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"Leave it there, that's the winner," Martín told his mother about the shirt with which he had come out as the regional league champion that same afternoon on December 21, 2019. Martín Ponce was the hitch and figure of the fifth division of the Club 25 de Mayo, in the small mountain town of La Cumbre, in the province of Córdoba, Argentina.
Proud of the achievement, the young man wanted to look at the number 10 shirt for a little longer before his mother put it to the wash.
Jessica, the older sister, says she was always smiling, always ready to help out.
"He was one of those boys who everything went well for him, everything went easy for him: school, friends, football ..." He had tried himself in Boca, where he could meet his idol, Carlitos Tevez, and take a photo with he;
a memory he treasured more than anything.
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That Saturday night, leaving a house party, one of his friends got into a fight with another boy and Ponce interceded to defend him.
According to what the witnesses told the family, he beat his friend's assailant, throwing him to the ground and leaving him there.
After that, another teenager approached with a knife and stabbed the young man three times in the chest, which immediately began to bleed.
He didn't make it to the hospital;
died on the way.
Martín Ponce was 14 years old.
The boy who stabbed him, 15.
Marisol Maldonado, Martín's mother, reviews her son's memories while smoking chain cigarettes.
“I don't know the boy;
my daughter Gisela did because they went to the same school, and from there we know that she had many conflicts.
It seems that his mother has addiction problems.
That beat him.
They did not know each other with my son, ”he says.
“We found out that they were going to release him a few months ago from
Esperanza Complex, but it seems that inside he stabbed another boy, and that's why he's still there.
Our attorney was honest with us and said there is no chance that he will be tried for what he did because he is a minor.
I wish my daughters never had to cross it.
Let this end here ”.
Martín Ponce's crime deeply shook the small town of La Cumbre.
It was covered by national newscasts and marked the Club 25 de Mayo, where the 14-year-old boy had played his entire childhood and adolescence.
Her older sisters, Jésica and Gisela, in the last photograph.
Ignacio Conese
Maldonado says that the first months after his son's murder were spent on medication and in bed.
That the most difficult thing is trying to find an explanation.
Overcome the thousands of possible scenarios that did not happen, where nothing happened to your child that night.
Where grief and emptiness do not become omnipresent.
The Esperanza Complex is the largest rehabilitation institution for minors in the Argentine province of Córdoba.
Massive sexual abuse, criminal guards who charge for protection, murder of inmates, brutal beatings and restrictions typical of an adult prison are the usual currency in this center.
"If you lock up a kid, what you're saying is 'look, you're going to have to continue being violent because in that space violence becomes a necessary, multipurpose resource.'
Far from solving the problem, you create the conditions for it to end up
spiraling.
There is something that cannot be deactivated, which is speed, urgency.
Because problems do not disappear from one day to the next ”, reflects by teleconference Esteban Rodríguez Alzueta, who investigates these social relations as a researcher at the National University of Quilmes.
“It is a society that has fetishized youth.
That has empowered her.
It generated expectations.
But that empowerment did not reach young men.
Violence can be a kind of wild card that comes to fill a void.
Especially in those wild kids who grew up outdoors, under the open sky ”, he adds.
“Poverty affects the symbolic ability to interpret and resolve situations.
Take options off the table.
The failure is of the institutions.
If a kid can't get to school on time because the police stop him,
Or he can't have classes because the school is destroyed, isn't that violence? ”asks Tamara Pez, a psychologist at the Secretariat for Children, Adolescents and the Family of the province of Córdoba. She, who lives with these frustrations on a daily basis, comments how within the same institutions there are lights of hope with teams that are trying other paths with a high degree of success.
Santiago, Benjamín, Ezequiel, Darío, Valentino, Patricio and Alexis, aged between 15 and 21 years, live together in La Casa de Achával, a pilot project of the Secretariat for Children, Adolescents and Family of the Province of Córdoba where the processes they are built, as Rodríguez Alzueta proposes, with patience.
The seven young people are going through judicial processes and lack a family nucleus to contain them.
In the house they each have their own room;
freedom to come and go;
food in the fridge.
The process is accompanied by a group of social workers and psychologists and by the director of the home Sergio Mancini, a former Catholic priest.
Extreme and incomprehensible violence is far from being a heritage of poverty
The project is not far from being something less than revolutionary in the context of the institution that houses it - the same one in charge of the aforementioned Esperanza Complex - and its dominant logics. Mancini and Mara González, one of the psychologists in charge, relate how problems are solved at home by talking, one, two, or a thousand times if necessary. The terms are set in years. In these dynamics, the gaps are filled with plans and life projects.
“When I was a boy I suffered a lot of family violence.
That was building up in me.
When I blindly exercised violence, a very hurt person came out, they were feelings accumulated for years.
To this day I sometimes think 'I can do that' and images come to me.
If I see blood, I get sick.
I live with pain in my hands ”, says Alexis Giménez, the oldest of the group.
21 years old, he works as a repositor, studies social pedagogy and writes poetry.
Valentino, shortly after turning 18, feels he never had a choice.
His mother abandoned him at 11. "I would pass her on the street and she would look the other way."
For five years he learned to experience extreme cold, extreme hunger and survive alone until, by stealing, he entered the system.
He spent a year at the Esperanza Complex before arriving at the Casa, waiting for visitors that never came.
Santiago, 15 years old, the youngest in the house, listens attentively and at one point breaks down in silence while he takes refuge in the affection of Mara González, the psychologist, who is the closest thing to a good mother.
From the fences and the hateful environment of the Esperanza Complex to a true hope in the House of Achával.
The writings belong to one of Alexis's poems;
the fists, deformed from using them, too;
the same as the portrait.
The rate of social reintegration of the House of Achával is three times that of any other institution of its kind at the provincial level Ignacio Conese
The kids of La Casa de Achával share experiences of violence and deprivation from a very young age.
Of not having other memories, or other examples.
Of
banking it
or being someone's dog.
To feel that the first time they were presented with options was in the house, which most of them arrived after passing through the Esperanza Complex.
They talk about how hard it is to overcome the gaze of others, for whom they are “shitty blacks” and how that gaze brings out the worst for them.
Extreme and incomprehensible violence is far from being a heritage of poverty.
In Argentina, rugby, a sport practiced especially by young people from the middle and upper classes, has jumped from the sports pages to the police pages too often to speak of isolated events.
Alejo Paz, a 19-year-old young man, a player for the Córdoba Athletic club and a benchmark in his division, lends himself to a conversation to which the world of rugby in general tends to elude him. “There is a lot of class hatred, from both sides, from upper class towards lower class and vice versa. I have seen and felt that type of situation, like being looked at badly for being at a party that is not your environment. Class hatred is lived a lot. The 'che, shitty nigger' is not going away. 'Negro villero', the 'puto', the 'trolo' ... You have to get him out, "he says.
The last most resounding case was the summer of 2019, after a group of young people, division mates in a club in Zárate, in the province of Buenos Aires, massacred Fernando Báez Sosa, a 19-year-old with fists and kicks. years, at the exit of a disco in the seaside resort of Villa Gesell, on the Buenos Aires coast. The spotlight exposed to society something that in the rugby environment was widely known and little condemned: the coexistence in almost all clubs of some violent and hyper-trained young people who go out to demonstrate, put on alcohol and other drugs, what their bodies they can. The case also exposed what Paz says: a savage class hatred. Fernando Báez was a dark-haired kid, the son of immigrants, who had saved a lot of time for those vacations. His appearance was the reason why the aggression started.
The crime of Fernando Báez Sosa, for which 11 young people are imprisoned and awaiting trial, shocked Argentine society due to the absolute indifference of the accused towards their victim, but his case has not been the only one involving rugby players.
In the portrait, Alejo Paz, in the facilities of the Córdoba Athletic club in the city of Córdoba Ignacio Conese
“I believe that rugby cannot be separated from what the rest of society lives, and there appears the great issue of inequality and its consequences, which are not only the kids from some poorer neighborhoods who go out to steal more, but also that distances many kids from the middle and upper classes from the rest of society.
This is not free, we all pay the price ”, says Pablo Carballo, president of the Tala Rugby Club in a telephone conversation.
Tala was put in the focus of the scene when, one year after the murder of Báez Sosa, a 19-year-old player belonging to the club, he beat another young man to disfigurement at a party in a private neighborhood. Alejo meets the young man from Tala involved in the episode. He says that he never seemed like a violent boy, on the contrary, and that seeing him involved in such a situation made him even more aware of the untenability of the situation without real and profound changes.
“Rugby doesn't unfairly drop it, it deserves to be beaten.
It seems good to me that they give us a reality check, "says Paz, adding a feeling that is as difficult to measure as it is evident:" Something happens to us, you notice it on the street, how at the slightest disagreement people insult each other, they fight , they throw the car at you.
It seems that there are many that are ready to explode ”.
Abel Suárez was 26 years old, with two children and a partner;
He lived with them in the peripheral neighborhood of San Jorge, in Córdoba.
He worked as a street vendor of cleaning products.
His family says that on the night of February 13 he went out with a friend looking for a party, all clandestine due to the restrictions of the pandemic, and that they had gone to Yofre, the neighboring neighborhood where he used to stop on a corner to sell his products.
They killed him for being black, for being poor.
Abel was a present dad, loving, super hardworking;
never let us lack anything
Irupé, widow of Abel Suárez
The stories that reached the press describe that Suárez snatched a phone from Leandro Daguero in the street and he chased him until he caught him, at which point two police officers who were patrolling the area appeared: Corporal Jorge Ferreyra and agent Hernán Campos. It was then that Daguero strangled Suárez with one arm until he was dead while insulting him, and with the other arm he filmed the entire scene on his mobile phone, smiling at the camera. Daguero, 19, the son of a neighborhood pharmacist, uploaded the video of the execution to his WhatsApp status, where it went viral in a matter of minutes. Suárez's family found out about everything when that same video was shared that morning on Instagram. The following day, the Prosecutor's Office ordered the arrest of Daguero and the police officers Ferreyra and Campos,accused of having been witnesses to everything and not having prevented it.
“They killed him for being black, for being poor. Abel was a present dad, loving, super hardworking; He never let us lack anything, ”says Irupé, his widow, who goes from tears to contained fury as she holds her youngest 10-month-old son in her arms. Hugged at his feet is the oldest, four years old. Suárez's family, neighbors and friends cut an avenue two blocks from Daguero's house, in Yofre Norte, demanding that justice act and that crime and police negligence not be covered.
One of the most chilling data of the murder of Abel Suárez was the number of people who shared the video congratulating the author for what he had done, showing him as an example of what to do with the “choros”. At Suárez's wake, his aunt Mimi, who was like a mother, broke down and died of a heart attack. His family demands justice Ignacio Conese
“I think of hatred, of the domination that exists in this society. There is a question of showing others what you can do. Power over another is a very strong feeling ”, reflects
25-year-old
rapper
Negro Yoni
Díaz, talking in the courtyard of the La Morera Foundation house, in the town of El Tropezón, one of the largest pockets of deprivation in the city of Córdoba. Also in the conversation is Ezequiel Kowalsky, 22, who is a muralist and studies social work at the National University of Córdoba. They both grew up and live in the village, and both work in La Morera, giving workshops and supporting young people who want to change their course or who have problems and cannot count on anyone else.
“This is intergenerational: the father, the grandfather. These are people who came to the city believing that they would be able to work, but what happened to them was crisis after crisis and ending up in the villages. Most of the people here are not from here; my old woman came from the north of the province to work. They killed my old man with a
corchaso
. My old man's father died here as an old man. There are small searches and records of people who leave their skin wanting to have a decent life and others who cannot. That they spend their lives trying, ”says Díaz.
Like many young people in the village, Díaz knew as a child what it was like to be behind bars after the police pointed a gun at his neck and put his face on the ground. “I was not born to be locked up, to be executed, I was born for something else. I lost many friends when I left that life, but I also gained many other things. Surprise people with my art, win a national music contest, go on tour. Leaving the neighborhood, which is no small thing. Here everything is reduced. There are guys here who don't come out if we don't take them. That's where their heads open up ”, says the rapper.
Kowalsky tells of a life experience similar to that of his friend: “My old man ended up killing a person. He died last year; I haven't seen him for nine. He bought the entire package of violence: he did not kill my old woman, but he did kill his partner. I was left with a lot of resentment because I did not know what we are doing here, because he brought me here, and I am proud to be from here. There is nobility and sincerity in that, in sharing needs, because one's needs are almost identical. I think of all that violence that my old man sucked ”.
Yoni Díaz and Ezequiel Kowalski, teachers at the La Morera Foundation, in the village of El Tropezón. The foundation is dedicated to providing workshops, training and social assistance to children and youth. Both met in those formations and today they are references, not only in the educational center, but in the neighborhood. The vertical portrait is by Yoni Díaz, and the murals are collaborations that Ezequiel organizes with young people from the neighborhood. Ignacio Conese
What Kowalsky and Díaz teach other young people in the neighborhood is that there are other possible paths, although difficult, as the rapper says: “We are opening a door to an alternative that did not exist before. There are
monkeys
that have already left and it is deadly to see them. Here, if you don't end up being a cartonero or a
trader
[scammer], you end up at the construction site. They are all forms of exploitation. We come to suggest that you can be something else: a
musician
, an artist, a carpenter ”. He concludes with a reckless reflection: “The exit of these
kids
is at the outbreak. Personal or collective ”.
“It doesn't really matter if this gets worse or better, what we have to think is that it can't go on like this. If what we want is to reduce violence at all levels, not only at popular levels, we must resolve underlying cultural values. Remember that young people are very internalized in this culture, that they are the ones that consume the most cell phones, the ones that use the most networks, and all from a young age ”, says Valeria Plaza, lawyer and researcher at Conicet-UNC. With an extensive trajectory studying state security policies and police abuses, the expert knows first-hand the state's confusion in the face of juvenile crime: “There are no state strategies for these young people. They are not summoned. And then there is the look of society. It seems that from that of some feminisms today this sector of young people does not qualify as victims,they are in a no place. What social place and what strategy are they going to give so that they are part? If not, you will annihilate them. It is a social suicide ”.
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