A minister attacked with fists after the murder of a driver in Argentina

Daniel Barrientos, driver of the 620 bus line, was 65 years old and had a month to go before retiring. In the early hours of this Monday, at the height of the Buenos Aires town of La Matanza, he was killed with a shot to the chest. In response to the crime, the union declared a total bus strike in the western suburbs of Buenos Aires. Hours later, they blocked the ring road that divides the Argentine capital from the province of the same name and attacked the Buenos Aires Security Minister, Sergio Berni, with their fists and objects, who had approached to try to dissuade them from the measure of force. What happened is a sign of the anger of a large part of the Buenos Aires population with a government that minimizes the problem of insecurity, although surveys place it as the main concern.

The attack against the driver occurred around 4:30 in the morning, according to police sources quoted by local media. Three thieves posed as passengers to get on the unit that Barrientos was driving. Once on the move, they showed their intentions of robbery but a police officer who was traveling in the bus told them to stop and a shootout began. One of the shots hit the driver in the chest, who died instantly. The robbers got out of the vehicle and escaped in a car.

The union that represents the bus drivers, the Union Tranviarios Automotor (UTA), declared a strike in the almost hundred lines that circulate through the western zone of the Buenos Aires suburbs. The UTA warned that attacks have been increasing in recent years and anticipated that they will carry out forceful measures until the authorities take measures to guarantee their safety. “The death of our colleague adds to a number of episodes of insecurity that have been affecting drivers,” the union said in a statement. In April 2018, Leandro Alcaraz, another driver on the same line, was killed with a shot to the chest and another to the skull.

“Nobody shows their faces, I don’t run away like everyone else,” Berni said in front of the cameras that approached the demonstration. His presence warmed the mood. The drivers began to insult him and then attacked him with punches and kicks. As Buenos Aires city police escorted him to safety, stones, debris, sticks, and bottles were thrown at him. The Buenos Aires minister was wounded in the face. “He came to give orders and not bring any solution to so much insecurity. There is nothing to talk about. We are tired”, they responded from the union to justify the attack.

“Let them all go, let them all go,” the drivers chanted at the demonstration held this morning on the highway. That chant, which became popular during the corralito crisis in 2001-2002, is becoming more frequent in mobilizations of workers who are dissatisfied with a political class that they blame for the increase in insecurity and inflation —today above 100%— that devours wages and impoverishes them more every day. With just over half a year to go before the presidential elections and with no better prospects on the horizon, the tension is growing.

“We are all tired. The wells, the robberies, the deaths, the entrances, the drugs. We cannot go with our grandchildren to the squares. I pay taxes so that they take care of me, not so that when I have to leave my house I have to look to one side and to the other,” a neighbor who expressed solidarity with the protesters and joined them denounced before the cameras. Her testimony went viral on the networks.

The opposition took advantage of the incident to attack the management of the Peronist Kicillof in the province of Buenos Aires. The macrismo highlighted that Berni appeared without an escort and had to be protected by police from the Argentine capital, governed by Horacio Rodriguez Larreta, a presidential candidate for the Together for Change coalition. The extreme right also tried to get a profit and assured that Berni’s management “is an absolute failure.”