Film, vigil mark anniversary of Argentine activist Santiago Maldonado's disappearance
The one-year anniversary of the disappearance of artist and Indigenous rights supporter Santiago Maldonado is being marked today by a vigil in Buenos Aires' Plaza de Mayo square, and by the premiere of a documentary film dealing with the case.
The film, El camino de Santiago (Santiago's Path), was directed by Tristán Bauer and written by Omar Quiroga and Florencia Kirchner, the daughter of former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
A death in Patagonia
Maldonado, then a 28 year-old tattoo artist and muralist, had arrived on July 31, 2017, at the site of a protest camp near Epuyén, Chubut Province, in Argentina's windswept Patagonia region.
The camp had been organized by members of the Mapuche people to demand the release of a jailed leader and the return of ancestral lands claimed by the Mapuche but owned by the Italian firm Benetton and British investor Joe Lewis - a personal friend of President Mauricio Macri.
The protest camp was assaulted on August 1 by a National Gendarmerie (militarized police) detachment, acting without a court order. Witnesses stated seeing police beat and detain several fleeing protesters - including Maldonado, who was never seen alive again.
Police never confirmed the arrest, and denied wrongdoing - but human rights groups have accused Macri of being part of a cover-up.
Security Minister Patricia Bullrich's initial claims that no shots were fired were contradicted by cell phone footage. Her assertions that Maldonado was "hiding in Chile" were likewise later disproven by cell phone data presented by Chile's then-President Michelle Bachelet.
Bullrich's chief adviser, Pablo Noceti, was photographed near the scene and according to witnesses personally supervised the crackdown. Noceti and the chief suspect in the death, Gendarmerie officer Emmanuel Echazú, were later promoted.
A subsequent Mapuche protest on November 25 resulted in the death of 22 year-old Rafael Nahuel, who was shot in the back by the same forces.
Mystery upstream
Maldonado's body was ultimately found after 78 days on October 17 floating on the banks of the Chubut River - but around 1,300 feet upstream of the site of the incident.
His being found that far upstream has led his family and rights groups to suspect his body may have been planted.
Argentine forensic expert Enrique Prueger published a study on July 26 that found that the body could not have been in the river for more than two weeks, rather than the "55 to 72 days" claimed in the official autopsy report.
Pollen found on Maldonado's jacket, according to analyst Leticia Povilauskas, appears to confirm Prueger's findings.
"It's very strange that the body was found where it was, when we've searched those same places and there was nothing," the victim's brother, Sergio Maldonado, pointed out at the time. "We want to know the truth."
At: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.infobae.com%2Fsociedad%2F2018%2F07%2F25%2Fse-estrena-el-camino-de-santiago-un-documental-sobre-el-caso-maldonado-que-exige-respuestas-al-estado%2F
Santiago Maldonado, 1989-2017.
His death garnered international attention, and put Macri's use of force to quash dissent on the defensive.
= new reply since forum marked as read
and the revelation of what a huge response the government actually got from the population, concerning Santiago Maldonado, something which slipped by almost ignored by the US corporate media, as usual.
People who haven't been to the region have only what has been mentioned in US corporate media to serve as their awareness of Argentina, which is clearly almost 100% wrong, for decades upon decades!
Looks as if this documentary could go far toward lighting up the darkness we've all been swimming in throughout our lives about life south of the southern US border. So many of those problems have been duplicated here over hundreds of years, due to the perverse nature of people who chose the worship of things and power over the experience of growing out of primitive self-centered dead-end existance and growing toward the light and real freedom beyond the reach of the oligarchs and their militia they use to hold their own citizens under their power.
Santiago Maldinado by not bowing and scraping before the Grifter-in-chief, as long as he was alive, was a thumb in the eye of the would-be dictator. Bulldog Bullrich had to throw a solution together, and it was about as bad as possible. Shameful for the whole nation, and clearly many expected it would happen.
It was interesting seeing her speaking, as she revealed so much about herself in motion, with her peculiar, undeveloped speaking voice, her shifting, evasive, guilty eyes and utter lack of conviction. As soon as I saw her speaking, all the previous still photos I've seen of her started swimming before my eyes, and I realized she does carry a very heavy sense of guilt about her growing list of crimes against the human race. That has to be what's behind her dance with the spirits!
She loves the power Macri has given her, she's not ever going to give it up in time to get her soul back!
scarf tied around her neck during her happy hours.
Is there some particular association the public makes between Bullrich and the US, or is it just the artist's way of noting her strong ties to the world-wide military industrial complex? It jumped right out at me when I saw it today.
