The arrest of a popular community activist in northern Argentina on charges of corruption has caused tension between Argentina’s new centre-right president Mauricio Macri and another prominent Argentinian: Pope Francis.
The pope, a former archbishop of Buenos Aires, is an outspoken supporter of Argentina’s social movements, the associations of unemployed workers, human rights advocates or environmental activists that often step in to fulfill the duties of an absent state in the country’s poorer provinces.
And no activist leader gained more prominence during the presidency of Macri’s predecessor Cristina Fernández de Kirchner than Milagro Sala, the 52-year-old leader of Túpac Amaru, an organisation in Argentina’s northernmost province of Jujuy whose influence became so vast that it almost rivaled that of the provincial government.
Sala’s arrest last month on charges of fraud, extortion and illicit association has generated concern in Argentina’s Catholic church that Macri and his political allies are determined to take on the social movements.
“We must be careful not to slip into what Francis calls ‘subtle xenophobia’ under the noble guise of the battle against corruption,” wrote Bishop Jorge Lozano, a leading Argentinian churchman, in a recent newspaper column. The bishop has offered to mediate with the government to secure Sala’s release.
Her arrest will almost certainly come up when president Macri visits the pope in Rome on 27 February.
Sala and the pope knew each other from Argentina when the pontiff – then better known as Jorge Bergoglio – visited poor neighbourhoods where Sala’s association provides assistance to poor families, and she visited Francis in Rome in June 2014, bearing a gift of of coca leaves, and receiving an image of the Virgin Mary in return.
Sala’s association Túpac Amaru is named after the last Inca monarch who was executed by the Spanish conquistadors in Perú in 1572. Under Sala’s leadership it has grown into an organization with a $50m budget, a fleet of 40 vehicles and reportedly 300 registered firearms.
The group received nearly $2m monthly in housing subsidies under Macri’s predecessor Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Those generous handouts made Sala the head of a parallel state within the province of Jujuy, distributing housing among the Túpac Amaru mostly indigenous 70,000 members and managing factories employing some 5,000 workers in a province with a population of only about 673,000 people.
Fernández’s departure from office spelt the end of Sala’s long tenancy as an
important provider of social aid for Jujuy’s underprivileged class.
New provincial governor Gerardo Morales, of the centrist Radical Party, has had a long-running feud with Sala – and in a widely-publicized incident six years ago, he was physically attacked by two youths from Sala’s organization.
Matters came to a head when Sala organized a long vigil outside the governor’s office in Jujuy to protest against the cutting back of the generous subsidies her group received. “They wanted to throw me out of office,” Morales told the press. “They wanted to overturn the (provincial) government.”
Sala was finally arrested on 16 January and the vigil in Jujuy was eventually called off, moving to the capital city of Buenos Aires, where Sala supporters have set up tents on the Plaza de Mayo square in front of Macri’s presidential office instead.
Human rights groups in Argentina have demanded for her release, a call echoed by Amnesty International which has said Sala “is being criminalized for peacefully exercising her rights to freedom of expression and protest”.
Sala’s group runs schools, health centres, textile factories and has built entire neighbourhoods with the subsidies it receives form the national government. The association also distributes up to 80,000 unemployment subsidies that it receives from the government to its supporters, keeping a small percentage for itself.
But it has also been accused of violent tactics. Allegations against it include the death of a five-year-old girl in a shootout involving Túpac Amaru members, involvement in drug-trafficking, and violent attacks against a judge, a newspaper and police stations.
Sala’s son Sergio Chorolque Sala has denied the charges. “There’s no proof, it’s easy to criticize, but when they have to do something for Jujuy they don’t do it,” he said in a recent radio interview.
Open all references in tabs: [1 - 5]