Que se Vayan Todos

Killing Piqueteros

The Piquetero movement has been growing across the country and despite a media campaign of criminalisation and warnings from the president that the government was no longer going to tolerate any more road blocks, a large mobilization took place on the 26th of Junecutting some major arteries into Buenos Aires. After dispersing the crowd with teargas, rubber and real bullets, the police hunted piqueteros throughout the city, often firing from the back of cruising pick up trucks. What followed was the cold blooded murder of two organisers, Darrio Santillán and Maximiliano Costequi, both in their early twenties and both from the most radical piquetero network. Darrio was shot in the back at close range while he was helping Maxi who had been shot in the chest . By the end of the day 160 people had been arrested and over a hundred injured. It seems that the whole thing was set up as a stage managed confrontation by the state, but it failed to break the movement and the response from every part the popular rebellion was incredible. Thirty thousand took to the streets in support of the piqueteros, and within days the president went on TV to apologise. The head of the secret service, the minister of justice and the chief of Buenos Aires Police were forced to resign and the police officers involved in the operation were put in jail. Days later Duhalde announced the early elections, brought forward by nearly a year, a clear sign that he is hanging onto power by his finger tips and that in Argentina it is people in the streets who are making politics.

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