For political scientist Andrés Malamud, it is a mistake to consider Argentine provinces feudal in which certain family groups remain in power indefinitely.
In the Catamarca of the Saadi, the Chaco of Capitanich and the Tucumán of Alperovich do not agree, so as not to go into too much mention of feudal territories.
And you don't even have to go very far from kilometer zero of Argentina: are
n't the so-called “Barons of the Buenos Aires suburbs” permanent leaders of virtual fiefdoms?
Malamud bases his statement on the fact that the fiefdom is “a production system” and in those Argentine provinces what exists is “a distribution system.”
It is like this: in feudalism there were “servants of the land” (one of the many formulas that we use to enslave our fellow men), and the owner of the territory was also the owner and lord of the lives of those people who worked his land, who could use a part of what they produced to feed themselves.
Here and now,
the political owners of the territories do not produce anything, they live off the co-participation distributed by the central government
and they distribute whatever they want however they want among the inhabitants, who do not produce either, but instead The vast majority are government employees.
Explained this way,
that feudalism even seems better than this one.
In Formosa, seventy percent of employees with contributions have a state position.
Catamarca is very close to that record: sixty-five percent of the workers are provincial or municipal employees.
They are not the only ones.
At the national level, 37% of registered employees carry out their activities in the public sector;
Of that total, 19% corresponds to the national order and 81% to the provinces.
Also in the table of those that have more public employees than in private activity are La Rioja, Santiago del Estero, Jujuy, Misiones, Corrientes and San Luis.
It is clear that
the boss on whom the family's food depends is the governor.
In the fiefdoms, Malamud also says, there were rules and norms, to the point that it was established how the right of pernada should be fulfilled, but in some provinces of Argentina, it is not the law that governs, but rather arbitrariness, and it is thought that there is right to be creative in that field.
Three faces of the victims of Argentine political feudalism: Paulina Lebbos, Cecilia Strzyzowski and María Soledad Morales.
What is the right of pernada, as the original Latin name ius primae noctis (the right of the first night) was called in Spain?
Crudely put, the one that allowed the feudal lord to deflower any of his servants on their wedding night.
His ownership of people reached that point.
And in the Argentine provinces?
Of course, the law does not govern, but there are many variants on the outside that, in many cases,
include death.
The owners of the life, honor and dignity of others
Some historians claim that the right of the first night was not a right established by any law, but rather it was a custom in which the sexual content, the pleasure of sex with a young virgin, did not prevail, but rather the man showed thus to his vassals that his dominion over them reached the point of being able to take away even their dignity.
Yes, to his vassals, because the right of pernada does not only affect the subject woman, but also the honor and dignity of those who can do absolutely nothing to avoid it, as happened and
happens in the feudal Argentina that still exists.
This, wanting to reduce the human condition to one thing, is one of the temptations and habits that have spread over time, not only in politics, or at the extreme of the military regime, but even in the smallest circles in which The one in charge feels the joy of demonstrating to his employees, or dependents, that his power is absolute.
The curious thing about the name “derecho de pernada” has an explanation: that is what the feudal rite in Spain was called in which the lord, touching the nuptial bed with his leg, symbolized that the descendants of that marriage would also be his servants, that is, they inherited that form of slavery,
and their children would inherit it again, which did not invalidate the master's right to have sex with their girlfriends before them.
From Fuenteovejuna to Catamarca
On December 10, 2011, the Saadis returned to govern Catamarca, although they did so secretly: Lucía Corpacci took over, who during the campaign did not use her second surname.
She is the daughter of Teresa Saadi, sister of the founder of the clan, Vicente Leónides Saadi, and, therefore, Ramón's first cousin, whom Menem sent to Luis Prol in 1991 as Federal Comptroller due to
the scandal that had generated the rape and murder of María Soledad Morales by those they called “the children of power.”
The story is very well known, several journalistic books have been written (those by Norma Morandini and Alejandra Rey, among other important ones), and Héctor Olivera filmed The María Soledad Case in 1993, but we can do a little memory on the fundamental points and how the investigation was hindered to protect the rapists, murderers and even the cover-ups.
The phrase of the then deputy Ángel Luque, in a Clarín report on April 4, 1991, with which he explained why his son could not be guilty of the crime is a complete definition of the functioning of feudal power in Catamarca: “
The body does not "It would have appeared because I have all the power to make the corpse disappear."
Guillermo Luque, sentenced to 21 years in prison for the rape and murder of María Soledad Morales, with his father, Congressman Luque.
On Monday, September 10, 1990, some National Highway workers found her dead seven kilometers from the city.
Her body was completely disfigured, with signs of having been raped.
She had a broken jaw, cigarette burns, and was missing her scalp, ears, and one eye.
Her father recognized her by a small scar she had on one of her wrists.
According to the reconstruction of what happened the night before, Luis Tula, with whom she had been in love since she was fifteen, took her to a party at the Clivus nightclub, where Guillermo Luque (the son of the national deputy of that condemnatory phrase) was present. ), Pablo and Diego Jalil (nephews of José Guido Jalil, the mayor of the city at that time), Arnoldito Saadi (cousin of Governor Ramón Saadi) and Miguel Ferreyra (son of the police chief), where they drugged her with cocaine and At least four young people sexually abused her, all belonging to that social sector that the people of Catamarca called “the children of power.”
The autopsy confirmed that María Soledad had died of cardiac arrest caused by the lethal dose of cocaine that she had been forced to consume.
With the appearance of the body, the protection machinery for the murderers was put into action: the head of the province's police, General Commissioner Miguel Ángel Ferreyra, ordered it to be washed, thereby erasing traces and signs irretrievably.
It took more than two months for the judicial investigation to be opened, and when the justice system intervened, the favoritism towards those possibly involved was more than evident.
In 1991, the Saadis lost their first election.
On December 10, the new governor took office, the radical Arnoldo Castillo, who had been the last governor appointed by the dictatorship and won with 49 percent of the votes.
Ramón Saadi retained 30 percent of voters despite the scandal, and returned to Castillo the presidential sash that he had given him in 1983.
The thunderous silence in which the massive marches took place demanding justice for María Soledad.
The change of government did not modify the rules by which political fiefdoms are governed, and the oral trial could only begin in 1996, during the second term of Arnoldo Castillo's government.
Comment in passing: who succeeded him as governor despite the criticism of the inheritance of positions that they had made during the campaign?
That of his son Oscar, who had been a senator, a position in which his father replaced him when he transferred the governorship to her.
Gatopardism of the most rancid breed.
This same practice of inheriting family positions had been used by the Saadis from 1983 to 1991. Ramón Saadi was succeeded by his father in 1987, Vicente Leónides Saadi, and Ramón replaced his father as national senator for Catamarca, but Vicente died in 1988. , so Ramón ran as a candidate and won the elections;
He resigned as senator and left his sister Alicia in that place.
In 1996 the forces of feudalism could no longer stop the start of the trial because Catamarca had been transformed into Fuenteovejuna.
They were not asking for the death of the commander, but much more: justice.
Some consciences must have been shaken by the thunderous silence in which those massive protest marches organized by the nun Martha Pelloni, rector of the Carmen and San José nuns' school, where María Soledad was in her final year when she was killed, took place. , but the evident partial attitude of the judges, especially Juan Carlos Sampayo, produced a new scandal and the trial was annulled.
It took a year for the new one to open, and on February 27, 1998, Guillermo Luque was sentenced to twenty-one years in prison for the rape and murder of María Soledad Morales (he only served fourteen), and Luis Tula was sentenced to nine as a secondary participant. of the crime of rape.
The court ordered an investigation into the cover-up, which could reach the senior staff of the Catamarca police, former governor Ramón Saadi, deputy commissioner Luis Patti and Carlos Menem himself, in addition to clarifying the responsibilities of the other participants in the party at which drugs were used. , they raped and murdered María Soledad Morales.
But it was “too much to ask”: it was never done.
Lucía Corpacci Saadi governed until 2019. She was succeeded by Raúl Jalil, who won again in 2023 with fifty-six percent of the votes.
Whom?
To the candidate of La Libertad Avanza (the champions of ending the caste), her cousin José, who got the forty-eight, and says that, in addition to being a relative, he is a friend of Raúl.
Just another detail: Raúl Jalil is the son of José Guido Jalil, who was the mayor of Catamarca between 1987 and 1991, whose nephews Pablo and Diego Jalil were accused of participating in the rape and murder of María Soledad Morales.
His cousin José, who is a doctor, was a party expert in the María Soledad case.
From what part?
A clue, Enrique Prueger was the Morales family advisor.
These fiefdoms will not produce, but they are resistant to the passage of time.
From Emereciano Sena to José Alperovich
On June 2, 2023, almost twenty-three years after María Soledad Morales' parents waited in vain for María Soledad Morales to return home, Cecilia Marlene Strzyzowski disappeared in Resistencia.
She was married to César Sena, son of Emereciano and Marcela Acuña, piquetero leaders pre-candidates for deputy and mayor of Resistencia on a ticket aligned with Jorge Capitanich,
who was seeking his fourth governorship of Chaco in the PASO of 2023.
In November 2019, José Alperovich, governor of Tucumán three times in a row, and who, due to not being able to run for a fourth term, was a national senator for his province (what a coincidence: he succeeded his wife, Beatriz Rojkés), was criminally denounced by an assistant , who was also part of his family, for sexual abuse committed between 2017 and 2019.
Emereciano Sena is imprisoned at the Tercera Resistencia police station;
Marcela Acuña, in the Sexta Resistencia Police Station, and her son César in the Villa Barberán Penitentiary Complex, also in Resistencia, all accused as co-authors of the disappearance and murder of Cecilia Strzyzowski and awaiting trial.
Capitanich eliminated the Sena couple from his list and sixteen days after the disappearance of Cecilia Strzyzowski he won the PASO of the Chaco Front by more than ninety-nine percent of the votes, but on September 17 he lost the re-election for governor.
The piqueteros leaders Emereciano Sena and Marcela Acuña, accused in the disappearance and murder of Cecilia Strzyzowski.
Leandro Zdero, the candidate of Together for Change, formally assumed his duties as governor on December 9, 2023 because he had agreed with Capitanich to advance the transfer of command by one day.
Two days before, the judge of guarantees María de las Mercedes Pereyra accepted the habeas corpus appeal presented by Marcela Acuña and ordered that the Senas should “reconnect” family-wise and meet for four hours in the jail where César is imprisoned on December 14. December (her 20th birthday) on January 21, 28 and January 4 (what a coincidence, another birthday: Marcela Acuña's).
In order for this “family reconnection” to take place, which has been so effective for the family to achieve its common objectives, the parents must be transferred each time through a police operation that includes the participation of personnel from the General Directorate of Highway Police, of the Special Operations Corps Department, of the Motorized Operations Corps Division, of the Third, Fifth and Seventh Police Stations of Resistance, and of the Canes Division.
We must pay attention to the prediction of Gloria Romero, mother of Cecilia Strzyzowski: “For me, they will end up free, with state subsidies and compensation.
The Sena manage everything, they govern the Chaco.”
The trial of José Alperovich for the sexual attacks on his personal assistant, the daughter of a second cousin, which occurred from December 2017 to May 2019, began on Monday, February 5, almost five years after they were denounced because an attempt was made to The investigation was in charge of the Tucumán justice system, but in May of last year the Court ordered that the facts should be investigated in the National Criminal and Correctional Court 35 of the City of Buenos Aires.
José Alperovich on the first day of the trial for sexual abuse and the wallpapering of the city of Tucumán with posters of social condemnation.
During those years,
Alperovich's defense was led by Mariano Cúneo Libarona, the current Minister of Justice
, who retired in December and left two lawyers from his firm, Augusto Garrido and Mercedes Rodríguez Goyena, in charge of proving Alperovich's innocence. who have already begun to act in the oral trial.
The judge who will hand down the sentence is Juan Ramos Padilla, who participated, along with Luis D'Elía, in mobilizations in which the release of “political prisoners” for cases of corruption was requested, such as the leader of the Tupac Amaru Milagro Sala, the former vice president Amado Boudou, the former Kirchnerist Minister of Planning Julio De Vido and the “Mapuche” Jones Huala, and was denounced for calling a town to pressure the Court that was to judge Cristina Kirchner for the so-called Road Cause.
From what we have seen and heard, it is very possible that the lawyers left in charge of the matter by the Minister of Justice of the Nation include in their defense the issue of the “armed cause” by political enemies, which Alperovich has been maintaining from the beginning, as as he did when Paulina Lebbos was killed in Tucumán.
Yes, Alperovich's Tucumán has a case similar to that of María Soledad Morales, but unsolved: the murder of Paulina Lebbos, a 23-year-old university student who had gone dancing on Saturday, February 26, 2006 to celebrate that she had passed a subject. .
She was missing for two weeks, until her body was found, in an advanced state of decomposition, on March 11, on the side of Route 341. She had mutilations in her vaginal area and mouth, her scalp had been removed and filed. fingerprints.
An autopsy determined that she had died of asphyxiation due to strangulation.
From there, irregularities occurred in the police investigation and in the actions of justice, with the obvious purpose of protecting the perpetrators,
who were also called “the children of power” as in Catamarca, and the cover-ups.
In June 2013, Paulina's father, Alberto Lebbos, who had been an official in Alperovich's government, denounced to court what had been said publicly: the perpetrators of the crime were Gabriel Alperovich, the governor's eldest son, and Sergio Kaleñuk. , son of Alberto Kaleñuk, one of his private secretaries.
The crime would have been committed at a party on the El Cadillal dam or in Raco.
But the mechanisms of impunity that characterize these provincial fiefdoms are ensuring that, twenty-four years after the murder, impunity still remains.
Will Malamud be right in saying that, since they do not produce, in these territories there is no malformation of the exercise of power achieved by the popular vote that is called feudalism?