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 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 Argentine teenagers. Walter and a group of friends never made it into the concert. They waited outside the stadium after the show had started, in the hopes of gaining free admission. 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.
Walter Bulacio became the latest young victim of police violence, which persists despite Argentina’s return to electoral democracy nine years ago. 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.
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.” Jorge, the friend cited in the statement, tells a different version. “We were in front of [the stadium],” he said. “The police arrived and asked for our identification. Walter had his, but I didn’t. They put us in the van anyway. They kept us there for over half an hour, because they were rounding up more people. One officer told me: ‘If we get more, you can leave. Otherwise you stay.’ Walter told me later that at the station he heard them saying ‘We have to bring in 40. We have enough minors now.’ Anyway, on the bus they beat up a few of them, the ones sitting in the back. They hit my sister across the ankles and threw her on the floor.”
In the police station some hours after the arrest, Walter complained of feeling ill and being unable to walk on his own. He was given a glass of water, which he vomited immediately. A doctor was summoned once Walter began to lose consciousness and suffocate, but no treatment was given. Jorge remembers that when he unbuttoned Walter’s pants to make him more comfortable. he noticed bruises across his stomach. At 10:30 the following morning, Walter was taken to the hospital.
A friend notified Walter’s mother late Saturday afternoon that her son was at the police station, too sick to be sent home. “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.” Walter was moved from hospital to hospital three times that evening. When his parents finally saw him at 11 p.m., he was barely conscious, diagnosed with irreversible brain damage. He died the following Thursday.
The official cause of death was changed twice from “serious lesions” to “uncertain” and finally to a brain hemorrhage from natural causes. Meanwhile, witnesses continued to attest that police had beaten Walter during the bus ride. The question remains why family members and juvenile court officials were never notified of Walter’s detention. The case also renewed debates in Congress regarding the constitutionality of a whole set of police edicts which have been in place for decades. These allow the police to detain any citizen without charges under the premise of checking for previous criminal records. According to former juvenile court judge 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.
Why Target Youth?
Why are young people so often the victims of this parallel “justice” system? 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. 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. But as the new political system became consolidated, these kinds of mass mobilizations came to be seen as potential sites of conflict. Already during the government of Raul Alfonsin (1983-9), politics became more a game to be played behind closed doors, with the public relegated to the role of spectator.
This gap between politics and the populace has widened under the presidency of Carlos Menem. His economic policy, which involves dismantling Argentina’s traditionally strong welfare state, has created intense social pressures. In this context the street has once again become an arena of open confrontation with the government. At the same time, cultural projects have suffered the same cuts as other sectors of the government. Rock concerts have been privatized along with everything else, and now take place in stadiums and concert halls with paid admission. This leaves many young people like Walter Bulacio out on the street, looking for a free entrance.
The economic crisis has other social consequences which particularly affect young people. 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 café. Added to this is the dramatic rise in alcohol consumption among adolescents–an activity virtually unheard of a decade ago. 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. Their presence on the street exposes young people most directly to the arbitrariness of police violence.
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 majority of victims were under 25 years of age and lived outside the city. 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 numbers presented in the CELS report may be low. Because of a lack of accessible crime statistics, the researchers had to base their investigation on media reports, admittedly a questionable source. The mainstream media use terms like ‘delinquent’ and ‘thug’ loosely, and publish their share of stories of cops-and-robbers shoot-outs. These stories tend to present only the police’s version of events. Even the ‘critical’ press such as Pagina 12, a daily paper which has been praised for exposing government corruption, rarely ventures outside the immediate area of the capital for a story. An average middle-class porteño (inhabitant of the city of Buenos Aires) is easily left with the impression of a shadowy world of crime, drugs and violence. Stories of ‘confrontations’ in which ‘delinquents’ are killed can produce the same response they did during the dictatorship: “Por algo habrá sido,” (“There must have been a reason.”)
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. 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. In the meantime, people continue to come to them with complaints of police brutality.
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.” 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. 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 pan of police work.
The difference in scale may be attributed in part to the workings of a more open, ‘democratic’ political system. It also derives from the total discredit of the military following the Malvinas War. Since the collapse of the military government, the police force remains the only repressive branch of the state with any legitimacy. Furthermore, the political context has changed; all-out terror is not needed to rein in dissent.
Political power and police repression also operate differently today. The relationship between the executive branch and the police is mediated through the Minister of the Interior, one of the most powerful cabinet posts. 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.
Yet there are disturbing continuities with the Dirty War period. 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. Efforts were made under the Alfonsín government to replace some of the worst police officials, but their successors came from within the system. 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.
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. In 1987, police killed three young men in Ingeniero Budge, a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. When family members and neighbors organized themselves to demand justice, people in the capital took notice.
The Budge case also stood as a turning point in public appraisals of Argentina’s democratic system. 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. Traditional judicial proceedings went on completely behind closed doors. Judges had no contact with witnesses, and based their decisions on written testimony recorded by police officials. Argentina’s first oral proceeding had been the trial in 1985 of the military commanders who had directed the Dirty War. The openness of that investigation had created an air of optimism regarding the possibilities of achieving justice within a freer political system. The Budge case called that optimism into question.
lngeniero Budge sits at the edge of the Riachurelo River, which separates the federal capital of Buenos Aires from the province. Fifteen minutes from the cafés and movie theatres which give Buenos Aires its fame as the great European capital of Latin America, here the streets are dusty and unpaved, there are no sewers, and the nearest telephone is a bus-ride away. A young man explained to reporters from Página 12 what it was like to live in the neighborhood. Like most witnesses in the case, he was afraid to give his name. “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. “There’s nothing here. 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.”
Agustín Olivera, Oscar Aredes, and Roberto Argañaraz, 19 to 26 years of age, didn’t bother making the trip to Liniers on May 8, 1987, They bought beer at the corner store after arguing with the owner, who resisted selling it to them. On the way out of the store, one of the three broke a window in the door. The merchant sent her son to complain to the police. By 7 p.m. the three young men were enjoying their purchase, seated on the sidewalk within a block of their homes. Soon after, two vehicles arrived, carrying police officers Jorge Miño and Isidro Romero, and their superior, Juan Ramón Balmaceda. Only one of the young men was able to get to his feet before the shooting began. Within moments Aredes and Olivera were dead. Argañaraz, wounded, was put in the pickup and taken to hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival. Neighbors claim that they heard three gunshots from the direction of the truck.
The next day, the Commission of Friends and Neighbors of Ingeniero Budge was formed. Neighbors placed flowers, crosses and banners at the street comer where the boys were killed. The case was stalled by various appeals by the defense, who tried to argue that an oral trial was unconstitutional. On April 4, 1990, almost exactly three years after the shootings, the court case against the police officers and the Province began. 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. 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. A second autopsy performed on Argañaraz showed that he had died from three gunshot wounds to the head, and not a chest injury, as the original death certificate had stated. 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.
After a ten-day trial, Isidro Romero was found guilty of homicide and homicidio en riña (homicide in the context of a fight), and sentenced to 12 years. Balmaceda and Miño, found guilty of homicidio en riña, each received five years. District attorney Jorge Reynoso declared his satisfaction with the results: “This time there was justice.” Before he could read his full statement to reporters, however, he was interrupted by Agustín Olivera’s father. “You see, Doctor?” Olivera said. “I was right. Nothing’s happened and as far as I’m concerned there was no conviction. What more does the Justice want? More evidence? All the evidence we’ve given them isn’t enough?”
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 the justice system. “Since 1983 we have democracy in the executive branch, in that we can now elect the president,” he said. “We have democracy in the congress, in that we vote for our representatives. But there has never been a reform of the judiciary. We have the same justice system, and even many of the same judges and police officials that we had under the dictatorship.”
Menem has distanced himself as much as possible from the specific cases of violence which have emerged since he took office in 1989. He has also demonstrated his cynicism regarding the need for reform. This September the government institutionalized the oral trial procedure on a broad scale. The pressure for this judicial reform likely derived at least in part from the Budge case. Yet the president packed the new courts with judges who had been active during the Dirty War.
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 increasedpublic school funding by threatening that “more mothers would be walking in the Plaza de Mayo demanding the return of their children.” 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.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Karen Robert is a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Michigan, specializing in Argentina. Rodrigo Gutierrez Hermelo is a journalist living in Buenos Aires.
