Fourteen, 15, 16, 17 and 18 years old. A little older youth. A lot of women. And families with younger children. Thousands of people, who in silence yesterday said everything.
What was lived in the Center of the city of Córdoba registers little antecedents. We will have to go back three decades, when the provincial senator Regino Madres was assassinated, or even more years after the brutal crime of Gabriela Ceppi, to achieve a similar comparison to yesterday’s massive march for Valentino Blas Straps (17). The history of the province recognizes little antecedents of such crowded demonstrations for a homicide.
“Enough of ‘easy trigger‘”; “Justice for Blas”; “Don’t kill the students”; “Justice for José”; “# I could have been”; “Justice for Nano and Agus”; “Who takes care of us from the Police?”
Large banners and handwritten signs. Behind Blas, several more names, cases less known to the public opinion, but that in recent weeks have caused similar pain.
José Antonio Ávila was 35 years old. Last Saturday, July 4, he was killed by a police bullet in the Villa El Libertador neighborhood, south of the city of Córdoba. Together with a friend they tried to escape by motorcycle from a police checkpoint due to quarantine. The case has two experienced officers charged and detained.
Agustín Barrios, 22, and Lautaro Guzmán, 23, died when a motorcycle collided with a car on the main avenue of Colonia Caroya on Friday, June 19, last night. They were going at high speed pursued by a police motorcycle.
The young people, according to the cause, had not committed any crime that motivated such persecution. “They had only crossed a red light,” insist their relatives. Yesterday, they traveled from Colonia Caroya to the city of Córdoba. They understood that in this massive claim there was the same thread of the questions that they rehearsed for almost two months without official answers. There are no defendants for these two deaths.
José, Agus and Nano. “They were also Blas,” the families repeated yesterday, holding up banners.
With firm steps, yesterday’s march was advancing from the corner of Colón and General Paz towards the roundabout located in front of the Patio Olmos.
Adolescents who from one moment to another stopped arguing about the color of the diver in the last year of high school, about a trip that continues to be postponed and because of all the questions that pile up at that age of life. Now, they debate on the institutional quality of the Police. Innocents traversed by pain that made them suddenly change their interest.
The march, whose convocation was powered by social networks by Blas’s older brother, Juan, brought together thousands of people from Cordoba. Between 18 and 19.04, when a massive applause moved everyone, silence was the only thing that spoke. Merchants and residents of this vital artery of the city looked out with surprise: nobody could believe that such a crowd was capable of keeping quiet in that way.
No blue presence
The streets were cleared of policemen. An official signal in the absence of other answers. Do not provoke, was the state explanation. Ashamed, they read several during the march.
What happened so that the State had to withdraw the uniformed men? The dense plot that has begun to be discovered around the murder of Blas is only part of the explanation.
At the end of the march there was no stage or microphones ready. Just pain, shock, and a forceful claim for official answers.
Blas’s mother, Soledad Laciar, was not present. Pain prevented him from walking through the Center. At the same time, on social networks he exposed everything irreparable that those police shootings produced. And she asked for explanations again.
Blas, the father of the murdered young man, chose a discreet low profile and marched through the crowd without having contact with the press. Days before, the man had made it clear in different interviews that the answers received so far were not enough for him.
Go ahead, Juan, the older brother led the long line. Other relatives and many young friends and colleagues of Blas surrounded him. Among them, two of the teenagers who survived the police shooting at dawn on Thursday 6 of this month.
Before the numerous media that covered the entire demonstration, Juan spoke at the end of the march. The young man read an open letter that a while before had already begun to resonate on social networks, the refuge that young people chose to spread their pain.
“Why do so many people have to mobilize so that this is not forgotten or repeated? Will this ever change? Will there be more Blasitos in the history of Córdoba? Will someone else suffer the pain that my family and I are going through? I hope that one day these questions will be resolved by those who must answer them, that this does not remain in a sad memory, that your murder, dear little brother, will serve so that no one else passes what we are going through ”, was one of the paragraphs that Juan read yesterday firmly.
More questions that continue to pile up since last week.
The provincial Justice has managed to clear something, with three imprisoned policemen, a fourth accused officer and the certainty that a group of uniformed men not only perpetrated a murder that morning, but also devised a whole scheme to try to dirty the victims of all this history.
But Juan yesterday was emphatic on this point: “It is not enough with three detained police officers, we seriously want justice.”
Police, Government and Justice. All the questions yesterday surfaced in the midst of silence.
Grow up suddenly
While Juan read, friends and colleagues of Blas, several with a T-shirt in which they demanded justice, hugged and consoled each other.
The sadness, along with the impotence for what until now continues to be inexplicable in terms of police action, were the feelings that overwhelmed the thousands who marched yesterday. Very many had not met the murdered young man.
Blas and his friends, classmates from the San José school in the sixth year, committed the crime of violating a quarantine with the idea of going to a car to eat a tenderloin and then joining to play at the Play Station.
They did not stop at a police checkpoint and at least two corporals decided to shoot at close range.
Five bullets hit the Fiat Argo in which the five young people were traveling. Everyone in the rear and at least two entered through the rear window. Right at the height of vehicles where bullets are usually deadly for their occupants.
Yesterday, a new generation marched for the first time. Someone described the massive rally as “Never Again for millennials.” Adolescents and young people who had only known the worst face of the state from history books were mixed in a single order. It is that now they have begun to put together the scattered pieces of a puzzle that still lacks the central answer.
The keys to a case that shocks
A rebuild that does not yet have all the keys.
Shot control. In the first minutes of Thursday 6 of this month, policemen stationed at a vehicle control on Avenida Vélez Sársfield, in front of the Pablo Pizzurno institute, in the southern part of the city of Córdoba, opened fire on a car in which five adolescents were traveling and whose driver did not heed the signal to stop. In the middle of the back seat was Valentino Blas Correas (17), who was killed by an official bullet that entered him through the right shoulder blade and affected his lung and part of his heart.
Arrested and charged. The investigation led by the prosecutor José Mana led to jail at first the policemen Lucas Gómez (31) and Javier Alarcón (35), accused of the fatal shots. On Wednesday, meanwhile, agent Wanda Esquivel, who has been in the force for a short time, was accused of having “planted” together with Alarcón an old revolver with the idea of falsely incriminating the young people shot. The main officer Yamila Martínez was also charged with the omission of the duties of a public official. She was released. The chain of police cover-up that existed in this case after the police shooting is still being analyzed, so it is not ruled out that there are new charges.
It shouldn’t be there. Police officer Lucas Gómez was already charged with covering up the La Calera serial rapist. Together with three policemen, he awaits trial. For this reason, it is not yet understood how he was working first and with a regulation weapon, since generally the policemen with criminal cases are in a passive situation or in non-operational tasks, without weapons.
Attention. The reason why Blas was not treated at the Aconcagua sanatorium is also being investigated.
