Santiago Maldonado: Demonstrators marks first anniversary of disappearance
One year ago, 28-yearold artisan Santiago Maldonado disappeared during a Border Patrol operative in the southern Chubut province.
The young man had been participating in a road block alongside a group of militant Mapuches to demand the return of ancestral lands formally owned by the Italian clothing designer Luciano Benetton.
For some, the discovery of Maldonado’s body in the Chubut River, nearly 80 days later, raised more questions than answers.
For the Mauricio Macri government, eager to tone down the public outcry over the disappearance just days before the 2017 mid-terms elections, it was the other away around.
As it stands today, the Judiciary is investigating the case as a “forced disappearance followed by death,” a charge that puts responsibility for what happened to Maldonado with the Border Patrol officers who carried out the operative on August 1, 2017.
DEMONSTRATION
Human rights groups and political factions on the left – as well as others tied to former president-cum-Senator Cristina Fernández de Kirchner – on Wedneds ay marche dontheP laza de Mayo to de mandjust ice for Santiago Maldonado. His brother Sergio, the public face of the campaign, addressed the crowd. He accused the “government and some media outlets” for having “installed” the idea in the public domain that his brother had “drowned” alone.
“We tell you that these are more lies, to which we are accustomed,” he declared.
Later that evening, a film by Tristán Bauer, El camino de
Santiago (“Santiago’s Path”,) had its premiere in Buenos Aires City. One of the documentary’s screenwriters is Fernández de Kirchner ’s daughter, Florencia. The event, however, was overshadowed by a attack by masked hoodlums on the theatre where the film was to be shown, illustrating the depth of feeling the Maldonado issue has prompted. The attackers launched their assault on the front of the building, smashing glass windows, just moments after human rights leaders had entered.
“This was an attack. It is supposed that this does not have to happen in a democracy, [but] they hide behind the fact that they are anarchists and in reality they belong to the [intelligence services,” José Albistur, the ow ne rofth eN DA ten eoT he at re said in an interview with C5N.
“It’ srepugnant, Ido notknow what to say,” said Sergio Maldonado, responding to the attack.
Two hours after the march, police revealed that six indivi- duals, four men and two women, had been arrested following the march in the capital, for an “attack and resistance to authority.” WHAT HAPPENED?
“Westandbyth eh ypoth es is of forced disappearance followed by death, based on certainties and unresolved doubts,” the Maldonado family’s lawyer Veronica Heredia told the Times back in May.
“Our certainties are that he was present at [the Mapuche community] Pulof on August 1, 2017; that more than 100 officers entered the community illegally, firing shots; and that [the protesters] ran to the Chubut River,” she said.
While autopsy reports indicated Santiago Maldonado’s body show ednosig ns ofphy si cal injury,andt ha tithadl ar ge amo unts of water in its lungs, Judge Gustavo Lleral has not closed the investigation, as the cause of death has not been precisely determined.
The excessively politicised search for Santiago Maldonado, who was missing for 78 days, came to a climax less than 48 hours before Argentines held midterm elections in October last year.
Though campaigning was suspended before the vote, the results pushed coverage of the case to the sidelines, after two months of media storm.
The Mauricio Macri administration has continued to insist the case is all but closed.
Security Minister Patricia Bullrich in April told Radio 10’s El Ángel programme that Judge Lleral should now “help us to change the charges surrounding this episode”.
In more recent interviews, she has questioned Maldonado’s motivations and integrity, for instance by comparing the 28-year-old’s participation in the August 1 Mapuche road block with the strike activities of the powerful union family, the Moyanos.
For their part, the family and their lawyer insist the government is “deliberately” trying to stymie the investigation.
“This is a situation that forms part of the phenomenon of forced disappearances in which the State is investigating itself and instead of opening up to the investigative process it deliberately inflicts pres sur et oshutt he case down, claiming that what happened was anything but a forced disappearance,” Heredia said.