ARGENTINA:
World's First Homeless TV Talk Show Host
Maricel Drazer

BUENOS AIRES,  (IPS) - A plaza in a residential neighbourhood of the Argentine capital has become "Stellita's Living Room" for the first TV programme in the world hosted by a homeless person.

Stella Cros, 70, has lived on the streets for nearly two decades. But now she is interviewing special guests, columnists and an astrologer, and presenting live music, as a talk show host.

The programme, "En el living de Stellita", is taped in a square in the fashionable Belgrano district of Buenos Aires. The set basically consists of park benches and two sofas brought in for the occasion, as well as a doorframe, through which the guests arrive.

"Welcome to my living room," says Stellita as the cameras begin to roll and her guests arrive. "I am here in this plaza which has already given me shelter before," she adds.

"The show plays with a paradox: a homeless woman can be so warm that she generates a home-like atmosphere, welcoming her guests to her 'home'. And since her home is often a bench in a city square, that's where she receives them," Alfredo Olivera, a psychologist and the creator of the programme, told IPS.

"I never imagined that I would be doing this," Stellita commented to IPS. The opportunity came her way through the La Colifata programme, a community radio station that broadcasts from a psychiatric hospital.

"On one hand, the programme generates recognition and consideration of Stellita, and on the other, respect for society. It is therapeutic in terms of 'destigmatisation' - in other words, it shows that the person who we see panhandling on the street corner actually has another set of values, which we can now see," he said.

Nearly 15 years ago, La Colifata created the world's first radio show wholly produced by patients in a psychiatric hospital, the José T. Borda hospital in Buenos Aires.

La Colifata's latest initiative is the programme hosted by Stellita, "so the future of crazy people will not be the street," according to the show's stated objectives.

"Through the radio, La Colifata has discovered a method for healing, but I suspect that more than the radio - or in this case, television - what is therapeutic about it is the consideration and respect given to the other," Carlos Ulanovsky, a well-known Argentine journalist invited to Stellita's programme, told IPS.

"The way the show is set up is the total antithesis of traditional talk shows. The living room is a public square, outdoors; the couch is one that was used, worn out and thrown away by some middle class person; nothing is like anything we're used to seeing," he added.

In front of the cameras, Ulanovsky had presented the show's hostess with one of his books, which he autographed with the dedication, "To Stella, a star of the streets."

After the taping, however, she confided with a laugh to IPS: "I don't feel like a star, I'm nothing but a street rat!"

"This initiative thumbs its nose at traditional concepts of good taste and aesthetics," psychologist Tom Lupo, another guest on the show, commented to IPS, adding that Stellita and her "well-earned wrinkles" would never grace the cover of a typical "women's" magazine.

Lupo described the project as "audacious, brilliant and free of prejudices."

"A show like this gives Argentine television a level of truth and stripped-down reality that is like a balm in a parched wasteland of ideas," he commented.

In addition to themes like mental health, the environment and social justice, the programme also addresses the issue of the homeless.

"Even if we don't talk about it directly, this issue is always going to be present. But we want to treat it with total respect, and not portray it as an oddity," explained Olivera.

"Stellita's Living Room" premiered late last year, and in response to the enthusiastic reaction of TV viewers, the special "pilot" episode was rebroadcast almost 20 times.

It airs on the "Open City" channel, which was inaugurated two years ago by the centre-left government of Buenos Aires and is hailed for its innovative style and content.

Beginning in March, the programme will be broadcast monthly, according to the producers' plans.

"I loved hosting the show, especially because it gave me the opportunity to converse with these people I admire so much," said Stellita.

The show closes with the following message on screen: "Dedicated to the people living on the street." There are currently estimated to be 1,400 people in this situation in the city of Buenos Aires alone.

Poverty rates skyrocketed in Argentina following the late 2001 economic, financial and political meltdown, plunging close to 60 percent of the country's 37 million inhabitants below the poverty line. In the last two years, under the government of left-leaning President Néstor Kirchner, this figure has dropped to around 40 percent.