distribute the water in the town. “The electricity produced there is uploaded to the network, but it is equivalent to what 45 houses in Arroyo Cabral or all the pumps in the cistern can consume. Which means that the provision of the service is done entirely with clean energy”.
previous and final
The Saturday night before the final, no other topic was discussed in the two bars that surround the Plaza de Arroyo Cabral. The heat and drought of March had been in the background. It mattered little when to harvest the soybeans. Everyone wanted and even needed the UFO tank to beat the dinosaur from Serodino, Santa Fe. “My mom already told me before the final that it was happening and she saw the tank bigger,” Scarafia laughs as she tells how the previous one was lived . “We ran campaigns on Twitter to seek votes. We were facing a great competitor, who had won the previous rounds by a lot of difference”, recalls Lucía.
The talks in the bars continued while the fernet with coke and beers flowed. They wanted to stretch out the night. Plan the best strategies to add votes from neighboring towns and other provinces that had been left out in the previous rounds. That Sunday, March 26, arrived and the dispute with the Serodino tank was vote by vote. He closed the certificate and the winner was the Arroyo Cabral UFO. “We obtained 5,000 votes, more than the inhabitants of our town”, the young woman who works in the cooperative is proud.
And there were festivities. And now all of Arroyo Cabral looks up when it passes through the street that borders the tank. They see it prettier, bigger. Maybe they can even plan some tourism business around the UFO. T-shirts and souvenirs. Everything is possible. “The important thing, beyond the game of social networks, is that water be valued as a natural resource. And that we take care of her ”, closes Scarafia.
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