The Buenos Aires mayor’s office reported in a statement that a man between the ages of 40 and 45 who was demonstrating at the Obelisk, an emblematic monument of the Argentine capital, suffered a cardiac arrest and was transferred to the Ramos Mejía hospital.
“For more than half an hour, resuscitation maneuvers were carried out until his death was confirmed,” added the mayor’s office.
Local authorities did not identify the victim because he did not have an identity document. Militants who participated in the protest identified him as Facundo Molares, a left-wing activist who was a member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) for more than a decade and who currently worked as a photojournalist for alternative media.
The capital’s Minister of Security and Justice, Eugenio Burzaco, confirmed to the local channel América that the activist suffered a heart attack while he was under arrest. He explained that when the police wanted to disperse the protesters, they responded “with sticks.”
“After that, the police arrested five attackers and within minutes one of them began to suffer a cardiorespiratory arrest,” said the official.
A video captured by a witness and viralized on social networks shows the apparently unconscious man while police officers held him to the ground.
The woman asks the agents to release him because “he’s purple, he’s having a heart attack, call an ambulance.”
“We got together to hold an assembly with our compañeros to talk about the situation in the country… We don’t know why (the police intervened), we didn’t do anything, we didn’t block the street. We were not violent, we did nothing,” activist Delia Delgado, from the Teresa Rodríguez organization, one of those who had called the demonstration, told the AP. “They dragged compañero Facundo Molares. They made a circle with the policemen and he, in the middle… They killed their compañero”.
Delgado explained that “the same police officer who was suffocating him with his knee gave him CPR.”
The mayor’s office of Buenos Aires attributed the cardiac arrest in the statement to “risk factors.” It added that the body was transferred to the judicial morgue for autopsy.
The mayor of Buenos Aires, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, who is a presidential candidate for the opposition coalition Together for Change, supported the actions of his police.
“I want to highlight and fully support the actions of the City Police, which acted with professionalism, containing the acts of violence. In the City, violence is the limit, ”he expressed on his social networks.
In return, different human rights organizations questioned the police behavior and demanded the clarification of the case.
“Dying for participating in a protest has nothing to do with democratic life,” said the Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS).
The Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo said in a statement that “we repudiate the brutal repression of the City Police that caused the death of Facundo Molares. We stand in solidarity with his relatives and demand that the culprits be investigated and punished ”.
A Buenos Aires prosecutor’s office is investigating the incident.
Molares joined the FARC at the beginning of this century. Nicknamed “Camilo, the Argentine”, he was a political organizer and collaborated in the assembly of student centers and the labor movement, according to what he detailed in a recent interview with the state agency Télam. In 2018 he left the FARC and settled in Bolivia.
The Colombian justice accused Molares for the kidnapping of councilor Armando Acuña, a case for which he was arrested in 2021 in southern Argentina. The justice of his country rejected the extradition. He was currently a member of the Popular Rebellion group, a faction that broke away from the Communist Party.
The protest this Thursday had been called by different left-wing organizations and social movements “against the electoral farce and the democracy of the people”, four days before the primaries that will define the candidates for the October general elections.
The death of the protester is the second tragic event that mourns the run-up to the elections after the death on Wednesday of an 11-year-old girl in an assault that led the main political forces to suspend the campaign closing acts.
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Journalist Almudena Calatrava in Buenos Aires contributed to this report.
FOUNTAIN: Associated Press
