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Buenos Aires, 2017: Commemoration of the murdered Santiago Maldonado.
Photo: Roblespepe via wikimedia
CC BY-SA 4.0
(Buenos Aires, July 3, 2023, Paco Urondo Agency).- Left-wing journalist Adriana Meyer researched police violence in Argentina and came to the following conclusion: The Macri government was the most repressive of all, it denigrated the family of Santiago Maldonado and there were the most allegations of violence against security forces during this period.
APU: Which government has had the most human rights violations since democracy was restored?
Adriana Meyer: In my book “disappear in democracy‘ (Disappearing in Democracy) I don’t specifically address human rights violations. I focus on the In Latin American dictatorships, tens of thousands of prisoners have been subjected to enforced disappearances by state or para-state organizations. Most of them were probably murdered. Since their bodies have not been found to this day, they are classified as "Disappeared” (Spanish Desaparecidos). Uncertainty about the whereabouts of their friends or relatives means that their relatives still find no peace and are therefore organizing themselves in human rights organizations such as the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo in Argentina.
” href=” data-gt-translate-attributes=”[{” attribute=””>Verschwindenlassen. Nora Cortiñas [Menschenrechtlerin und Mitbegründerin der Madres de Plaza de Mayo] said in one of the first demonstrations after the disappearance of Santiago Maldonado was a human rights activist campaigning for Mapuche land rights in Argentina. On November 24, 2017, he disappeared during a violent eviction by state police units. They were commissioned by the then Security Minister Christina Bullrich to end the protests of the indigenous people against the large landowner and textile manufacturer Benetton. A month later, the body of Santiago Maldonado turned up in a river near the site of the eviction. To date, the case has not been settled in court, and the Mapuche and their supporters are repeatedly accused of being "terrorists" criminalized.
” href=” data-gt-translate-attributes=”[{” attribute=””>Santiago Maldonado, in allen demokratischen Regierungen werde mit Verschwindenlassen gearbeitet. […] This also corresponds to my thesis that there is no so-called “ideological ditch” for allowing people to disappear.
APU: Are the violent actions of the security forces due to political decisions, or is it simply part of historical practice?
AM: It is sometimes said that the security forces, especially those in Buenos Aires, work independently. Others familiar with these questions, like journalist Ricardo Ragendorfer or sociologists like Alejandra Vallespir, claim that’s wrong. On the other hand, they speak of a very close connection between the police units, which are known for their brutality in pressuring children and torturing them in police stations, and the political representatives in the respective neighborhoods. Many also think, mistakenly, I would say that the shootings that Easy Trigger, the murders in police stations and prisons and the disappearances of people are a legacy of the dictatorship. My research for my book, however, revealed that it is actually the other way around: the dictatorship has taken advantage of police practices that existed before. And I would say that this particular kind of politics beyond democracy still exists, the kind of politics that engages in certain violent practices. As Security Minister León Arslanian [Anfang der 2000er Jahre] announced that it would thoroughly clean up the police force because of the numerous allegations of violence and corruption, calls from judges and mayors begged them not to fire the police officers in question. Politics and the judiciary obviously need these police officers, but why? It may have more to do with money than ideology.
APU: In your investigations, did you find a connection between the number of people who disappeared and the respective government?
AM: Of course there are nuances. For example, since Sabrina Friedrich took over the security department, several human rights organizations have been received, including CORREPI, the initiative against police violence, and several protocols of the security minister under Macri, Patricia Bullrich, have been overturned. According to available figures, the Macri government was by far the most repressive. Every 19 hours someone dies at the hands of the security forces. One could say that the situation improved slightly in the first year of Alberto Fernández’s government. But during the pandemic we even had a person killed every 17 hours. This shows that the ideological orientation is not the decisive factor in police violence. During the state-mandated social isolation, the police had something of a carte blanche and the death toll skyrocketed. Of the 411 deaths in 2020 during the pandemic, 70 percent were in the first phase of the disease Mandatory Preventive Social Isolation. The disappearance of Facundo Astudillo Castro and Luis Espinosa in Tucumán also falls during this period. They were murdered by the Tucumán and Buenos Aires police respectively. The numbers make it clear that we need a lot more structural reforms. All laws that encourage arbitrary arrests must be repealed. This was already decided in the Walter Bulacio ruling, but no government has implemented the decision [Der 17-jährige Bulacio wurde 1991 bei einer Razzia verhaftet, obwohl das Jugendschutzgesetz die Inhaftierung von Minderjährigen ohne Einschaltung eines zuständigen Richters verbietet. Nach einer Nacht in Polizeigewahrsam wurde er mit gebrochenem Schädel ins Krankenhaus gebracht, wo er fünf Tage später starb]. What the current government has achieved, however, is that the police at the airports no longer carry weapons, which means that the number of Easy Triggers went back, that’s good of course. Now other areas should follow suit.
APU: What have been the most iconic cases of enforced disappearance for you?
AM: In my book I go into 218 stories. There are some that are more emblematic. The first person to disappear in Democracy was José Luis Franco in the city of Rosario, that was in December 1983. Jorge Sivak and Jorge Julio López disappeared twice [während der Diktatur UND der Demokratie]. In my book I also discuss the cases of Miguel Bru, Sebastián Bordón, Sergio Avalos, Facundo Rivera Alegre in Córdoba and Franco Casco in the littoral. And of course Santiago Maldonado and Iván Torres, whose body was never found. I have deliberately taken cases from the 90’s to salvage them from oblivion and others that are little known and have shocked me. Alejandrito Flores was run over by a police car in Rio Cuarto, Cordoba, in 1991. The police officers from the tub called some nurse friends and because they couldn’t revive him, his body had to go. It wasn’t until 17 years later that Alejandrito’s family got his remains, and by accident. The body had been disposed of in a gully near the scene of the accident. Since his hip showed signs of the accident, the incident could be reconstructed. The police officers had taken the patrol car to another province to have it repaired. Then there was the case of Elías Gorosito, who died in 2002 in Paraná, Entre Ríos. At the time, the family had already lost several children to police violence. Or Diego Duarte, whose story Alicia Dujovne Ortiz based on her book “¿Who killed Diego Duarte?” (“Who Killed Diego Duarte?”) inspired. The young man had been looking around at José León Suarez’s garbage dump. A police officer gave the order to bury him under the garbage with a bulldozer. Diego’s body was never found. And finally the case of Víctor Balbuena in Concordia in 2003: he left a disco with three friends and was murdered by the police death squads that were rampaging through Entre Río at the time. His friends were also tortured, only one survived.
APU: You say that the reigns of Mauricio Macri and Patricia Bullrich were the most repressive. Could you explain that in more detail?
AM: It’s clear that the Macri government, with Bullrich as security minister, was the most repressive, and it’s not just the numbers that speak for it. Just think of the government’s attitude in the case of Santiago Maldonado. A state dedicated to denigrating the missing young man’s family. Scandalously covering up the case. The government’s position was simply shameless. Think of the repressive protocols that have fortunately only been lifted by the current government Chocobar-Doktrin: “Shoot first, ask questions later” and “If you want to be armed, arm yourself”. This government just did what it wanted. This period saw the most cases of institutional violence and yet we continue to listen to their heirs and their hate speech proposing to shoot the poor like Javier Milei, Espert and all these people. I can support the initiatives CELS and I rushed only agree: In terms of repression and institutional violence, the Macri government was definitely the worst democratically elected government we have ever had.