un poco de justicia

The big news from yesterday: Catholic priest Christian von Wernich was sentenced to life in prison for his role in assasinations and tortures during the dictatorship. He was found guilty of involvement ("co-authorship") of 7 murders, 31 cases of torture and 42 kidnappings. It was the first conviction of someone from the Catholic Church in relationship to crimes committed during the military dictatorship and is important demonstration of the Church's complicity in the torture and murder of 30,000 people. (Hugo tells me as I write this that in some masses, priests even blessed the instruments of torture). Von Wernich served as the police chaplain of the Buenos Aires police during the dictatorship and was often present at torture sessions using his role as priest to try to extract "confessions" from torture victims. The Church still denies any official involvment in the acts of state terrorism carried out by the dictatorship, maintaining that some individuals were involved of their own personal accord (umm yeah right).

I watched the sentencing hearing on TV which was intense -- von Wernich's lawyers asked for his absolution and von Wernich himself spoke, quoting the Bible and speaking of "false witnesses". The courtroom was full of family members of victims, Mothers of Plaza de Mayo and other human rights activists. At one point the hearing was interupted for a bomb threat. The judge announced the sentence around 7:30 to a display of fireworks (I really good fireworks display which I wonder who organized/paid for?) and the cheers of hundreds of protesters outside. Although in many ways it is too little, too late, it is still good to see that some justice is being carried out. But as one of the prosecution lawyers said -- there are still a lot more trials that need to happen and we are still missing Jorge Julio Lopez.


the story from pagina 12 explains everything better than I could

el precio de los tomates

the price of tomatoes -- it's the talk all over the city -- at every single party, dinner, event i went to last week people were talking about tomatoes. i overheard people on the colectivo talking about the price of tomatoes. so what's the deal? the price of tomatoes has reached a ridiculous high -- as much as 20 pesos per kilo in some parts of the city. this is, of course, while the government continues to claim that inflation is at 0%. prices are so high that there's now a boycott of tomatoes (the prices have got to drop if nobody buys the tomatoes and they start to rot, right?) and a friend working at a pizzeria tells me that they've stopped making all the pizzas that have tomato slices (i.e. my favorite la napolitana). so here's to a tomato-less spring...

a week of rock

i got back from chile on monday and had a busy busy week in buenos aires:
tuesday propagandhi played in the teatrito -- not a bad show but a bit weird because of the lack of band-audience interaction/communication (mostly a language thing?) we definitely stalked the band after the show and guessing that they would show up in the Bauen, hung out in the bar there until they showed up and managed to meet the band and hang out with the drummer.
friday attaque played in escobar -- really far away (to the north of the city so passing san isidro and passing tigre) so i got there late but still in time to catch a good part of the show. they played a really good set with lots of my favorite songs, including the best of the new disk (cartonero, buenos aires en llamas, ejercito de salvacion) and great old songs (chicos y perros, espadas y serpientes, donde las aguilas se atreven, etc). only complaint was that it was a little short and very far away, but still worth the 2+ hour bus ride.
saturday a peña for the red libertaria's anti-electoral campaign. really nice to see some folks that aren't completely caught up in election bullshit (as i speak toty's campaign is still going a ful)
sunday there was an event in plaza de mayo commemorating che guevara (40 years after his death) with bands and exhibits all day. i just went in the evening to see karamelo santo -- incredible. manos de filipi and 2 minutos also played of course. and i'll just finish by saying that fans of la 25 are really obnoxious. but still, free rock in the plaza de mayo is something that should happen more often.