ARGENTINE – 10 thousand people took the streets of the city to remember the massacre and the impunity of its perpetrators. The Frente Popular Darío Santillan organized the demonstration that ended in front of the civil municipality with people lighting candles in the memory of their martyrs.
THE MASSACRE
“We believe that cutting roads and using other methods of struggle is the only way to change things here, in Argentina”, said Darío Santillán in 2002, a young man who had decided to join the so-called piquetero movements that since the 1990s had been gaining prominence with these methods of protest as the crisis worsened in the country. He could not have imagined that months later his name, together with that of Maximiliano Kosteki, whom he did not know, would be forever linked to Argentine history.
“The murders of Darío and Maxi changed the course of history,” says Leonardo Santillán, Darío’s brother, who followed in their footsteps and today leads a social movement that bears his brother’s name.
Argentina had just suffered its worst social and economic breakdown with the December 2001 crisis. The confiscation of Argentineans’ bank deposits -the corralito, as it was called- had unleashed the anger about a crisis that was affecting more and more people and ended up catapulting the resignation of the then president Fernando de la Rúa. The year 2001 was ending in the midst of social protests that did not cease, with the so-called “cacerolazos”, mostly from the middle classes, and the pickets, which sought to make visible and demand help for the most vulnerable.
In this context, on January 1, the then Peronist senator Eduardo Duhalde was elected by the Argentine congress to complete the term of the resigned president, put the situation on track and call elections again. But the months passed and the social protest continued.
On that day the social movements, the piqueteros, had announced a new day of protests and street blockades, including the Pueyrredón bridge, which links the Province of Buenos Aires with the capital, and which was a sort of symbol for the demonstrators because in that way they were able to make visible their demands for more social assistance. But the government wanted to prevent it.
“This cut was pre-announced as a very strong cut, a very strong action. There were rumors and rumors,” recalled Felipe Solá, who at the time was governor of the province and, therefore, the top chief of the Buenos Aires Police.
The first-person memory of the photos that changed everything
“There was a very, very hot social climate, where we can say that Duhalde was being pressured to bring order and the organizations were getting stronger and demanding more political space”, recalls Pepe Mateos, photographer of the newspaper Clarín, who was on the scene covering the events. His photos would be decisive to know what had really happened and to unmask the first official version of the police, which denied its responsibilities and spoke of fights between different sides of the demonstrators.
“At one point I began to see some shots that I identified as not being the usual rubber bullet shots,” says Mateos, who was in the vicinity of the bridge taking photos. “A lot of things happened very quickly, but very intense. A lot of gas, a lot of shots.”
The police had begun to break up the protest to prevent the demonstrators from occupying the bridge with a virtual manhunt, which started on the bridge and ended at the Avellaneda train station, a few blocks from the site.
“When I arrived at the station, I called it a day, I said ‘that’s it, the people have dispersed the march, they achieved what they wanted, which was that the bridge should not be cut, that the organizations should not be there’. They were no longer there, there was no more resistance on the bridge,” he recalls.
However, when he entered the station hall, he realized he was wrong. “When I entered the station I saw Maxi’s body there, which was a surprise because I saw him (and) he no longer had any sign of life. And immediately Darío appears and crouches down next to Maxi, takes his pulse, grabs him by the wrist and at that moment shots are heard, the police enter, (former commissioner) Fanchiotti enters with (former deputy) Acosta and I think another officer who I don’t remember the name.”
Mateos with his camera was witnessing a moment as unique and defining as it was atrocious. “Dario raises his hand, raises his arm and runs away. I am standing against the wall. I hear two shots, I can’t reach, I can’t look, I hear shots and when I go out to the courtyard Darío is lying on the ground. There the police drag him out, they drag him out. There is a whole trail of blood,” he says. “Then they load him into a pickup truck and load Maxi’s body as well.”
“Remembering that is very painful,” says Alberto Santillán, Darío’s father, who still finds it hard to look at the photos and images of that moment. He knew that his son was going to participate in the demonstrations, but he could never have imagined that ending.
“I started to watch the news and my brother called me and said ‘look what is happening, they are repressing’. My sister called me and asked me if I knew anything because she was watching what was happening. Well, 20 minutes later my brother called me again and said ‘I’ll pick you up’. Two minutes later Maxi’s name had already appeared, if I’m not mistaken. And then I saw the image of Darío when they put him in the van and there they gave his name and surname. It was Darío. At that moment I dropped everything I had in my hand,” he recalls 20 years later, trying to hold back his tears.
“Darío Santillán, my brother, was murdered while helping Maxi, a person he didn’t know. He was giving him resuscitation. Darío was 21 years old at the time,” says Leonardo Santillán.
The investigation into Kosteki and Santillán’s death
However, at the beginning, the official version was that Kosteki and Santillán had died in clashes between different piquetero groups, denying any responsibility to the police forces.
“We did not go too far, we were only carrying rubber bullets; in this case, helmets, and the famous tonfas, which are our hand weapons, which are not firearms”, responded, categorically, to the press the then commissioner Alfredo Fanchiotti in charge of the operation.
“But this big lie put together by the government is falling down. It falls down because there were two people who had big enough balls like Ruso Kowalewicz and Pepe Mateos”. Photographers both, who were able to portray on the spot everything that had really happened.
“If it hadn’t been for them, I think it would have been closed as a confrontation between picketers. But the whole lie is falling apart,” he says. Those photographs and later the video images taken by the official TV channel left no doubt about what had happened and President Duhalde himself had to admit it.
“Once again those who should guard order are the ones who have carried out this atrocious hunt”, he would say publicly a few hours later, in the prelude to a new political crisis that these events were generating.
“Darío could have kept running to catch the train and he stayed. He saw Maxi’s body and stayed there. He didn’t leave him until the end and the madness of shooting, of shooting when he runs away, I don’t think it can be explained. We don’t know why the police had that way. It was really totally unnecessary.
According to the justice system, Kosteki and Santillán were murdered by the then police commissioner Alfredo Fanchiotti and the former non-commissioned officer Alejandro Acosta. In 2006 they were sentenced to life imprisonment. However, Justice never advanced in the intellectual authors and political responsibilities and the convicted never revealed it.
“The trial lasted eight months. You can imagine that, for each witness, the images were played again at the station. There is not a single time that my soul doesn’t break,” says the father. “There are days when it becomes very heavy. There are days when you are overcome with anguish and days when you wish enormously that a second would appear and say ‘pa, I’m fine'”.
The deaths of Kosteki and Santillán precipitated the departure of Eduardo Duhalde, who was flirting with the possibility of running for the presidency. Instead, he brought forward the elections and excluded himself from the political race.
This resignation made it possible for a sector of Peronism to choose a governor from Patagonia, practically unknown in the national scene, as its candidate for the presidency. Thus, on May 25, 2003, Néstor Kirchner became president of Argentina. A new political era began: Kirchnerism, which still lasts today. Just like the piquetero groups, which today, 20 years later, continue to block the streets with the same demands.
