27/06/2026 03:49 - Sociales
This marks 24 years since the Avellaneda Massacre, one of the most tragic episodes in Argentina's recent democratic history. The events unfolded on June 26, 2002, during a severe institutional and economic crisis. The convertibility system (a currency peg that maintained a one-to-one parity with the U.S. dollar) had collapsed six months earlier, plunging millions into poverty. Interim President Eduardo Duhalde was governing a society on the brink, with alarming unemployment and exclusion rates.
On that morning, social organizations and piqueteros (unemployed workers' movements that use roadblocks as a form of protest) marched toward the Pueyrredón Bridge, intending to reach Plaza de Mayo in downtown Buenos Aires. The state's response was not dialogue, but a repressive operation coordinated by the Buenos Aires Police. What followed was a manhunt.
He was 22 years old. He was shot in the back while running for refuge in the hallway of the Avellaneda Train Station. He died instantly.
He was 21 years old. He stayed behind to help Kosteki. He was executed in cold blood by Commissioner Alfredo Franchiotti while attempting to protect his companion.
Immediately after the murders, the provincial and national governments orchestrated a false narrative: "the protesters killed each other." The then-Cabinet Chief, Aníbal Fernández, spoke of an alleged "plot" and armed confrontation. Governor Felipe Solá even praised the police officers involved.
"This is a clash between the poor and the poor, rest assured," Solá told human rights activist Nora Cortiñas that same day.
However, the official lie lasted less than 24 hours. The work of two photographers was decisive: Pepe Mateos (Clarín newspaper) and Sergio Kowalewski (Página/12 newspaper) documented the criminal sequence. The images showed Franchiotti and Corporal Alejandro Acosta firing at point-blank range and picking up the red cartridge cases (lead ammunition) to simulate a confrontation that never existed.
Justice was slow, but it arrived. On January 9, 2006, the Oral Tribunal N° 7 of Lomas de Zamora sentenced Alfredo Franchiotti and Alejandro Acosta to life imprisonment for double homicide and seven attempted homicides. Other agents received lesser sentences for covering up the crime.
Now, 24 years after the massacre, the former Avellaneda Station of the Roca Railway Line bears the name "Maximiliano Kosteki and Darío Santillán", in memory of the two popular activists murdered by the state's repressive apparatus.
Source: Infobae
Alfredo S. Quiroga
