Buenos Aires today became the scene of an excessive screened film: a bus driver was killed, the drivers of 80 urban bus lines began a strike, the city's main highway was cut and the Minister of Security of the neighboring province of Buenos Aires, who showed up to talk to the drivers, He was greeted with a brutal punch to the face. Bloodied, he spent half an hour against a wall while receiving a shower of insults, protected by the police of the Argentine capital.

"I'm not a liar!" defended the Minister of Security of the province of Buenos Aires, the Peronist Sergio Berni, in the face of shouts and accusations from bus drivers, known as "colectivos" in Argentina. "Don't lie, don't lie!" the drivers insisted.

"You're a liar, you bastard, son of a bitch!" the drivers shouted at Berni, who was still against the wall. According to Clarín," the minister received for several minutes a shower of bottles and projectiles while thundering a cry against politicians in general: "Let them all go, let not a single one remain!" That cry was the one that mobilized the masses during the collapse that the country suffered in December 2001.

Berni is a high official of enormous public exposure, a right-wing Peronist related to Cristina Kirchner – although it sounds contradictory – and who flirts with the idea of presenting a candidacy for the Presidency of the country.

"Berni's presence was experienced as a provocation," said the LN+ news channel before the fact of the day, which took over the screens of all televisions in the country.

Insecurity is on the rise in Buenos Aires province, the country's largest, most populous and wealthiest, and bus drivers are frequent victims of robberies, assaults and murders. Exhausted and desperate after the murder last week, a 65-year-old driver who was about to retire, bus drivers in the western part of the Buenos Aires suburb blocked General Paz Avenue, which is equivalent to Madrid's M-30, to express their protest.

As the day progressed, the possibility grew that drivers of more bus lines would join a strike. Monday of violence occurs in a context of high social tension in the country, with inflation exceeding one hundred percent annually and a poverty rate that touches 40 percent, almost 19 million of the country's 46 million inhabitants.

  • Argentina

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