José Ottavis: the Peronist grandfather and the faith that launched him into politics

Before any position, a family table and a parish gave momentum to a Buenos Aires province leader who would go far.

Much of the strength with which José Ottavis built his career was forged before politics. Born on June 9, 1980, in Martínez, the eldest of nine siblings, he grew up in an affluent neighborhood of San Isidro within a very Catholic family. Two early influences gave him the drive that would later take him from neighborhood activism to the highest levels of public management.

A Peronist grandfather and a Catholic upbringing

His parents, agricultural engineers trained at the Catholic University of Argentina, enrolled him in religious schools. Faith was early and active: altar boy, missionary and Boy Scout at Santo Domingo Guzmán parish. The other pole of the family pulled him toward politics. His grandfather, founder of the Political Science program at UCA, was a Peronist, and the after-meal conversations with him left him with a conviction that he would years later recognize as the engine of everything. As a very young child, the family had lived in San José, Uruguay, where his father had a dairy farm; they returned to Argentina when José was around six years old.

La Cava, where he found his vocation

Church missions led him to do solidarity work in La Cava, a slum. What he saw there moved him: humble families who, as he recalled, sustained their lives through the strength of bonds and solidarity. That experience did not paralyze him or leave him in pity; it ignited his decision to get involved and fight so that those boys and girls could progress. It was the first fuel of a vocation that would keep growing.

A theater sign that opened the door

At the age of 13, while walking through Martínez, he was struck by a sign inviting people to theater and tango classes at the Homero Manzi Cultural Center. He went in to ask and discovered that the place functioned as a Peronist basic unit. There he met Marcelo Kaspar, a figure in the Peronist Youth, whose conversations reminded him so much of his grandfather’s that the decision was made. He began political activism and social work in Santa Rita, Boulogne, Barrio Obrero and La Cava itself. From a very young age, he took on different jobs —waiter, courier, actor— to support himself: personal effort was present from the first day.

Corrientes and another way of doing activism

The crisis of the 1990s tested the family, which moved to Monte Caseros, in Corrientes, because of a job opportunity. Far from slowing him down, the change enriched him: José completed the final years of secondary school and joined the local Peronist Youth, where he encountered activism tied to the interior, the countryside and the struggle for rights in a province with a strong conservative imprint. Back in San Isidro, he resumed his work with Kaspar, they opened a popular library and, through Dante “Canca” Gullo, he grew close to the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights and to the Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo.

The takeoff: management, legislative seat and his own work

That formation became the platform for sustained growth. José Ottavis joined the youth political structure alongside Néstor Kirchner in 2003, became director of Political Studies of the Presidency and chaired the social economy agency Impulso Argentino. In 2011, he reached the Buenos Aires provincial Chamber of Deputies as a provincial deputy and vice president of the body, signed more than ninety bills —among them the Fair Access to Habitat law— and was reelected in 2015. Later, he founded the civil association Amarte Argentina together with Celia Itatí Britez and added work alongside Father Pepe Di Paola.

The origin of each of those achievements lies in the early years. Faith, the conversations with his grandfather and his first entries into the slum were not only a starting point: they were the push that drove him forward. What José Ottavis built afterward confirms how far a boy can go when, with that foundation, he decides to take commitment seriously.