Today Buenos Aires became the scene of a film with an excessive script: a bus driver was assassinated, the drivers of 80 urban bus lines began a strike, the city's main highway was closed and the neighboring Minister of Security Buenos Aires province, who appeared to speak with the drivers, was greeted with a brutal punch to the face. Bloodied, he remained for half an hour against a wall while he was showered with insults, protected by the police in the Argentine capital.
"I'm not a liar!", defended the security minister of the province of Buenos Aires, the Peronist Sergio Berni, before the shouts and accusations of the bus drivers, known as "colectivos" in Argentina. "Don't lie, don't lie!" the drivers insisted.
"You're a liar, cheeky, son of a bitch!" the drivers yelled at Berni, who was still against the wall. According to Clarín," the minister received a rain of bottles and projectiles for several minutes while he deafened 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 country's collapse in December 2001.
Berni is a high-ranking official with enormous public exposure, a right-wing Peronist close to Cristina Kirchner -although it sounds contradictory- and who flirts with the idea of presenting a candidacy for the country's Presidency.
"Berni's presence was experienced as a provocation," said the LN news channel before the event of the day, which took over the screens of all televisions in the country.
Insecurity is growing in the province of Buenos Aires, the largest, most populous and richest in the country, and bus drivers are frequent victims of robberies, assaults and murders. Exhausted and desperate after the murder last week of a 65-year-old driver who was about to retire, the bus drivers from the western area of the Buenos Aires suburbs blocked General Paz avenue, which is equivalent to Madrid's M-30, to express his protest.
As the day progressed, the possibility grew that the drivers of more bus lines would join a strike. Violent Monday occurs in a context of high social tension in the country, with inflation above 100 percent per year and a poverty rate close to 40 percent, almost 19 million of the country's 46 million inhabitants.
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