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A fight over an iconic shantytownNOT far from the Sheraton Hotel in the Retiro district of Buenos Aires there is another building jocularly known to locals by the same name, where beds are available for a more modest fee. This precarious rooming house marks the entrance to Villa 31, the Argentine capital’s oldest villa miseria (shantytown). Now the settlement has become the focus of hostilities between Mauricio Macri, the conservative city mayor, and the left-leaning national government of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.Villa 31 nestles between the city’s bus terminal, its largest railway station and its port. But on its western edge it abuts skyscraper offices and plutocratic apartment buildings on Avenida del Libertador, whose balconies facing the River Plate look out over its maze of makeshift dwellings. Office workers and apartment owners complain that Villa 31 is home to thieves who prey on commuters at night and a source of protesters who periodically block