Buenos Aires. A militant from a left-wing organization that was demonstrating in the heart of Buenos Aires against the political system a few days before the primaries in Argentina died on Thursday due to cardiorespiratory arrest that he suffered apparently while the police held him to the ground during an operation to disperse the protest.
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.
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 partner”.
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.
A Buenos Aires prosecutor’s office is investigating the incident.
The protest 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 general elections in October.
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.
