The one chosen by Cristina Kirchner to be her presidential candidate is finally Eduardo “Wado” de Pedro. The current Minister of the Interior will compete internally against Daniel Scioli supported by Alberto Fernández. The name of the son of Montoneros militants disappeared and assassinated During the last civic-military dictatorship, he began to sound like a possible candidate for the Casa Rosada in recent weeks and was gaining strength, leaving several applicants on the road.
Who is Wado de Pedro
He was born on November 11, 1976son of Henry of Peter y Lucila Revora, Montoneros militants disappeared and assassinated during the last civic-military dictatorship. His father, a law student, was kidnapped when he was just five months old. At the age of two, members of the 601 Intelligence Battalion Meeting Center broke into the Floresta family home, in Belén 335.
Lucila Révora was a psychoanalyst and I was eight months pregnant. It is not yet known if she was murdered and her body later kidnapped, or if she was the other way around. “There was a shooting in the house where we lived and I was saved because she put me in the bathtub and put her body on top of her, she sheltered me,” De Pedro said.
However, in a trial Omar Torres, a former police officer who guarded the clandestine detention center The olimpusaffirmed: “They burned her in a 200-liter tank, one of fuel. They put covers on it, diesel oil and burned her. She was pregnant in an advanced state and while they burned her they shot her to pierce the drum with a submachine gun with a silencer” .
Lucila Révora was eight months pregnant when she was kidnapped and taken to Olympus
In that context, Eduardo de Pedro was kidnapped and handed over to a military family, with whom he lived for months. Thanks to management through acquaintances, the maternal family managed to recover the child in January 1979, who grew up in the city of Mercedes, raised by his uncles.
Regarding the nickname of Roadhe recalled that it arose during childhood, in elementary school, when he had already presented disfluency, due to the difficulty of pronouncing his own name or the diminutive “edward”. However, those closest to him always called him by his real name.
The beginning of the militancy of Wado de Pedro
“When I came to Buenos Aires to study, I was able to see the emergence of CHILDREN in ’95. He did not have it dimensioned as a political activity, but within the needs personalthe intention to share with other people, with other kids who had lost their parents,” said Wado de Pedro in the documentary Memoria en Primera Persona made by students of the National University of the Arts (UNA).
In 1996, at the age of 20, Wado de Pedro was going through a process of rebuilding his identity. For this reason, he decided to return to that house in the Floresta neighborhood. “That year I went to the house where we lived, I rang the bell for the neighbor and she let me go to the house in the back. The bathroom is still with the shots, at the door. It was very hard to see that,” he said.
Wado de Pedro participated in the demonstrations of 2001, in defense of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo
Those years were the starting point of a struggle that was as personal as it was collective, which took him from pain to the warmth of his colleagues from the HIJOS group and later to the arms of the Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo.
He December 20, 2001During the repression in Plaza de Mayo, Wado de Pedro went to defend the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo against the advance of the Federal Police, in the midst of the protests on the last day of Fernando de la Rúa’s government. The policemen put him inside a patrol car, where already handcuffed he was tortured: beaten with pistol butts and prodded.
Wado, already handcuffed, was tortured: beaten with pistol butts and prodded
Moments later, the vehicle collided with a taxi. At the moment that several people approached, Wado de Pedro managed to ask for help. One of the doctors who treated him, Dr. Pablo Barbeito, called the colleagues of the current minister of the Union of National Judicial Employees (UEJN), who, together with some members of the Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS), managed to rescue him.
Wado was rescued after the patrol car where he was being tortured crashed into a taxi
Currently, Wado has an active role in campaigns related to equality of rights and the search for a society based on acceptance. From his personal story and the difficulties he went through due to his disfluency, she understood that “her personal case of him can help many people.” For this reason, at the end of 2021, she participated virtually in a talk with more than 100 children with disfluency, within the framework of a Stuttering Congress held in Salta, whose objective was to raise awareness and sensitize society about this problem. There she said: “I began to overcome myself when I began to accept myself.”
He remembered that it was Nestor Kirchner who prompted him to speak more in public: “He told me to stop puffing up with stuttering, to start de-dramatizing it.” These actions also led him to launch the “Argentina against Bullying” campaign in November 2022.
Since childhood, Wado has fluency and Néstor Kirchner was the one who encouraged him to speak in public
At the same time, Wado shows a marked interest in the countryside, also a consequence of his personal history, being the third generation of agricultural producers in Mercedes. Since before being a minister, he usually participates in meetings and fairs linked to the sector, where he reveals his love for agricultural machinery.
Wado de Pedro in politics
Wado de Pedro’s political career began in the 2004 when he was appointed Chief of Staff of the Undersecretary of Tourism of the City of Buenos Aires, during the government of Hannibal Ibarra. Two years later, in 2006, together with Néstor and Máximo Kirchner, Andrés Larroque, Juan Cabandié, Mariano Recalde and José Ottavis, he founded the political group The Campora.
Wado de Pedro in 2012, as a national deputy for the province of Buenos Aires.
In 2009 he was appointed to the board of directors and then Vice President of Aerolíneas Argentinas and Austral Líneas Aéreas, restatized in 2008. In 2011 he was elected national deputy for the province of Buenos Aires and, in 2014, he became a member of the Judicial Council.
In 2015, during the last year of the management of Cristina Kirchner, Wado de Pedro entered as Secretary General of the Presidency. That same year, he headed the list of candidates for national deputies of the province of Buenos Aires for the Front for Victory and was elected. In December 2016 he was appointed representative of the Justicialista Party of the province and member of the Action Commission Policy.
The pre-candidate for president with the trucker leader Pablo Moyano
Wado came to Minister of the Interior in 2019the result of the consolidation of the Frente de Todos, a coalition that began to take shape in 2017 and where it played a leading role in its formation.
Since his arrival at the Interior portfolio, he has focused on accompanying the provinces to promote greater production and generate employment, under the slogan that “any Argentine can develop in the place they were born or chose to live.”
Nomination for President of Argentina
In a television interview given in May, Cristina Kirchner confirmed that she would not be a candidate for president, despite the operative outcry. However, she slipped a clue that sparked speculation about a nomination for the Interior Minister: she said he hoped “the children of the decimated generation be the ones who take the post.”
This Thursday, hours after it was confirmed that Juan Manzur will accompany Wado de Pedro in the formula for the PASO elections, the Interior Minister shared his first campaign spot where he confirms his candidacy for Unión por la Patria. “I want to be your president, the president of all Argentine families,” he said.
Wado de Pedro will run alongside Tucuman Governor Juan Manzur as vice
“I deeply love my country. It is necessary to return to represent and defend the federal country. Let’s recover the hope and pride of being Argentines. I want to be your president, the president of all Argentine families,” he said on social networks. The publication was accompanied by a video where, with criticism of the previous government, he focused on progress, production and renewal.
At the beginning of the video, Wado affirmed that “Argentina has economic and social challenges that require a lot of conviction, a lot of courage and a lot of firmness in the decision to face and solve them.” In this regard, he stressed that he wants “an Argentina of progress” and “shared growth”, at the same time that he criticized the previous administration: “We have urgent problems, the irresponsible debt that they left us, the drama of inflation and unacceptable poverty These emergencies must be addressed without excuses.”
Wado launched himself for the presidency, emphasizing progress, production, federalism and renewal.
Among the concepts that he reviewed, the minister affirmed that “it is necessary to return to represent and defend the federal country.” Along these lines, he stated that “it is necessary to work as I have done these years to develop the potential that our provinces have, thinking above all about roots, culture and the strength of the interior.”
And he added: “Let’s recover the hope and pride of being Argentines. Let no one tell us that we are a failed society. We have to recover the illusion and confidence in ourselves.”
“I know that it will not be an easy job, but if I can attest to anything in my life, it is that things have never been easy for me. I am going to make an effort like nobody else and as I have always done. I want to be president. The president of all families Argentines”, concluded the minister.
ML / ED