Wednesday 24 January 3007
Another deathday here in Buenos Aires. Today marked ten years since the murder of José Luis Cabezas, a famous photojournalist. In the late 90's he worked for a paper called Noticias, which was known for its exposés. Cabezas had worked on several articles on police corruption, and also one on Alfredo Yabrán, a local businessman with mafia ties who refused to have his picture taken. So, Cabezas exposes some corruption, takes a picture of Yabrán, and a little later he is found dead, having been beaten, tortured, shot, and his body burned.
The chief of police and several other officers were jailed for life for clearing the area of police, thereby allowing the murder to take place. However, they figured the actual contract had been taken out by Yabrán. When they went to arrest him, though, they found that he had shot himself in the face. Now, there are still a lot of dodgy loose ends around the story (most people believe that Yabrán faked his own death, for instance) and at the protest today Cabeza's mother was still calling for justice. But it was a time when hundreds of journalists were being harassed and assaulted for investigating into leftover vestiges of corruption, and really, there is no one left to go after in this case.
So, to commemorate and at the least keep him and his cause in the spotlight, they had a nice little rally. His family members and friends all spoke, mostly just calling on everyone to remember Cabezas. More impressive, they projected his pictures and pictures of him onto the Obelisco, the Washington-monument-lookalike that sits right smack dab in the middle of downtown.
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