Saturday marked the sixth anniversary since 16-year-old Luciano Arruga disappeared after being stopped by the Buenos Aires police on the night of 31st January 2009. It took five years and nine months of tireless protests and insistence from his family before his body was finally found, buried in an unmarked grave in Chacarita cemetery. He had been killed the same night he disappeared after being hit by a car while running across Av. General Paz, the busy highway that marks the boundary between the city and province of Buenos Aires.
Luciano’s family continue to attribute his death to the police, which had been harassing him for months because he refused to steal for them. This year, as every other year, they led a march of social organisations and human rights groups to demand justice for Luciano and all cases of institutional violence. The Indy joined the peaceful manifestation in Lomas del Mirador, and spoke with Luciano’s sister, Vanesa Orieta, who led the tireless search for her brother from the day he disappeared.
“To be honest, when this began I knew my brother was dead,” Orieta told The Indy. “Luciano had refused to steal for the police, he had been detained countless times, he had been threatened, he had been tortured at the police station, so we couldn’t really think anything else.
“Finding his body on 17th October was difficult. It always will be hard – he had a whole life to live and it was taken from him – but it provides some relief from the tortuous state that his disappearance had left the family in.”
The march began around midday in Lomas del Mirador, a suburb in Greater Buenos Aires. Hundreds congregated at the leafy square at Peru and Pringles, where Luciano was last seen the night he disappeared. Among those gathered were the relatives and friends of other victims of state violence, either killed by security forces or disappeared in democracy.
Orieta led the chant: “I knew it, I knew it, it was the police that killed Luciano” while marching to the ex-police station where he had been illegally detained and tortured a few months before he disappeared, in September 2008. She called on members of the community to “never forget” that their local police officers were responsible for the death of a 16-year-old boy.
The protest ended with a presentation on the embankment of Av. General Paz, just metres from the spot where the teenager was killed. “We believe that Luciano was made to cross General Paz, at a point where anyone going into the road is putting their life at risk,” said Orieta. Witness accounts from that night say Luciano was running barefoot across the highway when he was hit, around three hours after he was allegedly detained by police.
“Along the side of the highway there was a police patrol car that could observe what was going on – this is the same police that didn’t provide information that would have allowed us, his family, to locate him. And that is because they were responsible for making Luciano cross the highway.”
Protesters held up images of Lucian Arruga and other victims of institutional violence (Photo: Marc Rogers)
Nora Cortiñas, president of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo Línea Fundadora association, also spoke at the event, stressing the need to end impunity once and for all in Argentina. “We can’t accept that there is still torture and killing in Argentina. It’s great that we remember the past, but we want justice now, in the present, as well.
“I can’t believe that Luciano’s body was lying there on the General Paz, that the ambulance came and took him to hospital, and knowing that his family was searching for him, that everyone involved chose to stay silent. I’m ashamed as an Argentine, and as a mother. I’m ashamed that in this country we have to consider that indifference is all around us,” added Cortiñas.
Investigations into Luciano’s death continue, with the case still considered to be one of ‘forced disappearance‘.
“No one can be offended that we hold the state responsible, even more so considering that none of the democratic and constitutional governments have put an end to institutional violence – the torture, killing, and disappearances that our children suffer,” said Orieta.
“We are taking a step forward in the defence of democracy and of the human rights of youngsters living in impoverished neighbourhoods.”
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