Film, vigil mark anniversary of Argentine activist Santiago Maldonado's disappearance
The one-year anniversary of the disappearance of artist and Indigenous rights supporter Santiago Maldonado is being marked today by a vigil in Buenos Aires' Plaza de Mayo square, and by the premiere of a documentary film dealing with the case.
The film, El camino de Santiago (Santiago's Path), was directed by Tristán Bauer and written by Omar Quiroga and Florencia Kirchner, the daughter of former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
A death in Patagonia
Maldonado, then a 28 year-old tattoo artist and muralist, had arrived on July 31, 2017, at the site of a protest camp near Epuyén, Chubut Province, in Argentina's windswept Patagonia region.
The camp had been organized by members of the Mapuche people to demand the release of a jailed leader and the return of ancestral lands claimed by the Mapuche but owned by the Italian firm Benetton and British investor Joe Lewis - a personal friend of President Mauricio Macri.
The protest camp was assaulted on August 1 by a National Gendarmerie (militarized police) detachment, acting without a court order. Witnesses stated seeing police beat and detain several fleeing protesters - including Maldonado, who was never seen alive again.
Police never confirmed the arrest, and denied wrongdoing - but human rights groups have accused Macri of being part of a cover-up.
Security Minister Patricia Bullrich's initial claims that no shots were fired were contradicted by cell phone footage. Her assertions that Maldonado was "hiding in Chile" were likewise later disproven by cell phone data presented by Chile's then-President Michelle Bachelet.
Bullrich's chief adviser, Pablo Noceti, was photographed near the scene and according to witnesses personally supervised the crackdown. Noceti and the chief suspect in the death, Gendarmerie officer Emmanuel Echazú, were later promoted.
A subsequent Mapuche protest on November 25 resulted in the death of 22 year-old Rafael Nahuel, who was shot in the back by the same forces.
Mystery upstream
Maldonado's body was ultimately found after 78 days on October 17 floating on the banks of the Chubut River - but around 1,300 feet upstream of the site of the incident.
His being found that far upstream has led his family and rights groups to suspect his body may have been planted.
Argentine forensic expert Enrique Prueger published a study on July 26 that found that the body could not have been in the river for more than two weeks, rather than the "55 to 72 days" claimed in the official autopsy report.
Pollen found on Maldonado's jacket, according to analyst Leticia Povilauskas, appears to confirm Prueger's findings.
"It's very strange that the body was found where it was, when we've searched those same places and there was nothing," the victim's brother, Sergio Maldonado, pointed out at the time. "We want to know the truth."
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Santiago Maldonado, 1989-2017.
His death garnered international attention, and put Macri's use of force to quash dissent on the defensive.
