The start of 2006 has been shaken in Argentina by the culmination of the trial of what is known as the Massacre of Avellaneda, which will “pass judgement” on the assassinations of the young piqueteros Maximiliano Kosteki and Darío Santillán, in addition to the criminal repression of hundreds of protestors wounded by war munitions on June 26, 2002, in the locality of Avellaneda, located on the outskirts of the City of Buenos Aires.
The character of impunity throughout the judicial process mounted by the State —and particularly the “center-left” national government of President Kirchner— has turned out to be a textbook case in terms of the class character of the leadership of a State (even one which claims to be “defender of human rights”).
First of all, prior to the start of the trial in the month of May, 2005, the principal case was “beheaded” into four different parts according to the different focus points of repression which emerged during the Massacre of June 26, 2002, with the aim of covering up the unity of the State's repressive plan of the then Peronist President Eduardo Duhalde; moreover, and also prior to the start of the trial, President Kirchner attempted to de-activate the struggle of the popular organizations (headed by the Polo Obrero and the movements in which the youths Kosteki and Santillan were militants) for the investigation of the massacre and the punishment of those materially and principally politically responsible (starting with Duhalde himself and those who were his ministers, some of which today are acting officials in the present national government) with the offering of a “joint commission of investigation” (which never existed)... but failed.
The relatives of the assassinated youths, the organizations in struggle and a group of wounded and survivors of the Massacre, together with the social and student organizations, and Argentine and international human rights organizations formed an Independent Commission in order to take the investigation to the masses and to install at the start of the trial the denunciation of the cover-up role of the national government in relation to the political responsibilities of the Duhalde clique in the planification of the ferocious repression of June 26, 2002.
The trial which lasted almost eight months, moved national public opinion, almost in a manner comparable to the so-called “trial of the military juntas”. Each step in the judicial process confirmed the political denunciation of the organizations prior to the start of proceedings, and also in parralel with its development. The role of the prosecution (accusatory representation of the State) was to unleash all through the trial it accusation of the pair materially responsible for the assassinations of the youths Kosteki and Santillan, while the maneuvers of the prosecution abounded (with the connivance of the Court) so that those politically responsible (the former President Duhalde and his officials) did not even testify, against what was requested in the suits brought by the relatives of the victims. Meanwhile, in a separate trial, a young demonstrator named Hernán Gurián, who was brought to trial for confronting the repression and defending the protesters wounded on June 26, 2002, was conditionally sentenced to a year and a half of prison.
Moreover, the prosecution limited itself to requesting a minor sentence for the police standing trial (outside of the two materially responsible) of simply “obstruction of justice”.
In synthesis, the transmission belt of the present leadership of the Argentine State (Kirchner) in the task of obstruction of justice was the prosecution, with the consent of the Court. With the omission of any punishment for former President Duhalde and all the ministers as politically responsible for the Massacre of June 26, 2002 and the light sanctions for part of the repressive apparatus, the State was protected from head to toes in order to conserve its structure practically intact. The cost of this operation was, of course, the sentencing to life imprisonment of two police officers. In this way, it was all about the “excess” of a police inspector and a corporal in the framework of “legal and ordered” repression.
The words of the father of Dario Santillan, one of the youths assassinated, were more than eloquent: “we cannot suppose that they bring themselves to trial”.
The results of the trial was presented before Argentine society by Kirchner's government as “the end of impunity”; continuing at large Kirchner's immediate presidential predecessor (Eduardo Duhalde) and with the repressive apparatus intact. Mission accomplished.
However, far from having closed a process, the judicial result of this “witness” case of impunity in the popular struggle in Argentina, has awakened, as a product of the agitation of thepopular organizations and the relatives of the victims themselves, a picture of growing rage in the very heart of the Argentine people.
At the same time it covered up, the State also unmasked itself in a case still very strongly felt in the historic tradition of the popular struggle. Apart from various judicial instances already opened by the Massacre of Avellaneda, this trial and its results, threaten with becoming a “boomerang” against the State and the Government. A chapter in the struggle which remains open and which will depend on the deepening of the movement of struggle independent of the State and the government against the impunity of the bourgeois regime.
