The violent death of an 11-year-old girl, which took place this Wednesday (9) on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, has paralyzed the electoral campaign in Argentina, which will hold primaries for the presidential elections next Sunday (13).
Morena Domínguez was approached while on her way to school by two young men on a motorcycle who wanted to steal her backpack.
The girl was dragged to the ground and received a blow to the head, which ended up causing her death in a hospital in Lanús, the city in the province of Buenos Aires where the attack took place.
So far, there are seven people detained and, although a 14-year-old boy initially confessed to having participated in the attack, he later changed his statement.
María Domínguez, the girl’s mother, said in an interview with the A24 channel that, as he is 14 years old, the teenager should “go out again” to the streets soon.
“I ask for justice for my daughter, they won’t give her back to me anymore. That’s all, justice. Just it. It’s a very difficult time, I can’t believe it. Yesterday I was talking to her and today it happens”, said María, in tears. “I was sleeping and they called me from school to say that Morena was in a bad way, that she had been mugged.”
“I am in Salta [província no noroeste da Argentina]. We came for a week to have my baby baptized as I have a 5 month old baby. We came here and today I woke up to this call. Tomorrow we were going to travel back to Buenos Aires to meet her again and this happened ”, added her mother.
campaign stopped
The main pre-candidates for the Argentine presidency, who this Sunday are disputing the officialization of their candidacies, announced the suspension of their respective campaign closing rallies, which were scheduled for this Thursday (10).
Former Security Minister Patricia Bullrich, who suspended the activity she was preparing for tomorrow in Lanús, wrote a message on her Twitter account in which she expressed her “closeness and support to Morena’s family and friends”.
“We cannot go on living with so much anguish and fear. That’s not enough. They turned Argentina into an uninhabitable country,” declared the pre-candidate of the center-right alliance Together for Change, which has a tough and repressive approach to fighting crime.
In similar terms, the libertarian candidate Javier Milei expressed himself, who wrote on the same social network that the incident is the responsibility of the “political class” that for decades “puts victims in the place of criminals and criminals in the place of victims”.
“We want to end this model that defends criminals and return to the only model that works: the repression of crime without hesitation. Until murderers, rapists and criminals know that committing a crime has direct lifelong consequences, we will continue to live under this scourge of insecurity,” she added.
The mayor of Buenos Aires, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, who is running against Bullrich in the center-right primaries, also expressed his opinion: “There are no words for so much pain. My condolences to Morena’s family and loved ones. We need justice. I will accompany them to demand”.
The last to suspend the campaign was the government and current Minister of Economy, Sergio Massa, who was going to hold a rally in La Plata, capital of the province of Buenos Aires.
“Given the painful crime against Morena that took place this morning in Lanús, the Union for the Fatherland decided to suspend the closing ceremony of the campaign scheduled for tomorrow at the Teatro Argentino de La Plata. We accompany their families and ask for justice”, posted the official account of the ruling coalition on Twitter.
feeling of insecurity
Despite official statistics showing that the number of intentional homicides fell by 17.4% in Argentina between 2019 and 2022, other indicators increased. Cases of sexual violence increased from 5,461 to 6,794 in the country and bodily injuries, from 143,697 to 154,197 between 2019 and 2021.
A survey carried out last year showed that 45% of Argentine women have already suffered some type of domestic violence.
In March, after an attack on the family supermarket of the wife of star Lionel Messi, security was tightened in Rosario, where, in 2022, more than 280 homicides were recorded, a rate that exceeded the rate of 20 murders per 100,000 inhabitants.
The World Health Organization (WHO) considers violence to be epidemic in a region when there are more than ten homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. (With EFE Agency)
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