The federal government has extended its intervention of the train system for 15 more days, awaiting the completion of an inquiry into the crash at Once station.
On 28th February, the government announced that there would be a technical and operational “intervention” of Buenos Aires Trains (TBA) until today.
Signed by Planning Minister Julio De Vido, the new measure was announced in an official bulletin and gives the government control for 15 extra days “in order to ensure continuity and regularity of public service and ensure the safety of users” of the Mitre and Sarmiento railway lines.
The intervention extension comes just after the mother of one of the victims asked yesterday that those responsible be charged with manslaughter.
Francisca Centurión, whose son Randulfo González Centurión was killed in the crash, asked the judge working on the case to prosecute those responsible.
“This was not a fluke; this was a criminal act,” she said in a letter, according to Tucumán’s La Gaceta.
Fifteen days after the tragic train crash at Once station, the federal government has appointed a new transport secretary to take over the controversial sector.
Mayor Alejandro Ariel Ramos of Granadero Baigorria, Santa Fe took the reins yesterday, taking over from Juan Pablo Schiavi. The 36-year-old lawyer who received 70% of the vote when elected in Santa Fe.
“You have to listen to people and think about what needs to be done,” said federal Planning Minister Julio De Vido during the inauguration ceremony. Ramos was sworn in by De Vido.
After the Once station accident – which killed 51 people and injured 703 – Schiavi was severely questioned for his role in the deterioration of the system. He became the center of the storm of criticism, and was scorched even by leaders of the ruling party.
This morning, at just after 8am, a school bus collided with a provincial train in the Buenos Aires province of Campana.
Although there are no life-threatening injuries, seven children and three teachers have been reported as hurt, and were taken to a local hospital following the accident.
The accident occurred while the train, travelling in the direction of Rosario, was metres away from the Rómulo Otamendi station. The train was travelling at a slow speed when the bus collided with it. It has been reported that after the collision, the bus remained parallel, while the train “dragged” it.
Minister for Health for the Province of Buenos Aires, Alejandro Collia spoke to Canal C5N saying “The bus was carrying more children than it could move.” Arnedo Acciardi, the coordinator of Civil Defence in Campana, suggested that the crash happened due to a “fault on behalf of the bus.”
An investigation has been launched into the causes of the accident.
This morning four people were killed and nearly 100 were injured in a bus accident in southern Chile. A four-year old girl was among those who died when two buses collided on a motorway near the city of San Carlos.
The accident occurred when one bus pulled back onto the motorway after picking up passengers, when another, travelling at high speed, crashed into the side.
“When I got there the sight was quite alarming,” San Carlos mayor, Hugo Gebrie who was one of the first people on the scene, told Chilean newspaper Emol. He speculated, “I really do not understand how someone could crash there, I get the feeling that the other driver fell asleep or was totally distracted.”
The Chief Prosecutor, Rolando Carahuate, confirmed four deaths and 97 wounded, of which a four further victims are at high risk of death. He has ordered an investigation into the cause of the accident. The severely wounded were taken to the hospital at Chillán, but those with minor injuries were treated in San Carlos.
The victims have been identified as Luis Beltrán Terán (60), Olga Gallegos Rivera (50), Génesis Rivas (4), and French tourist, Cloe Delalui (19).
This unfortunate tragedy comes almost exactly two years after the Chilean earthquake took an estimated 525 lives. President Sebastián Piñera joined the families of the victims at a ceremony yesterday to commemorate those lost and the destruction caused.
Just before 7am today, three lorries crashed in Autopista del Oeste motorway, at Ituzaingó junction, affecting traffic in both directions. No injuries or deaths have been reported.
The National Motorway Administration (DNV) has reported that there are tailbacks of up to 5 km long. One of the lorries was a tanker carrying liquid gas and another was carrying cargo.
A spokesman for DNV said: “After the crash, which left no one injured, two lorries were overturned and completely blocked passage in three lanes, two going towards the capital and another that leads to Lujan.”
He also said that the lanes will be blocked off at least until midday today in order to take necessary preventative safety measures regarding the gas lorry.
‘The Worst End’. That is how national daily Página 12 described President Fernando de la Rúa’s resignation on 20th December 2001.
President De la Rúa fleeing the Casa Rosada by helicopter on 20th December 2001 (Photo: Walter Astrada)
At the premature end of his presidency, the country witnessed the worst state violence since its return to democracy in 1983. In total, 39 people died throughout the country, including five at the hands of police in the very centre of Buenos Aires.
The iconic image of the president ‘fleeing’ by helicopter from the roof of the Casa Rosada shortly before 8pm would become a powerful symbol of the demise of the government, and the chaos Argentina’s political class found itself in.
But it was the last few hours of De la Rúa’s 740 days in office that would remain imprinted in the minds of those who lived through it.
“It seemed like something was going to happen,” says Damián Neustadt, at the time a 25-year-old freelance photographer living in Caballito.
Like many in Argentina, on the morning of the 20th, Nuestadt woke up expectant. In Buenos Aires, the unprecedented protests of the previous night had unleashed a new social force, as exciting as it was unpredictable. With the cry of “El pueblo, unido, jamas será vencido” (The people, united, will not be beaten) at doors of the Casa Rosada, the public had defied the state of emergency and forced Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo, the architect of convertibility and the corralito, to resign.
At the same time, the aggressive police response, using rubber bullets and tear gases to clear Plaza de Mayo in the early hours of the morning, had left an air of tension as the new day began.
Nuestadt had joined the masses and taken photos of the police response. “I returned home at 5am, slept a little, and then went back to the Plaza in the morning with extra rolls [of film],” he says. Sensing that something big was about to occur, he also took a radio with him, so that he could find out quickly if a coup d’etat had taken place.
Soon after arriving, at around 9:30am, he witnessed the first of many acts of police brutality that day, which he would document in some 250 photos.
Madres versus the police at Plaza de Mayo on Dec 20, 2001
The Repression Begins
When Neustadt arrived, groups of protestors—some still remaining from the night before—were mingling in the square. Among the most conspicuous were the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, who gathered as they had for more than two decades for their weekly Thursday vigil in remembrance of those disappeared during the last military dictatorship.
This particular day, the Madres, who defied a murderous military regime, were also out to protest against the state of emergency decreed by the president the night before.
Virginia Lattanzio, 60, who had stopped on the Plaza de Mayo as she made her way to work in the city centre, witnessed what happened next.
“Around mid-morning, the mounted police came and rode their horses right over the Madres without a care. It was terrible,” she recalls, still incredulous almost ten years later. “There wasn’t any provocation that they [the police] responded to, they ran directly over people who were sitting down with a mate.”
The documentary ‘Argentina: Ahora o Nunca’ by Canadian Brian Hunter, who was living in Argentina during the crisis, also captured the police repression.
“I remember the helpless feeling of seeing an 80-year-old woman being beaten by a mounted police officer,” says Neustadt, pointing to one of his most memorable photos from that day - the white headscarf of a Madre in the foreground facing down eight policemen on horseback.
“I realised this was a breaking point; not just another day. And the public began to perceive it too: they saw the violent repression on the tv and came to the square with their arms held up to show that they were not doing anything.”
An Absent Government
As the square was filling with people, the government was engaged in a last ditch attempt to reach out to the peronist opposition — which held a majority in both legislative houses — and broker an agreement to exit the crisis. Following Cavallo’s lead, the entire cabinet had offered its resignation as a gesture to the peronists; clearing the protests from the emblematic Plaza de Mayo was another key prerequisite to opening negotiations.
Stories from inside the Casa Rosada that day tell of an increasingly isolated president, left powerless and indecisive as his government disintegrated around him. One particularly striking anecdote included in journalist Lucio Di Matteo’s book ‘El Corralito’ is that of President De la Rúa sat alone in his office watching cartoons as the violence outside escalated in the early afternoon.
The political chaos of that day has left unclear who was ordering the police to use such brutal force against peaceful protesters. De la Rúa maintains that he was not responsible, stating in a recent interview with La Nación that he only found out about the deaths in the city centre an hour after leaving the Casa Rosada.
A trial due to begin in June of next year will assess the responsibility of high-ranking members of the government in the violence and murders of that day (De la Rúa was cleared of criminal blame by the courts in November 2010). Neustadt has been called to testify due to his proximity to the police throughout the day.
Soon after the first outbreak of violence against the Madres, he witnessed the conversation between a federal judge and the police officer in charge of operations in the square - Jorge Palacios, who would later be charged with political espionage soon after being named chief of the newly-created Buenos Aires Metropolitan Police by Mauricio Macri in 2009 - in which the forces were ordered to retreat and allow people to voice their protest.
The order was ignored, however, and protected by the national state of emergency, the police launched new waves of attacks. A running battle ensued, with the police clearing the square with increasing force, only for the crowds of protestors to return. Without any government action, the violence intensified through the afternoon.
“I had never seen the police so out of control,” recalls Neustadt. As he took photos of Eduardo de Pedro, a friend and member of human rights groups H.I.J.O.S being bundled into a police car (where he was beaten and threatened with death), an officer put a shotgun in his face and advised him to stop and leave. At another point, when Neustadt was left isolated after the square had been temporarily cleared, he received a heavy blow from a police baton: “now that you are alone, what are you going to do?” jeered the officer.
“They [the police] were not worried at all about the photos - I was right in their faces, you could see their ID number. They were more annoyed that I was there taking photos than about the photos themselves,” adds Neustadt, describing the impunity with which the police operated that day.
Lead Bullets
The worst of the violence occurred between 3pm and 5pm. By that stage, more hardened protesters were hurling rocks at police, who were no longer responding with just gases and rubber bullets, but firing live rounds directly into the crowds. In clashes near Av. de Mayo and Tacuarí, three protestors - Gastón Riva (30), Diego Lamagna (27), and Carlos Almirón (24) - received fatal wounds.
An injured man is lead away by police (Photo: Patricio Murphy)
The president’s final speech, soon after 4pm, in which he appealed once more to the Peronist opposition to form a unity government and failed to mention or condemn the police aggression, only fuelled the violence.
“It all exploded after the speech,” says Lattanzio. “People were hoping and expecting the president to take control of the situation [...] But he said nothing, just threw the blame [at the Peronists] and played the victim.”
Soon afterwards, a fourth victim, Gustavo Benedetto (23), was shot in the face after protestors on Av. de Mayo and Chacabuco were fired upon by police and security guards sheltering inside the HSBC building at the corner. Benedetto’s mother and sister, who were watching the events unfold on television, saw him being loaded into an ambulance, bleeding heavily and unresponsive.
The End
It was only when news that De la Rúa had resigned circulated, around 7pm, that calm began to return to the streets. Even then, there was time for one more killing: Alberto Márquez (57) was gunned down by police as he sat with other protesters on 9 de Julio. Unlike the other deaths, where the shooters have never been identified, four individuals from the Internal Affairs department of the Federal Police are on trial charged with Márquez’ murder.
Around that time, Neustadt returned home after developing his photos, some of which were published in newspapers around the world the next day. “I didn’t know about the killings; I found out when I returned home. And then I had a bit of a panic attack for having been so close, especially as I had a one-year-old daughter.”
Despite that, he says is glad he went and was able to document the events of that fateful day.
“I had the feeling that I needed to be there, taking photos that might be of use later [...] For me, the difference that day with other historic moments in Argentina is that the public were out on the streets for real, for themselves, without any direction. It’s clear that some later exploited the events for their own gain, but at that moment, for those two days [19th and 20th December], that’s how it was.
“I don’t think a country has many moments like that in its history.”
Cacerolazo in the streets of Buenos Aires (Photo: Sub Coop)
Shortly after 11pm on 19th December, 2001, residents of Buenos Aires began streaming out of their homes, blocking streets in their neighbourhoods and marching towards the Plaza de Mayo. Soon, the banging of pots and pans—a form of protest coined as a cacerolazo—could be heard throughout the capital.
Street protests were nothing new in Argentina at the time. With the economy in its third year of recession and unemployment approaching 20%, piqueteros (picketers) frequently cut streets to demand government support while labour unions had called regular general strikes. The situation had deteriorated since the beginning of December, when Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo imposed restrictions on cash withdrawals from banks, leaving many angry clients unable to access their savings.
But this night was different.
Moments earlier, President Fernando de la Rúa had called a national state of emergency in a televised address. The measure was designed to put a stop to the unrest and looting that had for days been escalating in the impoverished outskirts of the city, turning increasingly violent. Instead, in a spontaneous display of collective anger and defiance, the public—significantly, the middle class—took to the streets with a simple message for the political leadership: “que se vayan todos“ (get out, all of you).
It was the point of no return for De la Rúa, who had become a political pariah, even within his own party. The president would leave office at 7pm the following day, departing ignominiously by helicopter from the roof of the presidential palace as police violently suppressed the street protests below, killing five people in the city centre. In total, 39 people lost their lives in two days of unrest.
Yet this was more than just the removal of an unpopular government. The uprising of the 19th and 20th—later known as the Argentinazo—represented a rupture between the Argentine people and the discredited political establishment. There were no partisan banners or chants in the protests, just a collective rejection of the ruling class and the economic paradigm that had been implemented 25-years earlier with the military dictatorship and intensified during the neo-liberal frenzy of the 1990s.
In the chaotic fortnight that followed, the country had four different presidents who, between them, enacted both the biggest debt default and currency devaluation in global history. As the rebuilding process began in 2002 under President Eduardo Duhalde, half of the population lived under the poverty line; among the other half, many chose to emigrate. The damaged - but not broken - democratic institutions faced a new social reality, with a intolerant public that had, temporarily at least, put aside class distinctions to combine and magnify the impact of the piquete and cacerolazo.
Young men fight against the police on 9 de Juilo in December 2001 (Photo: Sub Coop/Nicolas Pousthomis)
Ten years later, the immediate effects of the crisis are now barely noticeable, but its legacy lives on in today’s policies, social movements, and local attitudes.
In the coming month, The Argentina Independent will revisit this historic turning point in a series of articles ten years on from the crisis. In part one, starting tomorrow with testimonies from the protagonists of the Argentinazo, we will hear the personal stories of those who lived through those days, and analyse the role of the key players - both inside and outside of the country - who led the country into the abyss.
In the second half of the series, we will examine the Argentina that emerged from the ruins: the popular assemblies, bartering clubs, and recuperated factories that typified a new era of social activism and participation; the political hole that would be filled by kirchnerismo; and the resurrection of the internal market as the pillar of the economic model.
The reconstruction of the State, the evolution of social movements, and the search for justice are complex and unfinished processes, even a decade later, and we cannot aspire to cover all aspects of the ’2001 effect’ or answer all the questions that remain from those fateful days. Neither is out intention to condemn or romanticise the path that the country has taken on its ongoing recovery.
However, as the paradigm of free market capitalism and corporate-led politics comes under strain in the developed world, a better understanding of the new Argentina - including all of its flaws and idiosyncrasies - can only enrich the contemporary debate.
This is what we hope to provide, and encourage you, our readers, to participate with your own comments, questions and experiences.
Posted on 15 September 2011. Tags: bus, crash, train
There are at least 90 injured from a crash between a bus, a tram and a cement truck this morning. For the second time this week, Flores is the center of a major accident after a bus and two trains crashed on Tuesday, leaving 11 people dead.
The cause of the crash has not yet been determined.
Nine people are dead and around 180 injured after a colectivo (city bus) crashed into a train in Flores early this morning. More than 50 ambulances and 10 firetrucks arrived at the scene to rescue people trapped in the wreckage. Of the injured, around 20 are in critical condition.
“We were in desperation,” one train passanger told Radio 10, “because when the train crashed they closed the doors and no one could open them. People screamed and asked if they could please let them out. Until a few men broke open the doors, we couldn’t leave.”
It appears that the driver of the colectivo 92, who figures as one of the casualties of the accident, drove over the barrier despite warning sounds.
The Secretary of Transportation, Juan Pablo Schiavi, reported that according to testimonies, “the barrier was working” although he said that they still have to “check the videos from cameras on the trains.”
In the early hours of this morning, a Ferrobaires train crashed into a passenger train that it had gone to repair, leaving some 70 people wounded.
Engine 336, which had left Mar del Plata at 19h15 and was headed towards Constitución, broke down close to Lezama due to an engine fire, which was extinguished by fire fighters. Engine 335 was sent out from Constitución to assist but, as it approached, it could not brake and crashed into the waiting train at around 2am.
70 people were injured, amongst which eight remain in Chascomús hospital. All are said to be “generally stable and without serious injury” according to Adrián Tarditti, Director of Health Emergencies for Buenos Aires province.
Investigations are underway to discover the cause of the problem.
The crash involved a Ferrobaires train, as did the incident on February 16th, which killed four people and left over 100 injured. On that occasion, a Ferrobaires train heading to Junín crashed into a stationary San Martín train close to San Miguel station.
