ARGENTINA Where Youth Is a Crime
Hermelo, Rodrigo Gutierrez & Robert, Karen
For youths in Buenos Aires it is a weekend institution to trasnochar,to begin the evening at midnight and return home in the daylight hours. For this reason, Graciela Rosa Scavone may not have been...
...The official cause of death was changed twice from "serious lesions" to "uncertain" and finally to a brain hemorrhage from natural causes...
...Nothing's happened and as far as I'm concerned there was no conviction...
...Efforts were made under the Alfonsin government to replace some of the worst police officials, but their successors came from within the system...
...Rodrigo Gutidrrez Hermelo is a journalist living in Buenos Aires...
...The relationship between the executive branch and the police is mediated through the Minister of the Interior, one of the most powerful cabinet posts...
...These allow the police to detain any citizen without charges under the premise of checking for previous criminal records...
...In this context the street has once again become an arena of open confrontation with the government...
...I was right...
...The high prices, which are startling even to a North American visitor, make it impossible for many teenagers to get together in the traditional setting of the neighborhood bar or cafd, Added to this is the dramatic rise in alcohol consumption among adolescents-an activity virtually unheard of a decade ago...
...Why are young people so often the victims of this parallel "justice" system...
...And neighbors testified that Balmaceda, a superior officer in the local police force, had a reputation for running Budge like his private territory, and was responsible for 40 deaths in the neighborhood...
...In 1987, police killed three young men in Ingeniero Budge, a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Buenos Aires...
...Because the case became such a powerful political event, the victims' lawyers were able to secure the second oral trial in the nation's history...
...A witness claimed that a man in a Peugeot had arrived on the scene soon after the killings and had planted the four guns which the defense claimed had been used by the youths...
...They put us in the van anyway...
...But as the new political system became consolidated, these kinds of mass mobilizations came to be seen as potential sites of conflict...
...Rock concerts have been privatized along with everything else, and now take place in stadiums and concert halls with paid admission...
...When a bottle of beer runs the same price as a cup of coffee, it becomes more common for friends to gather around the late-night corner store...
...Jorge remembers that when he unbuttoned Walter's pants to make him more comfortable, he noticed bruises across his stomach...
...Argentina's first oral proceeding had been the trial in 1985 of the military commanders who had directed the Dirty War...
...Traditional judicial proceedings went on completely behind closed doors...
...A doctor was summoned once Walter began to lose consciousness and suffocate, but no treatment was given...
...According to a 1991 report by the Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS), a human rights organization in Buenos Aires, between 1988 and 1990 the police were responsible for 35% of homicides in the Greater Buenos Aires area, which includes the capital and surrounding areas in the province of Buenos Aires...
...The pressure for this judicial reform likely derived at least in part from the Budge case...
...He has also demonstrated his cynicism regarding the need for reform...
...But there has never been a reform of the judiciary...
...They hit my sister across the ankles and threw heron the floor...
...Jorge, the friend cited in the statement, tells a different version...
...Walter was moved from hospital to hospital three times that evening...
...It was also a social space defined specifically for young people, as political parties reached out to a new base of support by sponsoring cultural events like dances and rock concerts...
...The case also renewed debates in Congress regarding the constitutionality of a whole set of police edicts which have been in place for decades...
...An average middle-class porteiio (inhabitant of the city of Buenos Aires) is easily left with the impression of a shadowy world of crime, drugs and violence...
...The CELS report states: "The 'confrontations' in this period remind one of the supposed confrontations with which the last military government tried to conceal executions...
...Political power and police repression also operate differently today...
...He died the following Thursday...
...Furthermore, the political context has changed...
...Since 1983 we have democracy in the executive branch, in that we can now elect the president," he said...
...Though the police were never at the center of the military repression, they were often called upon to do their share of the dirty work...
...This leaves many young people like Walter Bulacio out on the street, looking for a free entrance...
...Why Target Youth...
...We were in front of [the stadium]," he said...
...On April 4, 1990, almost exactly three years after the shootings, the court case against the police officers and the Province began...
...At the same time, cultural projects have suffered the same cuts as other sectors of the government...
...Argafiaraz, wounded, was put in the pickup and taken to hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival...
...One officer told me: 'If we get more, you can leave...
...In the early years after the dictatorship the street was a political space, filled by people young and old who were called forth to mobilize in defense of democracy...
...He was given a glass of water, which he vomited immediately...
...Before he could read his full statement to reporters, however, he was interrupted by Agustin Olivera's father...
...We went to [station] 35," Graciela Scavone said, "and the chief told me he was 'tumbado.' I asked him what that meant, and he said that was what they called people who couldn't stand on their own, and that it could be from alcohol or drugs...
...The Budge case also stood as a turning point in public appraisals of Argentina's democratic system...
...Even the 'critical' press such as Pdgina 12, a daily paper which has been praised for exposing government corruption, rarely ventures outside the immediate area of the capital for a story...
...You see, Doctor...
...They bought beer at the corner store after arguing with the owner, who resisted selling it to them...
...The economic crisis has other social consequences which particularly affect young people...
...By 7 p.m...
...We have enough minors now.' Anyway, on the bus they beat up a few of them, the ones sitting in the back...
...Walter Bulacio became the latest young victim of police violence, which persists despite Argentina's return to electoral democracy nine years ago...
...Since the collapse of the military government, the police force remains the only repressive branch of the state with any legitimacy...
...The numbers presented in the CELS report may be low...
...Olivera said...
...Karen Robert is a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Michigan, specializing in Argentina...
...When his parents finally saw him at 11 p.m., he was barely conscious, diagnosed with irreversible brain damage...
...We have democracy in the congress, in that we vote for our representatives...
...A young man explained to reporters from Pdgina 12 what it was like to live in the neighborhood...
...In the meantime, people continue to come to them with complaints of police brutality...
...The Federal Police released the following statement: "The legality of the process was confirmed in court by the companion of the deceased, who accompanied him throughout, affirming that they had both been properly treated by the police agents...
...Yet the president packed the new courts with judges who had been active during the Dirty War...
...Furthermore, no attempt has ever been made to restructure the police force or to improve the minimal professional training and impoverished wages which perpetuate established forms of violence...
...Stories of 'confrontations' in which 'delinquents' are killed can produce the same response they did during the dictatorship: "Paralgo habrd sido," ("There must have been a reason...
...The next day, the Commission of Friends and Neighbors of Ingeniero Budge was formed...
...According to formerjuvenile courtjudge Alicia Oliveira, these edicts function as a kind of "open penal system" which gives the police free rein to define and process a variety of alleged crimes, bypassing the judiciary altogether...
...all-out terror is not needed to rein in dissent...
...Because of a lack of accessible crime statistics, the researchers had to base their investigation on media reports, admittedly a questionable source...
...It also derives from the total discredit of the military following the Malvinas War...
...The scale of violence today does not compare with that of the period between 1976 and 1983, when an estimated 30,000 people were 'disappeared' and countless thousands more detained, tortured or beaten on the street...
...On the Margins of Justice The recent concern about police violence was prompted in part by one 'confrontation' five years ago, which remains etched in the public memory...
...What more does the Justice want...
...Balmaceda and Mifio, found guilty of homicidio en riiia, each received five years...
...They waited outside the stadium after the show had started, in the hopes of gaining free admission...
...This gap between politics and the populace has widened under the presidency of Carlos Menem...
...New Madres in the Plaza According to Ciro Annichiarico, lawyer in the Budge case and participant in the Commission on Institutional Violence, Budge left most Argentines feeling cynical about thejustice system...
...Most died in so-called 'confrontations' between police and 'delinquents.' CELS found that between 1985 and 1989, 72 police officers died in supposed 'shoot-outs,' while the police killed 705 civilians...
...The majority of victims were under 25 years of age and lived outside the city...
...the three young men were enjoying their purchase, seated on the sidewalk within a block of their homes...
...There's nothing here...
...Fifteen minutes from the caf6s and movie theatres which give Buenos Aires its fame as the great Euro-pean capital of Latin America, here the streets are dusty and unpaved, there are no sewers, and the nearest telephone is a bus-ride away...
...The openness of that investigation had created an air of optimism regarding the possibilities of achievingjustice within a freer political system...
...These stories tend to present only the police's version of events...
...In the police station some hours after the arrest, Walter complained of feeling ill and being unable to walk on his own...
...Forensic evidence could not prove that the killings had resulted from a 'shoot-out.' The angle of the gunshot wounds demonstrated that two of the young men had been shot from above while seated with their backs against the wall...
...The Budge case called that optimism into question...
...District attorney Jorge Reynoso declared his satisfaction with the results: "This time there was justice...
...The mainstream media use terms like 'delinquent' and 'thug' loosely, and publish their share of stories of cops-and-robbers shoot-outs...
...The difference in scale may be attributed in part to the workings of a more open, 'democratic' political system...
...The case was stalled by various appeals by the defense, who tried to argue that an oral trial was unconstitutional...
...Neighbors placed flowers, crosses and banners at the street corner where the boys were killed...
...Only one of the young men was able to get to his feet before the shooting began...
...A friend notified Waiter's mother late Saturday afternoon that her son was at the police station, too sick to be sent home...
...They kept us there for over half an hour, because they were rounding up more people...
...For this reason, Graciela Rosa Scavone may not have been anxious on the morning of April 19, 1991, when her 17-year-old son Walter Bulacio had not returned from a concert by the Redonditos de Ricota, a favorite rock band of Argen-tine teenagers...
...President Menem may not have noticed in September when members of the Commission of Family Members and Victims of Institutional Violence began their own monthly vigils in front of the Congress, reclaiming the lives of children killed by the police...
...Already during the government of Rail Alfonsin (1983-9), politics became more a game to be played behind closed doors, with the public relegated to the role of spectator...
...Instead, they were picked up in one of the police raids that have come to be another weekend ritual for young people in the capital...
...The number of killings by the police in recent years range in the hundreds, although there is no way to estimate the figures for less serious acts of violence which are clearly a daily part of police work...
...After a ten-day trial, Isidro Romero was found guilty of homicide and homicidio en rifia (homicide in the context of a fight), and sentenced to 12 years...
...The question remains why family members and juvenile court officials were never notified of Walter's detention...
...This September the government institutionalized the oral trial procedure on a broad scale...
...Walter had his, but I didn't...
...All the evidence we've given them isn't enough...
...So you leave your house, you go one or two blocks, and the cops stop you and take you away, because at night they're always picking people up...
...Its members hope that by working together they will be able to see their cases brought to justice, and achieve reforms in the police and judicial systems that will prevent more deaths...
...Yet there are disturbing continuities with the Dirty War period...
...The merchant sent her son to complain to the police...
...Walter and a group of friends never made it into the concert...
...When family members and neighbors organized themselves to demand justice, people in the capital took notice...
...More evidence...
...Judges had no contact with witnesses, and based their decisions on written testimony recorded by police officials...
...A second autopsy performed on Argaiiaraz showed that he had died from three gunshot wounds to the head, and not a chest injury, as the original death certificate had stated...
...Agustin Olivera, Oscar Aredes, and Roberto Argaiiaraz, 19 to 26 years of age, didn't bother making the trip to Liniers on May 8, 1987...
...Soon after, two vehicles arrived, carrying police officers Jorge Miflo and Isidro Romero, and their superior, Juan Ram6n Balmaceda...
...At 10:30 the following morning, Waiter was taken to the hospital...
...Menem has distanced himself as much as possible from the specific cases of violence which have emerged since he took office in 1989...
...On the way out of the store, one of the three broke a window in the door...
...Within moments Aredes and Olivera were dead...
...Their presence on the street exposes young people most directly to the arbitrariness of police violence...
...His economic policy, which involves dismantling Argentina's traditionally strong welfare state, has created intense social pressures...
...Otherwise you stay.' Walter told me later that at the station he heard them saying 'We have to bring in 40...
...The police arrived and asked for our identification...
...Although the Ministry encourages the situation by pressuring the police to meet the kind of quotas mentioned in the Bulacio case, it does not precisely orchestrate the violence...
...Neighbors claim that they heard three gunshots from the direction of the truck...
...We have the same justice system, and even many of the same judges and police officials that we had under the dictatorship...
...Earlier this year the Commission of Family Members and Victims of Institutional Violence was formed by the parents of a number of youths killed by the police in incidents like these...
...In the hopes of deflecting public attention from the numerous scandals that have plagued his Administration, Menem has returned to a language of 'law and order.' It is convenient for him to allow the police a free rein in acting against 'delinquents,' because this creates the impression of a state that guarantees security in the face of potential 'chaos.' He has even tried to cultivate a new climate of fear, a tactic taken to extremes in July of this year when he opposed the mass mobilizations for increased public school funding by threatening that "more mothers would be walking in the Plaza de Mayo demanding the return of their children...
...Like most witnesses in the case, he was afraid to give his name...
...Meanwhile, witnesses continued to attest that police had beaten Walter during the bus ride...
...Sometimes you want to go to the movies, and you have to go to Liniers or Lugano because there are no theatres here," he said...
...His death in police custody attracted public attention in Argentina, largely because of a series of demonstrations and silent marches which mobilized thousands of high school students demanding a proper investigation into the events of that night...
...Ingeniero Budge sits at the edge of the Riachuelo River, which separates the federal capital of Buenos Aires from the province...
Vol. 26 • December 1992 • No. 3
