Fans of Argentina’s main soccer clubs concentrated on Wednesday against the Argentine Congress to support retirees. In a country where there is no visiting audience in the stadiums to avoid fights between rival fans, this time they marched in block along with left -wing unions and parties against. This unpublished union, which managed to gather tens of thousands of people in the square, can be an incipient sign of the fed up with the citizenship with the government after 15 months of mandate. The day did not end well for protesters: minutes before five in the afternoon, the time the protest was convened, the police began to repress with tear gas, water and rubber balls. The balance was a hundred detainees, a police officer with a bullet on one arm and 15 wounded protesters, one of them with life risk.
Hundreds of people began to leave the square without control against the police onslaught, while the first line in front of the Congress resisted the riot. They threw all kinds of objects and burned containers, tires and up to two police patrolmen. With the disruption the violence grew.
At first, the most organized columns refused to return home and decided to march along May Avenue to the Casa Rosada, headquarters of the Argentine Government, and threw stones against the building. The surrounding streets were also occupied by a flood of fans, trade unionists and retirees who covered their faces with handkerchiefs to reduce the impact of gases and help themselves help reduce the stinging in the eyes. “How ugly, how ugly, what ugly should it be, hit the retirees to eat,” they sang in front of the riot. With the passage of the minutes, the area became the scene of a battle and serious damage in the urban furniture of the area was recorded.
The first official reaction was in charge of the Chief of Ministers, Guillermo Francos. “It was a totally prepared thing. They used the few retirees who are going to demonstrate, who do it with every right, and made it a violent expression to which the Barrabravas In recent days there are a number of political movements that are aimed at trying to destabilize the government, ”said Franks. The head of security, Patricia Bullrich, took another step. According to their reading, the police had neutralized an attempt to “turn to the government.” “These people who are politically brings together to turn to the government came on this occasion prepared to kill. We kidnap firearms, white weapons, two types of Miguelitos to prick the patrolmen’s gums, ”he said.
Mariana Nedelcu
From the eve, the Casa Rosada wanted to install that the protesters were going to be the violent fans of the clubs, known in Argentina as Barrabravas The Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich, also sought to deter fans with the threat of – a ritual for tens of thousands of fans every weekend – if they cut any street or participated in some disturbance.
In public, the government fell importance to the march until hours before it began. “The march of the Barrabravas is nothing more than that: a march of Barrabravas de Corta Surely from the left, Kirchneristas, with low, very low or null call,” said the presidential spokesman, Manuel Adorni on Wednesday, at a press conference. In private, on the other hand, the concern was greater for the emergence of a new actor as an opponent to the government, at least temporarily, and the fear of losing control of the street.
The spark turned on a couple of weeks ago, when in another manifestation of retirees, an older man who wore a Chacarita shirt was injured by the police. The following week, that club summoned its followers in protest of police repression and to guarantee the safety of retirees. This Wednesday, the call had spread to all clubs. Protesters with Boca Juniors t -shirts marched a few meters from other dresses with the colors of River Plate, Tigre, Racing, Independiente and Argentinos Juniors, among many others. Football shirts mixed with union flags and political parties.
“The right to protest is protected by the Constitution,” warns the lawyer and fan of Racing Pablo Torres. This member of the Racinguista Movement Group, one of the summons to the march, says that they joined for “the outrage that produces to see how the grandparents and retirees already in a context in which you have to understand why they are to the street, because they deny them the right to live with dignity.”
The retirees have been the most harmed by the tourniquet to public spending made by Milei since he arrived at the presidency. The minimum retirement equivalent to just over $ 300 and touches the poverty line. The reduction of income is aggravated by the increase in expenses, especially in medicines, whose prices were released by the government and have increased well above inflation.
Torres emphasizes that the participation of football fans responds to social rejection of politicians and the lack of referents that order the opposition: “The current crisis of representation means that in the absence of political leaders with driving capacity it is the people who go out into the street in indignant rejection because they are hitting the retirees.”
Retirement cuts have been common in successive governments, and also protest marches against them. In 2017, Mauricio Macri faced a massive demonstration to his pension reform, and further back in time, the Argentines remember the marches of this group during the 1990s under the government of Carlos Menem. In one of those demonstrations, which occurred on October 14, 1992, the Argentine football star Diego Armando Maradona, came out in defense of retirees. “I am with retirees to death, what they do is a shame,” he said at that time. “I defend the retirees, how am I not going to defend them? We have to be very crab not to defend them, ”he added. His words were written today in several of the banners raised in the demonstration.
Cuff deputies in Congress
The square in front of Congress burned and inside the deputies there was session. The opposition tried to force a investigative commission against Milei for and ended in a scam. The tension was increasing, until everything ended in a brawl with shoves, fist blows and insults.
Gresca was created among the deputies of La Libertad advances, Milei’s party. Two legislators insisted on staying in their seats while the president of the deputies, Martín Menem, had long been blocked by lack of Quorum a request for investigation against Milei promoted by Peronism. The two rebels received the violent visit of a partner, who accused them of being playing the opposition. The beef answered by throwing a glass with water.
A few seats there, another libertarian deputy tried to start from his seat to a former party partner who had now left the “forces of heaven” to oppose. The rebel resisted throwing fist blows into the air. In the middle the altercations broke the quorum, Menem lifted the session and fled the enclosure.
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