Víctor Cantero (63), his wife Hermelinda Riveros (61) and their family have been living a nightmare for several months.
They have been at
Ingeniero Budge, Lomas de Zamora
for 40 years .
They came from Paraguay to work and settled in the south of the Conurbano.
With a lot of effort they built their house and also the premises, where they opened a butcher shop, on Olimpo Avenue at 1900.
Then they divided the land and built several homes that they now rent.
But
everything changed
when two brothers, named Jesús and Eugenio Manuel Pérez, rented one of their properties.
This led to several complaints of violence and a protest by neighborhood residents, who blocked Olimpo Avenue this Sunday with banners and drums to publicly denounce the "usurpers."
The conflict began months before.
At first, the arrangement was verbal.
And for a while there was no problem.
Until one day the brothers visited Víctor and proposed a business deal.
The plan was
to tear down one of the houses and build a store
.
The idea prospered and the two parties agreed to a verbal agreement to invest in the new premises.
Each one contributed 50% of the construction cost.
And finally there, some time later, a chicken shop run by the Pérez brothers began to operate.
Milagros Cantero reported that she was attacked by two of the Pérez employees.
The problems started when the owner and the tenants argued about the agreement they had agreed upon.
Edgar Cantero (43)
, Víctor's son, assured
Clarín
that his father had agreed to make a three-year rental contract.
But the Pérezes refused to sign it and asked for a loan for ten years.
"That's not what they had arranged with my dad and that's when things started to get violent," the man said.
The Pérezes argued in their refusal that they had invested a lot of money in the premises and that they were not certain that the contract would be respected when it expired after three months.
"We promised to pay part of the costs. That they would be deducted from the rent. We even agreed to expand the premises and that I was going to be responsible for the construction," Edgar said.
The family's complaint.
However, the situation worsened.
And
to leave, the Pérezes asked for 30 thousand dollars
.
"What they are asking for is crazy. As you will see, the construction did not cost that much money," Edgar said while showing the premises where the Pérez chicken shop operates.
As the days passed, and without an agreement between Víctor and the tenants, the conflict began to escalate.
"That's when the first attacks and harassment appeared. Shortly after my father showed them the contract and they refused, they began to insult us and make all kinds of threats," said María Laura, one of Víctor and Hermelinda's daughters.
The protest on Olimpo Avenue at 1900, in Budge.
The Cantero family claims that they made "
more than 20 complaints" against the "usurpers
. "
They filmed several of the attacks they received.
In the videos you can see the Pérez insulting and also a group of men, who work for the brothers, making intimidating and aggressive gestures.
The owner says that they broke the security cameras, they threw sticks at them and that there was even physical aggression.
In a recording you can see how two women attack Milagros - Víctor's youngest daughter - and her sister Laura with pineapples at the door of the Cantero house.
"On January 15, two of their employees
came to hit us
," commented the 18-year-old teenager.
According to the family, they are two women sent by the Pérez family to occupy one of the family's houses.
"The day they beat my sisters, the police came and took them to the police station. I thought they were detained. But when we went to the Puente La Noria police station, we found out that they were declaring themselves victims, because they said they were attacked. for my sisters and that I went too far with them," Edgar noted.
The Police's handling of this conflict - according to the Cantero family - was very controversial.
"Every time we made a report,
the patrol car came shortly after and the police personnel helped them
. In fact, the last report we made was not taken and they told us to go directly to the Prosecutor's Office."
Finally, UFI 18 of Lomas accepted the complaint and prosecutor Pablo Rossi issued a perimeter against Eugenio Manuel Pérez (42), owner of the chicken shop.
The man targeted by the family as the aggressor.
"At the prosecutor's office they told us that this man has a criminal record for fraud and that he is a public official. They say he works in a penitentiary," Edgar emphasized.
He also reported that Pérez told him on several occasions that he had the Police and Justice in place.
"'
The monkey dances for the money
,' he told me one day," said the man.
The family also said that the Pérez brothers have a "good relationship" with the police officers who intervened in the conflict.
"In a video you can see how one of the brothers enters the store and then comes out with a package and gives it to the police," she concluded.
Due to the lack of response from the municipality and the Justice Department, and after spending months suffering constant attacks and harassment, the Cantero family decided to block Olimpo Avenue as a protest against the violence they are experiencing.
"
We are fed up. We can't take it anymore. We want them to leave. Nothing more
," Hermelinda concluded in anguish in front of what was her premises and is now "usurped."
EMJ