A column of protesters arrived this Thursday at one of the beaches of Lago Escondido located in front of the ranch of British magnate Joe Lewis, after another group was prevented from entering the Tacuifí public road due to the action of rural laborers who work on that property.
In statements to Télam, the president of the Interactive Foundation to Promote the Culture of Water (Fipca), Julio César Urien, offered details about the progress of the march after the incidents reported on Wednesday, when several participants of the Seventh March were attacked by Sovereignty to Lago Escondido.
“Column 2 of the mountain ‘Juana Azurduy’ arrived on the beach in front of Joe Lewis’s mansion. His people say they have to leave by a private road. We do not accept that. If they cannot go down the public road of Tacuifí, they will They are going to camp for a week until they receive a favorable response”explained Urien, who heads column 1 along with other political, social and union leaders.
He also detailed the situation of the injured protester Gabriel Berrozpeson of the bank trade unionist Eduardo Berrozpe, who after the attack on Wednesday was “transferred to the Bariloche hospital for security reasons.”
“We know that he has an injury to his nasal septum and apparently a broken legbut they transferred him because there is no security in El Bolsón,” he completed.
They had to evacuate Jorge Rachid
During the afternoon of this Thursday the doctor and Peronist leader Jorge Rachid was evacuatedwho had reached the mirror of water next to column 2 of the mountain.
An ambulance from the town of El Foyel was withdrawn by doctors on board by a “preventive” decision and is located in El Bolsón.
“I’m fine. A doctor came, took my blood pressure and asked me to evacuate preventively”, He commented on the moment he agreed to return. Likewise, he confidently said: “The column that is camping in front of Lewis’s is going to leave by the Tacuifí road, I guarantee it.”
Regarding the attack on Wednesday, the spokeswoman for the Presidency, Gabriela Cerrutticonsidered that “it does not attract attention” because these lands, he said, are used “to conspire against the division of powers, against the Republic and against the institutional order.”
“There is a landowner in Lago Escondido who has a number of lands in Argentina and who uses his mansion to take media owners, judges and government officials of (Horacio Rodríguez) Larreta there to conspire and make agreements to persecute to a political sector,” the spokeswoman said at a press conference.
During the attack there were also The deputy and block leader of the Frente de Todos del Parlasur, Gastón Harispe, and the leader of the Socialist Workers Movement (MST) Celeste Fierro, who once again repudiated the events, were wounded.
“There was a persecution that could have been a tragedy due to the violence unleashed. We retreated scattered. They hit me with something on the temple that left me fainting on the floor. I managed to get up and they hit me from all sides on foot and with horses”, Harispe related to Télam.
The deputy explained that a group was entering “through the public road called Huella Andina” when the “persecution” began by Lewis’s peons.
“A group of us entered from behind through another public path called Huella Andina, entering 500 meters behind them. When we approached to chat and exit through the closed main entrance, we were greeted with a stone,” he said.
Later, according to Harispe, policemen and the commissioner arrived “all without weapons, transported by the same attackers.”
For his part, Fierro indicated that this attack “is a consequence” of the existence of a “parallel state in Patagonia.”
“Yesterday (for Wednesday) is a consequence of what we have been denouncing for a long time, it is not surprising, shows that it is a British enclave in Patagonia. What happened to us is very serious, but it is necessary to mark it so that this parallel state ends,” said the social leader who is part of the Left Unity Front (FITU) in statements to AM990 radio.
Fierro explained that the road was closed by an iron fence, which contradicts last year’s court ruling.
“When we entered a mountain road and arrived at the road, which since September of last year the court ordered to be opened, they ended up throwing stones at us, the horses on top of it and sticks,” he stressed.
Criminal complaint for the attacks
In this scenario, the former judge and legal adviser of one of the organizations of the march, Daniel Llermanos, filed a criminal complaint in the federal court of Bariloche for “aggravated injuries due to treachery and premeditated commission of numerous people, illegal deprivation of liberty and aggravated threats.”
“We have come to denounce the commission of various crimes, such as aggravated illegal deprivation of liberty, coercive threats aggravated by the use of weapons and to compel and abandon a province and aggravated injuries – the severity of which has not yet been determined,” he tweeted. Call us along with the text of the complaint.
And he added: “The criminal responsibility for the fact that we denounce is not limited to the perpetrators, but extends to the mediate author or instigator, Joe Ted Lewis.”
At the same time, the lawyer and former national senator for Río Negro Magdalena Odardawho filed an amparo in the legal case for free access to the lake, requested the resignation of the security minister of that province, Betiana Minor, and its police chief, Osvaldo Tellería, for “failing to act” in the face of the “attacks”.
“The chief of Police and the Minister of Security should have protected the life and health of citizens and abide by the judicial order issued the day before by the amparo judge of San Carlos de Bariloche, who ordered that the physical integrity of all people”, indicated the legal representatives of Odarda through a statement.
Too Various leaders and social and political organizations repudiated the “usurpation and violence” of the attack, among which are the Argentine Banking Association and the Autonomous CTA of Río Negro.
The writer and journalist did the same Mempo Giardinellimember of the Coordinating Table for the Defense of Sovereignty over the Paraná River and the Magdalena Canal, who considered that “Lewis’s presence in Argentina is scandalous.”
“You have to expel him. Lewis is a persona non grata for the Argentine people and this is the obvious and what is requested is the expulsion of the country,” Giardinelli told Télam from the mobilization.
