Institutional brutalities

By Sebastián Lacunza
Editor-in-Chief

Some of Tucumán’s police officers appear to be used to having fun filming their torture of detainees. In September 2014, shocking images went beyond whatsapp and fatally ended up on social networks. They showed a handcuffed man whose face was repeatedly struck against the floor. A few days ago, another whatsapp message escaped from certain police networks and made it to the website of the newspaper La Gaceta. In this case, the victim of the police brutality was a teenager and the case took place in a police station close to the capital of the province. As if it were a method, both videos share some scenes — pretending to be angry, the torturers begin to frantically shake their prisoners’ heads.
Were they two isolated incidents, “abhorrent” as they were called in turn by police and judicial authorities? Mothers who denounce torture and abuse against their children are far from being the exception in the poor neighborhoods surrounding the centre of the provincial capital, such as La Bombilla. A young man with mental retardation rendered unable to speak because a cattle prod had been used on his tongue is not something of the past in a province that was terribly damaged by the state terrorism 40 years ago.
According to national and international reports, teenagers, young men and the poor are the victims par excellence of torture in prisons and police stations, but the relationship between the Tucumán police and the middle class also suffered a severe deterioration in two recent milestones. The first came with the traumatic police mutiny of December 2013, which caused three deaths and showed those officers who allegedly demanded a salary increase involved in lootings and thefts (there are 47 policemen accused). The second break took place on 24 August, when the protest alleging fraud in the central 9 de Julio square led to arbitrary arrests and beatings committed near — or even within — the Government House.
None of this has anything to do with Governor José Alperovich. Thus, the circle makes sense when the governor — elected 12 years ago — repeatedly justifies attempted lynchings against alleged offenders (“people are fed up,” he says) or when his wife and national Senator Beatriz Rojkés appeals to the most uncouth social stigmatization and sexist commonplaces.
So, some people may wonder why the repeated electoral successes of Alperovich, his allies and Peronism in general. The obvious (though, of course, insufficient) economic recovery from the collapse of 2001 and those comprehensive plans that helped to overcome the social abyss could not be reasons enough to explain the continuity of Peronism if the political alternative offered better institutional standards while ensuring social welfare.
There are lots of mentions about republican values and dignity of the poor. As the Republican Force party — founded by the massive killer and de facto governor Antonio Domingo Bussi — is now on the margins, a broad alliance built around the UCR retook political space in the last elections.
The Agreement for the Bicentennial front — which includes some emigrated from Bussi’s force — did not dodge the temptation of multiple lists and patronage sins that mark the elections in Tucumán, though it took benefit from them in a less drastic form than Peronism.
The lawmaker and gubernatorial candidate José Cano (UCR) ignored the results of the August elections and issued a risky allegation of fraud. The hectic political environment, encouraged by the preaching of certain media, echoed his stance.
Last Wednesday, the first division of the Tucumán Administrative Appeals court ruled the nullification of the elections, an unprecedented decision since 1983, when Argentina recovered democracy. Such a momentous decision — it is assumed — should be based on conclusive evidence of a system created to generate a massive transfer of tens or hundreds of thousands of votes from one party to another. It was not the case. By contrast, in about 50 pages, judges Salvador Norberto Ruiz and Ebe Lopez Piossek mention several dozens burnt ballot boxes (committed both by Peronist and opposition activists, as has been shown), gloss political commentary and media reports and — more accurately — describe some flaws in the process which were not decisive for the general results.
In the abscence of concrete evidence that reverses the gap of over 111,000 votes between the Peronist Juan Manzur and the UCR’s Cano, the two judges who invalidated the election spent many lines of text reproducing primitive political analysis based on prejudices and clichés. Ruiz and Piossek shipwrecked among discriminatory arguments about why the poor, middle class and the rich people vote; some vague ideas about how those who have clear ideas should help those confused, reopening a debate suposedly overcome by the electoral reform in 1912.
The Tucumán political confrontation escalated into a toxic strategy of rejecting the results of the election, something almost unheard of in this 32-year-old democracy. The common point between a provincial police which tortures detainees and a court trying to discriminate the quality of the vote is the institutional brutality.
@sebalacunza