Argentine police repress protest by pensioners in Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires. A brutal repression by the Federal Police against a demonstration led by the Union of Retired Workers in Struggle (UTJL) and organizations, left dozens of elderly people beaten, who had pepper spray thrown in their faces with a new chemical that causes burns, when they rejected the veto of the president, Javier Milei, to the law voted by deputies and senators to increase their pensions and continue with mobility, which is the updating of assets according to inflation.

The officers began to push them onto the sidewalk, using the anti-picket protocol (constitutionally illegal) of the Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich, and to prevent them from marching from Congress to Plaza de Mayo. “They hit us, they pushed us, they sprayed us with pepper spray directly in our faces. This is crazy, as if we were in the dictatorship,” one of the retirees told television.

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, such as the head of the opposition bloc Unión por la Patria (UP), Germán Martínez, and Nicolás del Caño of the Frente de Izquierda (FT), who denounced the actions of the Federal Police.

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This comes in another week that started off very complex as a tough internal fight advances in the pro-government La Libertad Avanza (LLA), whose minority bloc is shrinking with the resignation of some legislators, and this Wednesday it was done by Deputy Lourdes Arrieta, who denounced how the visit of six deputies to the military convicted and detained for crimes against humanity was prepared, in a plan arranged by the priest Javier Olivera Ravasi, to Deputy Beltrán Benedict and to the former marine Alfredo Astiz, who along with other true milestones of state terrorism applied during the last dictatorship, they were given a bill (a decree in reality) to free them.

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

He promised to open “all the cases of victims of terrorism (…) I made the commitment to complete memory since I was 28 years old and, although many things have changed, this has been the most important fight of my life,” he said and warned that “all the cases of victims of terrorism will be reopened so that Justice can do what it should have done more than 20 years ago.”

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The president of Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, Estela de Carlotto, said that “we are living in a very difficult, risky and also very dangerous time, because evil is contagious.” She said that she is afraid every time she leaves her house and that the government is trying to “implant hatred in reverse, that is, that the victims were those who left 30 thousand people dead and also missing and the theft of babies and property.”

In this atmosphere of chaos and confusion, the increasingly agitated population was missing the presentation of the Minister of Justice, Mariano Cúneo Libarona, summoned to explain to the Women and Diversity Commission of the Chamber of Deputies the official policies such as the closure of the Ministry of Women, and so many other organizations, which seriously affect the relatives of victims of femicide and the protection of threatened women who will also be left without shelter.

The minister surprised by admitting that “the diversity of sexual identities that do not align with biology are subjective inventions.” He also said that his party maintains that “violence must be punished regardless of the gender of the recipient.” He assured that “this is in the Constitution, the Bible, the Koran, science, the nature of the human being.”

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