JORGE LANATA: 1960-2024
Jorge Lanata, the man who redefined journalism during the past four decades of democracy, died last Monday at the age of 64 after over six months in hospital battling multiple ailments. He burst onto the media scene by founding the newspaper Página/12 in 1987 but escalated to mass audiences with his Sunday television programme Periodismo para Todos (2012-2020), one of many projects characterised by irreverently strident denunciations of corruption. He also coined the word “grieta” to picture Argentina’s polarisation.
GRAFT SCANDALS REACH KICILLOF
Buenos Aires Province Transport Minister Jorge D’Onofrio resigned last Monday after several weeks under the spotlight for a scheme whereby traffic offenders could elude fines thanks to manipulation of court verdicts via legal middlemen in exchange for kickbacks. He will be replaced by Martín Marinucci, close to the 2023 Peronist presidential candidate Sergio Massa like D’Onofrio, who headed the Trenes Argentinos railway system under the preceding Frente de Todos government.
VENEZUELA DENOUNCED IN THE HAGUE
The Foreign Ministry last Thursday denounced Venezuela to the International Criminal Court in The Hague for the “arbitrary arrest and forced disappearance” of Border Guard corporal Nahuel Gallo, who was arrested upon entry into Venezuela last month and is now being held in Caracas, accused of “terrorism, conspiracy and criminal association.” Before last weekend Security Minister Patricia Bullrich categorically denied that Gallo was a "terrorist" while insisting that his entry into Venezuela as father of a child living there was "absolutely legal" at a press conference shared with Foreign Minister Gerardo Werthein. Bullrich then proceeded to demand the Border Guard’s "immediate return," also thanking Brazil for its cooperation.
TOURISM OFFICIAL OUT FOR TRAVELLING
Tourism, Environment & Sports Secretary Daniel Scioli on Monday fired his Tourism undersecretary Yanina Martínez for having started a European holiday after having already flown to London before last weekend. Martínez was one of the few remaining holdovers from the preceding Frente de Todos government of Alberto Fernández. President Javier Milei, who will be remaining in this city throughout the summer had ordered his officials not to vacation abroad although Security Minister Patricia Bullrich has taken her grandsons to Disneyland.
SUPREME COURT NOW TROIKA
Juan Carlos Maqueda turned 75 last Sunday, thus marking his automatic exit from the Supreme Court – now reduced to three justices (Horacio Rosatti, Carlos Rosenkrantz and Ricardo Lorenzetti) with no replacement in sight, given Congress in recess, barring a presidential decree. Two days previously the Córdoba magistrate was given a warm farewell on the steps of the Supreme Court by dozens of officials, friends and relatives complete with orchestra, marred only by Lorenzetti accusing him of having made irregular appointments in his final week.
POST OFFICE FUTURE IN BALANCE
The High Court of the City of Buenos Aires has been handed the case of the Correo Argentino (Post Office) linked to the Macri family by the recent Supreme Court in order to decide whether to revoke its bankruptcy or not. Since 2001 the national government has been pressing the family for debts of almost US$300 million (before interest) related to the Post Office lease held by the Macris between 1997 and 2003 when the Néstor Kirchner government decided to rescind the contract. But now the Supreme Court in the Levinas case has recently ruled that national court decisions may be appealed to the City High Court, which opens the door for the bankruptcy decreed on June 5, 2021 to be lifted. But no decision is expected until after this month’s court holiday. Ex-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner commented that former president Mauricio Macri could not have received a better Christmas present than this Supreme Court ruling, which she described as “flagrantly unconstitutional.”
CROMAÑÓN REMEMBERED
The 20th anniversary of the Cromañón rock club blaze leaving 194 people dead and injuring over 1,400 was marked last Monday by survivors and families of the victims, who renewed their calls for justice, blaming corruption for the 2004 tragedy. An open-air mass was held in Plaza de Mayo to commemorate the disaster while even more people congregated around the Obelisk during the afternoon. Nilda Gómez, mother of a victim, pointed out that over 60 parents of the dead and a score of survivors have died in the 20 years since the inferno, also reading out a letter from her daughter which said: “That night was not an accident or a tragedy, it was a massacre,” calling for memory, truth and justice.
ANOTHER GRANDCHILD IDENTIFIED
With only four days left in 2024, the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo were in danger of striking out for an entire year but just before last weekend their president Estela Barnes de Carlotto was able to officially announce the recovery of the identity of the 138th grandchild born to the missing and snatched during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship. Talking to Radio Splendid, Carlotto insisted that while “138 is a considerable number,” much remains to be done with state assistance essential in a reproach of President Javier Milei for “so many travels and so many absurd, ridiculous, evil and unpardonable things” The 138th grandchild is a lawyer now living in Spain and the son of Marta Enriqueta Pourtalé and Juan Carlos Villamayor, both Montoneros militants.
MEMORY MUSEUM TO BE SHUTTERED?
Employees at the Memory Museum (the former Navy Mechanics School concentration camp) returned to work for the new year on Thursday, only to find that the Haroldo Conti Cultural Centre (denied a budget all last year) had been closed down with "mass dismissals" in the air while the Human Rights Secretariat speaks of “internal restructuring.” They also found that the National Memory Archive, preserving documentation of human rights violations during the 1976-1983 dictatorship, had been closed down, sparking a protest despite the presence of police with water cannons.
ORTEGA WANTED
Federal judge and Supreme Court nominee Ariel Lijo on Monday issued an international arrest warrant to extradite Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, his Vice-President and wife Rosario Murillo and 16 of their underlings to face charges of grave violations of human rights, based on the principle of universal justice. Persecutions for religious reasons, of indigenous communities and of dissident sectors in general and the arrests of journalists were all documented in the 76-page ruling with “arbitrary arrests, murders, torture, the forced disappearance of persons, deportations and media censorship” among the crimes listed.
LEO DAN DEAD AT 82
Romantic singer Leo Dan (an abbreviation of his full name Leopoldo Dante Tévez), who put his native province of Santiago del Estero containing Argentina’s oldest city on the map, died on New Year’s Day in Miami at the age of 82. His career spanned six decades, selling tens of millions of records, and last year he was still up to touring California and Las Vegas. Despite the devotion to his native province expressed in “Santiago querido,” he had been living in Miami for the past four decades, following an unsuccessful bid to enter Argentine politics soon after the return to democracy.
OLIVIA HUSSEY DEAD AT 73
Olivia Hussey, who starred as a teenage Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 film Romeo and Juliet, garnering her a Golden Globe, died on December 27 at the age of 73, her family announced. Buenos Aires-born Hussey was 15 when she and her co-lead Leonard Whiting starred in the Oscar-winning adaptation of William Shakespeare’s tragedy. In 2023, the two actors filed a lawsuit against the studio alleging child abuse over a controversial nude scene featuring the pair, who were minors at the time. A judge dismissed the lawsuit later that year. Born to an Argentine opera singer and a British legal secretary, Hussey moved with her family from Buenos Aires to London when she was seven years old. She later starred in the 1974 slasher film Black Christmas and the 1978 adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile, among other projects. She is survived by her husband, their three children and a grandchild.
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