An exhaustive
review of the per diem
of municipal officials caused an unprecedented event in democracy:
a town in Córdoba had to go to the polls just to vote if they fired two councilors
and a member of the Court of Accounts.
The story of the popular consultation in
Villa Huidobro
over a
"lead chicken"
on the Costanera of Buenos Aires and the cleaning of a backpack in a dry cleaner
hides a fierce Peronist internal conflict
that divided the town and alienated most of the political leaders. .
Villa Huidobro, located on provincial route 26, at the southern end of Córdoba, is closer to San Luis, La Pampa, Santa Fe and Buenos Aires than to Córdoba capital.
Like other towns in Córdoba, it is also known by the name of the train station:
Cañada Verde
.
Whether with one denomination or another, in that agricultural cradle every February they celebrate the Provincial Wheat Festival, with the election of a queen, parades and musical shows.
The town fights with Puelches, in La Pampa, to be the very
geographical center of Argentina.
Its inhabitants rely on the studies of the doctor in mathematics Alejandro Tiraboschi to claim this territorial title.
In addition to that scroll, the town has another milestone:
it had the first communist mayor in Latin America
.
In 1928, José Olmedo was elected but was in power for less than a year.
However, the fact that caught the attention of national politics and put the eyes of the country on the town took place on Sunday, March 6, 1994, when a striking popular consultation was held - mandatory for the six thousand inhabitants -, with a ballot to vote the end of the mandate of two councilors and another to confirm it.
Villa Huidobro, in the south of Córdoba, closer to San Luis, La Pampa, Santa Fe and Buenos Aires than to Córdoba capital.
A member of the Peronist Youth of the '70s in Córdoba,
Roberto Juan Repetto
won the election for orthodox Peronism and later won the elections for mayor in 1983. At the age of 28, he became the youngest community leader in Córdoba.
He was reelected twice and in a province governed by radicalism, in 1993 Repetto saw the opportunity to run for the provincial senate and obtained a seat.
There were still two more years left in his term as mayor in Villa Huidobro and that unleashed a harsh internal conflict.
The communal chief wanted a new election of authorities to be carried out in the municipality, which implied the resignation of all the councilors - who in Villa Huidobro do not receive a salary -, including the president of the Deliberative Council,
Osmar Roberto Buffa
, also a Peronist.
The plot of the conflict over "lead chicken" in the Costanera
When the Justicialist Party confirmed Repetto's candidacy as provincial senator for the department of General Roca for the Legislature of Córdoba, in mid-1993 it appointed a Municipal Electoral Board so that everyone would resign and call elections.
On October 3, 1993, Repetto won the election for senator, but both Buffa and the Peronist councilor Juan Carlos Principi remained in their positions.
They opposed the communal chief's initiative to hold new elections to complete his term until December 1995.
Repetto began to implement Law 8102, which allows popular revocation.
After some appeals, the mandatory popular consultation
was called for March 6, 1994
.
In the middle of the internal, the communal chief found the ideal argument for the mini electoral campaign: the travel tickets that Osmar Buffa presented after a congress of mayors and councilors from across the country in Parque Norte, in the City of Buenos Aires.
Villa Huidobro, in Córdoba, marked an unprecedented event in Argentine politics: the entire town went to the polls to decide whether to throw out two councilors.
"The organic charter says that the president of the Council takes charge momentarily until elections are called and whoever calls elections is disqualified from running as a candidate or has to resign as well. He was afraid that I would resign and be a candidate and he would lose the management of the municipality. And then he did all that trouble," Buffa tells
Clarín
today .
He remembers that the death of a 15-year-old boy a year earlier at the hands of the Police soured the climate in Villa Huidobro.
At the time when one peso was worth one dollar, Repetto denounced that Buffa spent 1,348 pesos on personal purchases and that he made his son pay another 1,400 for services performed in the private secretary of the Municipality during the two months he was in charge. of the municipality in the absence of the mayor.
The Justicialist Party managed by Repetto promoted the revocation of the mandates of the two Peronist councilors and the "campaign" included the dissemination of travel expenses, with the detail of a "lead chicken", which caused indignation in VIlla Huidobro.
Villa Huidobro, in Córdoba, celebrates the provincial wheat festival.
"That was the accusation he made against me. It was real because I presented the invoice. I was in Parque Norte for a week at a meeting of mayors from across the country chaired by (Carlos) Menem's (former) Minister of the Interior,
Gustavo Béliz
. And Well, we ate. What are you going to do? The food was on us. And the secretary I had, who was making all the notes for me, had to travel for reasons of an issue to see if it could be exported from the town, he took a common line bus from Buenos Aires and that thing that hangs like a backpack got stained and he had it washed, and well, that costs a lot, but less than $1000," Buffa argues thirty years later, and remembers that his charge was
ad honorem
.
-How was the lead chicken thing?
-We went to the Costanera carts, which I think have now been taken out of Buenos Aires.
And well, four, five, six councilors ate there.
Someone ordered lead chicken, I didn't order it.
It's a pouty chicken wrapped in aluminum foil, nothing more.
Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing at a strange price, we all pay it together.
In fact, on March 6, all of Villa Huidobro went to the polls.
There were four ballots, two for each councilor.
One said: "Popular recall. I vote for the dismissal of (the councilor's name). So that he does NOT continue in office."
While the other had the slogan: "Popular Recall. I vote for the confirmation (the name of the councilor). So that YES he continues in office."
"I saw the evidence presented by the mayor on television and I think that is enough to fire the two councilors
," said Nancy Ferreres, owner of one of the two video stores in Villa Huidobro, in 1994.
This was reflected by Alejandro Caravario, special envoy of
Clarín
, who collected testimonies of the "campaign" towards the popular consultation.
63% of Villa Huidobro voted to oust councilors Buffa and Principi.
The news reached the front page of the main newspapers and Roberto Juan Repetto was invited to the political program
"Tiempo Nuevo"
by Bernardo Neustadt.
Everyone walked away from politics and Peronism lost power for a long time
Osmar Buffa, former councilor of Villa Huidobro in a report with Clarín in 1994. Photo: Ricardo Cárcova
"That's where all these types of issues began, of making politics an easy way to fix one's life, politics as a solution to problems and all those disproportionate expenses, taking advantage of the situation of being in power. They were the first facts that had been happening within democracy," Repetto told
Clarín
today , away from politics after that term as provincial senator.
"For me it was a totally unpleasant thing, which led to serious health problems because I felt betrayed. I was a senator for four years and I left politics because I did not agree with the things I saw, that were happening. I returned to my private activity, I have a field, I had a service station, I am a lawyer, at the same time, I was a teacher at a night school and then I gave up things," Repetto reflects.
And he remarks: "In politics one always goes for bronze or gold, if you go for gold it is because they are a merchant. And the politician always goes for bronze, which is a tiny little plaque that says this work So-and-so made it for your son. And many like me were left without the gold, of course, and without the bronze too."
Buffa, for his part, reaches a similar conclusion: "When I started with politics I had to buy a field, when the recall ended I had to buy tobacco and paper to smoke. The policy here is like that. Now it has changed a little, "Now they are getting rich because they handle a lot of money. Before, you had to count money, 30 days, to make ends meet and be able to pay your salaries."
Osmar Buffa, former councilor of Villa Huidobro in a report with Clarín in 1994. Photo: Ricardo Cárcova
While Buffa moved away from politics, Juan Carlos Principi left Villa Huidobro when the popular recall ended.
In the town they point out that he was already planning to leave before the election.
He owned a kiosk with a bookstore and moved with his family to Villa Mercedes, in San Luis.
In the Puntana province he opened a bookstore and expanded with branches.
Both current leaders of Villa Huidobro and Buffa and Repetto recognize that that revocation of the mandate divided the people and ended up being detrimental to Peronism, which had won the elections since 1983. In the 1995 elections, when Repetto's mandate expired, for the first time Radicalism won thanks to Jorge Raúl Iriart.
An example of the Peronist crisis left by the popular consultation was seen in the following elections: the UCR governed Villa Huidobro for 16 consecutive years.
Only in 2011, Peronism returned to power at the hands of Silvio Quiroga, who last year could not run for his third re-election due to a law.
Today his brother Enzo governs.
There are no longer divisions in the Peronism of Villa Huidobro.
The UCR, within Together for Change, is fighting to return to power.
The surnames changed, but someone remains unchanged despite the passage of time.
At 73 years old and for five decades, in Villa Huidobro that was famous for the popular consultation, Armando Nicola still delivers milk in a horse-drawn cart and drives at night along a gravel road with a flashlight as the only light.