Juana Correa Villalba was born 43 years ago in Paraguay. Its main activity registered with the Federal Administration of Public Revenue (AFIP) is linked to "hairdressing services". But at this time she is being pointed out as the person responsible for the sale of usurped land in the 8 de Diciembre neighborhood, of González Catán, La Matanza district, where this Sunday there was a massacre with five dead and eight wounded.
Prosecutor Carlos Adrián Arribas, in charge of the investigation, asked to search his home. Similar procedures were also carried out at the home of her partner, Emanuel Lugo, and other relatives.
At the site of the shooting there is an abandoned rough hut. It was 15:30 p.m. on Sunday when a group of people – mostly from the Bolivian community and others from Peru – met with Paraguayan delegates, who are the ones who sold them the land.
It all ended in tragedy. They started shooting and killed Tomás Waldo Velásquez Chávez (28), Leonel Enzo Tuco Tapia (28), Peruvian Víctor Eduardo Rivera Diestra (23), Bolivian Gregorio Mamani Choque (40) and teenager Luis Fernando Bascope (16).
Investigators do not point to Correa Villalba as the person responsible for the shootings, but as the one who organized all this illegal activity in an uninhabitable place, which they usurped and sold to some 500 families in need of land to live on, some of which they oversold on several occasions through threats of firearms.
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It happened in the Barrio 8 de Diciembre, in the district of La Matanza. At least three armed men allegedly shot at a group of Bolivian citizens.
This woman already has a record of this type (usurpation of property) in the same prosecutor's office, UFI No. 2 of La Matanza.
In these cases, the usurpers usually carry "triggermen" to intimidate the families. And in what happened on Sunday, the situation got completely out of control.
It all started on Saturday, when a group of people complained that they had started selling a lot that was supposed to be destined for a plaza.
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At least three armed men allegedly shot at a group of Bolivian citizens.
According to what Clarín was able to reconstruct, those who claimed ownership of the lots sold what was in front of the square at a higher price. Faced with the version that they were commercializing that space, Saturday's meeting took place. According to witnesses, the first incidents took place there. And it was all over for Sunday.
There, delegates appeared on behalf of those who sell the land and the neighbors. "At that meeting there was an argument over money between the residents of the neighborhood and the delegates, in the middle of which they began to threaten each other," a source told Télam.
One of the shooters during the Gonzalez Catan massacre.
According to the first reconstruction of the event, among the delegates there were three armed people who, in the middle of an argument, began firing into the air. "People started running at these three men, throwing rocks and sticks at them, until at one point they managed to turn around and shot at them," the spokesman said.
When the shooting broke out, a larger group of neighbors ran at the shooters with sticks and rocks, but at least 13 people were hit by gunfire.
The version of the Municipality of La Matanza
The Municipality of La Matanza, led by Peronist Fernando Espinoza, indicated in a press release that in 2022 it denounced the seizure of land in the place and recalled that the following year it asked for the eviction of the usurpers.
"In view of the facts of multiple homicide that occurred in a land seizure in an area of abandoned tosqueras, in the town of González Catán, the Municipality of La Matanza communicates that in 2022 it carried out the corresponding police and judicial actions," said the Executive.
Eduardo Rivera (23), a Peruvian, was killed in the shootout during the land grab in Gonzalez Catan, La Matanza.
Similarly, he stated that "in 2023 he urged the speed of the execution of eviction due to a complaint of usurpation of land in the area where the incidents occurred".
"The Justice issued the measure of 'not innovating', which apparently was not complied with in view of the alleged new sale of land," the commune said, adding that, "in practice, this means that, because those who usurped those lands have also resorted to Justice, the decision remains in a status quo while legal actions advance."
Tomás Waldo Velásquez Chávez (28) was killed in a shootout at a land grab in González Catán, La Matanza.
"The area, an abandoned coarse area that belongs to private owners, was usurped two years ago, a circumstance of which the Municipality became aware through police information," he said.
The district led by Espinoza specified that "immediately, the corresponding complaint was made to the Decentralized Prosecutor's Office No. 2, currently in charge of prosecutor Gastón Duplaá" and graphed that the measure of not innovating "prevented any of the usurpers from being evicted and intended to prevent new occupants from entering."
The provincial government of Axel Kicillof, at least until noon on Tuesday, did not make a public statement.
EMJ