Gimnasia y Esgrima 1 Argentinos Juniors 2
Phew! What a relief. The Red Bugs finally returned to winning ways after six games. And well deserved it was too. However they play out the last few games of the season, Argentinos are assured of comfortable mid-table safety but nonetheless played this one with passion. Gimnasia fear relegation and needed to win, but were simply not very good.
They took the lead fifteen minutes into the second half with a goal from Jose Vizcarra who was left unmarked in the penalty area from a Gimnasia corner. Argentinos equalised with an offside goal from Gabriel Hauche. Then Gonzalo Prosperi scored the winner with a back-heeler off the post while he was lying on the ground, if you can picture that!
This match was played in the city of La Plata, about an hour south of Buenos Aires, and home to two first division sides – Gimnasia y Esgrima and the current South American champions, Estudiantes.
It’s a pleasant university city with a fine cathedral. It’s also the home town of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and a museum housing some of the best dinosaur finds anywhere in the world.
But it’s a place that I’ll always associate with the worst excesses of Argentine police corruption and brutality.
The tone was set by Miguel Etchecolatz, the chief of police in the city during military rule in Argentina between 1976 and 1983. It’s difficult to compile a list of the worst abusers of human rights during a nightmare in which an estimated thirty-thousand people were kidnapped, tortured and killed. But Etchecolatz would certainly figure in the top ten.
He was sentenced in 2006 to life in prison for kidnap, torture and murder. The day before the sentence, a retired labourer, Julio Lopez, a victim of torture who had given evidence at the trial, disappeared. He’s not been seen since.
Where is Julio Lopez?
There has been a huge campaign across Argentina for information about his whereabouts but his family suspect he was abducted by supporters of the military regime, police officers or former police officers sending a stark message to other potential witnesses in the countless human rights trials clogging up the country’s legal system. It later transpired that judges, lawyers and other witnesses in the Etchecolatz trial were threatened.
In December last year investigators discovered the remains of hundreds of people at a former detention centre just behind a police station in La Plata. They said the evidence showed that the bodies were thrown into a pit, covered in fuel then set alight alongside tyres to cover the smell of burning flesh.
The day the discovery was announced I found myself in the course of my duties as the then BBC South America correspondent in a mini-van distributing condoms to the transvestite street workers of La Plata. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7793183.stm) I was travelling with ex and current prostitutes who were running their own health clinic for the city’s sex workers.
La Plata has a thriving sex trade, catering for all tastes. Many of the men and women, usually from neighbouring Paraguay or Argentina’s poor, northern provinces, are coerced into the industry. A large number are underage, working in seedy hovels at the end of dirt roads on the outskirts of the city.
I visited one brothel – a co-operative run by a group of men and women – near the centre of the city. My host told me that he paid the local police four-hundred dollars a month for protection.
“Protection from what?” I asked him.
“They tell me, it’s protection from third parties,” he replied.
I think it’s fair to say that most Argentines have a poor opinion of their police forces and do their best to steer clear of them. Of course, that’s not always possible.
One friend told me her great aunt had died. I expressed my condolences and asked when the funeral would be.
“We don’t know,” I was told. “We’re trying to raise the money to pay the police for the certificate to release the body.”
The old lady had died of natural causes but the bureaucracy demands a certificate to verify that. With a combination of grief and the knowledge that any complaint will only meet more bureaucracy, the family decided it was easier simply to pay the bribe and move on.
The corruption is so endemic that it’s difficult to know where any reform of the system would start, should the political will ever arise to confront it.
I came across corruption at its lowest level on a simple trip to a new takeaway restaurant in my neighbourhood to buy some empanadas – little pasties filled with meat, cheese or tuna. The policeman in front of me collected his food and walked out without paying.
“He gets them for free?” I asked the cook.
“If we don’t want problems,” he shrugged. “He gets a few free samples a couple of times a week for him and his mates.”
There are no doubt some fine Argentine police officers. Many brave men are killed every year in the line of duty. And if, by any chance, you are an Argentine police man or woman reading this blog, I’m sure you are one of the good ones.
The city of Buenos Aires government, sick of being policed by the national men and women in blue, has been trying to establish its own force. But it’s become embroiled in farce even before a Buenos Aires bobby has collared his first villain.
Thin Blue Line
The first proposed boss, Jorge Palacios, had to resign and is under investigation for allegedly covering up evidence after the attack on the Jewish culture centre in Buenos Aires in 1994 that killed more than eighty people. Another major police player is embroiled in a phone tapping scandal.
The new police force is the baby of the mayor of Buenos Aires, Mauricio Macri, who in 1991 was himself kidnapped – by a gang of policemen. In fact, the assumption when anyone is kidnapped in Argentina is usually that current or former police officers are somehow involved.
My only brush with the local law was some years ago on my first visit to Argentina when the taxi I was travelling in with my wife and her aunt was pulled over by a traffic cop. He was a corpulent fellow who pointed a machine gun at us as we lined up against the wall. It might have been nerves but I found myself giggling, until my wife whispered that I’d need to present some form of ID. Not to do so was a criminal offence.
All I had on me was my Hackney library card – I never left the house without it – which you won’t be surprised to learn impressed our interrogator no end. He sent us on our way with a cheery smile. Nowadays I’d use my Argentinos Juniors membership card.
Anyway, back to the football. The previous leaders, Banfield, on Sunday lost their unbeaten record with a 2-1 home defeat to Racing Club. So Newell’s Old Boys took advantage with a 1-0 win over Colon to go top of the table with just three games to go.
