The triple crime of General Rodríguez. The quadruple crime of La Plata. The crime of Villa Gesell. The crime of St. Therese. Before even being able to come to terms with the unconscionable brutality of a murder, the community is hurled in horror before the misshapen mirror of violence. That name, that of the people, becomes intertwined with a painful formula, which is its own and which is not at the same time.
The attack on Tomás Tello (18) on the beach of Santa Teresita.
On the first day of the year, St. Therese stood in front of that mirror. It wasn't the first time. On March 24, 2008, the body of a 36-year-old girl was found among the branches of the tamarinds that build the edge of the beach, at the intersection of Costanera Avenue and 16th Street: she had been raped and suffocated with her shoelaces.
Her name was Mara Mateu and she was not born and raised in the village: she had arrived shortly before with her family looking for a quieter place to live. But what he found was a pair of assassins.
Two manifestations
When the news spread among that community of about 15,<> inhabitants at the time, anger erupted. It was said that they were going to release the suspects. One of them was said to have "contacts." A lot of things were said. The reaction was violence upon violence: dozens of neighbors surrounded the police station, threw stones at the windows and tried to burn down the police station.
In 2008, neighbors attacked the Santa Teresita police station.
Also on January 1, there was a demonstration in front of the police station. Most of those gathered there were friends and relatives of teenager Tomás Tello, who was ambushed by a gang just three blocks from the place where Mara's body was found in 2008: near La Carabela.
Saint Therese now looks at herself in a mirror that reflects the breakdown of social ties and an overflow of violence and irrationality. It also reflects poor families even though they all work, children whose hand has been let go of the school, the many faces of precariousness and operating mechanics (public and private) in which indolence and corruption thrive. And drugs, of course. A piece in the country's puzzle.
Santa Teresita beach. Photo: Federico López Claro.
But the people are also something else. A small town built (in the literal sense) by dozens of immigrants and Argentines who arrived mainly in the 70s and learned to live seasonally: from the hyperactivity of summer to the boring drowsiness of winter. It is a haven where groups of boys meet every January to go to the beach and have an ice cream on the pedestrian street.
Santa Teresita is still a town where it is possible to feel recognized and embraced by the other, where "everyone knows each other", where neighbors exchange house keys, just in case. Everything that the mirror of a crime does not show remains in that corner of the coast, 326 kilometers from Buenos Aires.