▲ Dozens of pensioners suffered blows and burns from pepper spray used by the police to prevent them from marching from Congress to Plaza de Mayo, yesterday in Buenos Aires.Photo Ap

Stella Calloni

Correspondent

The newspaper La Jornada
Thursday, August 29, 2024, p. 26

Buenos Aires. The Federal Police’s repression of a demonstration led by the Union of Retired Workers in Struggle (UTJL) and other organizations yesterday left dozens of elderly people beaten and had pepper spray thrown in their faces with a new chemical that causes burns, when they were rejecting President Javier Milei’s veto of the law voted by deputies and senators to increase their pensions and continue with mobility, which is the updating of wages in accordance with inflation.

The officers were pushing them to get on the sidewalk, using the protocol anti-picket (constitutionally illegal) by the Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich, and to prevent them from marching from Congress to Plaza de Mayo. They hit us, they pushed us… it’s crazy, as if we were in a dictatorship.a retiree denounced.

These incidents outraged the population and the deputies, since the demonstration was called after a meeting of the UTJL and other organizations of retirees, which was joined by leaders of social movements. Deputies were present, among them the leader of the opposition bloc of Unión por la Patria, Germán Martínez, and Nicolás del Caño, of the Left Front, who denounced the actions of the Federal Police.

This is happening at a time when a tough internal fight is advancing in the ruling party La Libertad Avanza (LLA), whose block, which is a minority, is shrinking with the resignation of some legislators. Yesterday, the deputy Lourdes Arrieta did so, who denounced how the visit of six congressmen to the military convicted and detained for crimes against humanity was prepared, in a plan arranged by the priest Javier Olivera Ravasi and headed by the deputy Beltrán Benedict. The former marine Alfredo Astiz, together with other true milestones of state terrorism applied during the last dictatorship, were given a bill (a decree actually) to free them.

While the differences between Milei and her vice president Victoria Villarruel continue, the latter, during an event she called in the Senate, using the International Day of Commemoration of the Victims of Terrorism, warned that All the Montoneros (armed group of the 60s-70s) have to be imprisoned and answer for bloodying our nation.

Commitment to memory

He promised to open all the causes of victims of terrorism. I took on the commitment to complete memory at the age of 28 and, although many things have changed, this has been the most important fight of my life.said.

He added that it will be given the reopening of all cases of victims of terrorism so that justice can do what it should have done more than 20 years ago.

The president of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, Estela de Carlotto, stressed that We are living in a very difficult, risky and also dangerous time, because evil is contagious.. He said he is afraid every time he leaves his house and that the government is looking for implanting hatred in reverse, that is, that the victims were those who left us with 30 thousand dead, as well as missing people, as well as the theft of babies and property.

In this atmosphere of chaos, what was missing was the presentation of the Minister of Justice, Mariano Cúneo Libarona, who was summoned to explain to the Women and Diversity Committee of the Chamber of Deputies the official policies that ordered the closure of the Ministry of Women and so many other organizations, which affects the relatives of victims of femicide and threatened women who will be left without shelter.

The minister surprised by admitting that The diversity of sexual identities that does not align with biology is a subjective invention. He stressed that his party believes that Violence must be punished regardless of the gender of the recipient. He said that This is in the Constitution, the Bible, the Koran, science and the nature of the human being..

You have said an outrage that ignores the laws that have expanded rights in the last 15 years in Argentina.replied the deputy of the Civic Coalition, Maximiliano Ferraro, who accused that the only thing missing was to say that (sexual identities not aligned with biology) are sick. As Minister of Justice you cannot ignore article 75, section 23 of the Constitution, which establishes the issues that relate to the equal treatment of women.”