Cecilia Hermoso, the former official who was in charge of Alberto Fernández’s digital social media strategy
Former first lady Fabiola Yañez accused Alberto Fernández of gender violence. In her full statement to prosecutor Ramiro González, which consists of 18 pages and was revealed by Infobae, she exposes details about the alleged situations of physical and verbal abuse that the journalist had suffered from the former president, and of the infidelities in that context of aggression.
One of the women pointed out by Fabiola is Cecilia del Milagro Hermoso González (35), a former official of the Frente de Todos government who worked as a community manager and was responsible for the social media strategy of the former president’s administration. Among them, she was in charge of the account of the collie dog Dylan.
“In December 2016, I returned and started living with him again. He promised to get married, have children, everything back to the beginning. But the harassment and constant persecution came back. While I didn’t give any reason for this, I was receiving messages from many women who said they were having intimate relationships with him, which he denied. Even the person who managed Dylan’s account, and who today largely manages all of Fernández’s communication, was one of these people,” Fabiola stated in her court document.
According to this media, Cecilia Hermoso started working in 2017 with the former Chief of Staff of Néstor and Cristina Kirchner. She was 24 years old. At that time, Alberto Fernández was still in politics but did not have a position in public office. “She was in the campaign and was climbing positions. She is the only person who had her Twitter password,” said a former official about the social media administrator.
With the start of the Frente de Todos administration, Alberto Fernández appointed Hermoso as general director of Digital Communication, through presidential decree 147/2020 of February 13, 2020. The position depended on the Undersecretariat of Communication and Press of the Secretariat of Communication and Press of the Presidency of the Nation. The former official was in that role until the end of the Frente de Todos government.
Fabiola Yañez said that Cecilia Hermoso managed Dylan’s Instagram account. But she was also a formally appointed official in the Executive Branch
Hermoso González is also one of the founders of the company Agustín Vidal Producciones, which had the eponymous businessman in charge of producing the program “Fort Night Show.” They produced the television series of media entrepreneur Ricardo Fort, who died in 2013.
Alberto Fernández’s official social media communication went through different moments. In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, that function was delegated to a team of advisors and specialists in the area, headed by Cecilia Hermoso. José Andrés Bossio, who was Hermoso González’s partner until then, was on that team, according to Noticias magazine.
As members of the public administration, these former officials required “exceptional authorization for not meeting the minimum requirements” for the appointment, although in the case of Cecilia Hermoso she had experience in the field.
Cecilia Hermoso’s name came to light after the former first lady’s statement, days after the leak of the video of the former head of state with the host and columnist Tamara Pettinato in the Casa Rosada.
But Yañez’s accusation against Alberto Fernández also implicated other officials in the presidential entourage. She even pointed to the former head of the Presidential Medical Unit, Federico Saavedra, for having concealed one of the assaults by former President Alberto Fernández when their son had not yet been born.
That scene of violence would have occurred in bed, when they lived in the Olivos estate. “That day I had to travel to Misiones, it was an official commitment, as First Lady, so I traveled anyway; at first it only looked red, but I stayed 3 or 4 days and the eye began to change to a stronger color. I went back and stayed in Olivos. While there, together with Alberto, we called Dr. Saavedra, Head of the Presidential Medical Unit, he gave me arnica globules, and told me that it would go away with time. And I was like that for days, walking around inside the house, in Olivos, forced not to go out so that the blow would not be seen,” said the former first lady.
