Listin Diario op-ed columnist, Oscar Medina, focuses today on the dilemma the authorities are facing following the occupation of the government-owned hills that border the Duarte Highway. He explains that the government chose to expand the highway by using lands that were unoccupied at the time, but took no action when, gradually, the lands closest to the city, near Villa Altagracia, were illegally possessed by families that built their homes there. On Sunday, the new community members paralyzed traffic on the highway for around four hours as they protested the death of one of their own, and demanded that the government build a pedestrian overpass across the highway. Medina writes that now the state has the dilemma of deciding whether to evict the hundreds of families that illegally occupied the zone or spend millions to build alternate housing for the squatters, at great social and economic cost. He wonders if, regardless of which of the two solutions the government chooses, the territory will again be taken over, and asks if this is not the land of chaos?
But there is a third solution, apparently: Listin Diario reports that Public Works Minister Freddy Perez said the government would build the pedestrian overpass linking the new Villa Altagracia communities of La Torre and Pajarito.