This Monday afternoon an important hearing was held in the Chamber of Deputies of the nation. It was convened as part of the activities that are being carried out when the 20th anniversary of the Avellaneda Massacre is about to be completed.
It was convened by Myriam Bregman, Nicolás del Caño, Alejandro Vilca and Romina del Pla, deputies of the Left Unity Front. It was attended by important human rights figures, social leaders, fighters and militants. More than remarkable was the presence of Alberto Santillán, father of Darío, who leads an exemplary and permanent fight for justice to be done and to condemn both the material authors and those responsible for politics and intellectuals. It was he who, after the presentations by Bregman, opened the audience with an emotional speech.
It may interest you: Twenty years after the crime of Kosteki and Santillán, this Monday there will be a public hearing in Deputies
It may interest you: Twenty years after the crime of Kosteki and Santillán, this Monday there will be a public hearing in Deputies
After loud applause for Alberto’s words, Orlando Agüero, from the Darío Santillán Popular Front, who was a partner of Maxi and Darío, spoke. Both he and Paula Alvarado Mamani -lawyer for the case- referred to the many obstacles that had to be overcome in all these years, as well as the maneuvers of the murderers to try to avoid convictions. Eduardo Beliboni, national leader of the Polo Obrero, also took the floor at this time, recalling the mobilizations of the unemployed in those early years of the 20th century.
Alberto Santillán, Darío’s father, has not stopped demanding justice since the State murdered his son and Máximo Kosteky. In the Hearing this Monday, he denounced the political leaders of the 2001 massacre. Among them Felipe Solá and Aníbal Fernández. “Alberto has placed Aníbal Fernández at the top of power and Felipe Solá as chancellor. Néstor promised to open the files of the Side, it was never investigated, I felt like a useful idiot.”
After pointing this out, he recalled how he felt that the government of Alberto Fernández reappointed them to ministerial positions. In turn, he defended his son’s struggle and pointed out that: “At 20 years he is still a great example of those places where there are shortcomings and nobody wants to go, I believe that Darío found his place in the world there, he was 21 years old when he murdered, a lot of dreams, a project”.
Representatives from human rights organizations that have kept the fight active for this cause were present and spoke at the hearing. Among those who spoke were María Del Carmen Verdú (Correpi), Pablo Pimentel (APDH La Matanza), Marta Ungaro (sister of Horacio, disappeared on the Night of the Pencils), María Laura Bretal (feminist activist of the Las Azucenas Collective and former detained-disappeared in the La Cacha Clandestine Center), Susana Rearte and Carlos Loza (Cachito Fukman Encounter). Luz Santos Morón and Matías Aufieri of the Center of Professionals for Human Rights. Patricio Escobar, photographer and director of the film The crisis caused two new deaths. Celina Rodríguez (feminist activist and member of the Darío Santillán movement). Sofia Caravelos, lawyer. Mario Santucho, sociologist and editor of Crisis magazine.
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and journalist Adriana Meyer sent a message to the Audiencia.
Other referents of the Left Front took the floor to denounce the political continuity of many of those politically responsible for these crimes. They were Raúl Godoy, a Zanon worker and PTS leader, Celeste Fierro (MST), Néstor Pitrola (PO) and Juan Carlos Giordano (IS), Alejandrina Barry (PTS legislator) and Guillermo Klein (PO). In addition, the worker from the recovered MadyGraf factory was present. César Arakaki, sentenced for protesting against the pension reform promoted by the government of Mauricio Macri.
In his turn, Raúl Godoy, a Zanon worker and leader of the PTS in the FIT Unidad, remembered Darío Santillán through shared militancy. They met in the city of General Mosconi, when at the end of the 90s the struggle of the unemployed spread throughout the country. Raúl arrived with a group of workers from the Zanon factory, under control, to fight together for the unity of the workers’ ranks.
The hearing was closed by Nicolás del Caño, who recalled that, 20 years ago, “Duhalde had to leave due to the massive rejection of Darío and Maxi’s crime.”
We would like to say thanks to the author of this write-up for this amazing content
20 years after the Avellaneda Massacre: audience with human rights leaders, deputies and social leaders