After the gruesome discovery of collapsed coffins and waste bags with human bone remains in the La Plata cemetery, authorities reported that
they will try to identify the bodies for burial
.
In addition, they began a meticulous administrative procedure to refer everything to the criminal justice system.
On Tuesday, in an audit ordered by the new management of the Municipality of La Plata, they found
501 abandoned closed drawers
in the necropolis and until Wednesday it was not known what was inside.
The survey ordered by Mayor Julio Alak (UxP) also discovered
200 bags with skeletal remains
of people who – it is presumed – were buried on land.
There are several hypotheses to explain this macabre discovery.
Those responsible for the previous management (Julio Garro, from JxC, from 2015 to 2023) assure that
the sites where they were found were closed since April 2013
, when the flood occurred
that affected almost 40% of the city
and ended with – at least – 89 victims.
The thing is that then, Justice began an investigation parallel to that carried out by the provincial government because it suspected that there were more deaths than those reported by Buenos Aires officials.
Then, say those who managed the cemetery for the last eight years, “the sites were closed by court order.
Nobody could enter.
We did not do it
".
This is how the deposits of the La Plata cemetery were.
They argue that the then administrative litigation judge, Luis Arias, directed part of the investigative task from those spaces in the cemetery.
Arias is now an official in the Alak government: secretary of Municipal Coordination.
"According to data collected from the staff, Arias worked there after the floods. Professor Claudia Carlotto (former National Director of Identity Law) also worked there and those places were developed as a warehouse in previous administrations because there was no space. When We assume a record was made informing that, but in the previous administration those places were not used,"
a former official from the Garro administration told
Clarín .
The drawers in the deposits of the La Plata cemetery were in this state.
Norberto Gómez, the general secretary of the commune, said that “when we entered the place there was great general deterioration.
But we never imagined we would find this,” and he considered that there was a “contempt for the right to have a
place worthy of death
as a memorial to family members.”
The task that the commune will begin has the support of the Missing Persons Directorate of the Ministry of Security.
There is the expert Alejandro Incháurregui, former member of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF) who actively participated in the identification of those murdered by the civil-military dictatorship of 1976-1983.
“Exhaustive work will be launched in each deposit, separating the drawers to find specific information that will allow carrying out the procedures to establish the original burial place and then proceed to the re-interment of the remains,” they explained in the municipality.
Horror and total abandonment in the La Plata cemetery.
The prosecutor's office in charge of Cecilia Corfield received the complaint to determine the possible existence of a
public action crime
.
She still does not have a cover for the case.
And still the judicial official did not take action or order procedures, according to
Clarín
in the Courts .
The prosecutor's office plans to wait for the municipal administrative procedures to be completed.
The La Plata cemetery occupies almost 30 hectares in the southern part of the city.
The main entrance is at the end of diagonal 74, at the intersection with avenues 72 and 131. But it extends to 76th street and 137th avenue.
According to the survey carried out by the auditors this week, in a first deposit, 16 wooden drawers were found with a metal interior protection that would indicate that
their origin could have been from a vault or a niche
.
From the municipality they explained that
the identification of each drawer had been suppressed
and that they did not have the badges that contain the information.
One of the 200 bags with human bones.
In a basement, a strong and nauseating smell was found, as well as coffins on the floor with stagnant water.
In another deposit, 200 black consortium bags with skeletal remains were found lying around, many without being identified by name, niche, or cadastral location, and another 15 wooden coffin boxes.
On the second floor of the building, those in charge of carrying out the audit found hundreds of coffins of adults and
22 of children
, since they had the identification of "little angels."
There were also more consortium bags with skeletal remains and bones scattered on the floor.
There was another space used as a warehouse where there were four separate places with more than 107 coffins stacked in disarray and more black consortium bags with human remains.
The Silver. Correspondence
MG