Pocho Lepratti
Encyclopedia
Claudio Hugo Lepratti known as Pocho Lepratti, was a volunteer who worked in a poor neighbourhood in Rosario
, province
of Santa Fe
, Argentina
, and who was shot and killed by the Santa Fe Provincial Police during the December 2001 riots
, while he tried to stop police agents from firing at a school.
, Entre Ríos
, and studied Law between 1983 and 1985, while at the same time serving as a cooperator of the Salesians of Don Bosco
. After that, he entered the Ceferino Namuncurá Salesian Seminary in Funes, Santa Fe
(a town in the Greater Rosario
area), as a coadjutor brother. He studied Philosophy and became a professor.
The students of the seminary were customarily taken to visit nearby places to get in contact with the everyday reality of the poor and work with them. Lepratti eventually asked to extend this practice to constant work among the poor, but his superiors told him that he needed to take vows of obedience and keep studying. Due to this, after five years he left the seminary and went to live in a villa miseria
or shanty town
in Barrio Ludueña, Rosario. In the parish led by Father Edgardo Montaldo, he created and coordinated a number of child and youth groups, organizing camping excursions, workshops, etc. He worked as a kitchen assistant in the associated facilities that provided food for the poor children in the villa, and taught philosophy and theology in the parochial school.
marked by long-term recession
and massive unemployment
. On 18 December, riots
and looting
of supermarkets and stores, initiated by activists who requested food, broke out in Rosario and Greater Buenos Aires
. President Fernando de la Rúa
dictated a state of emergency
, suspending constitutional guarantees, and violent repression ensued.
Lepratti lived in the villa miseria in Ludueña but was doing daily volunteer work in a school located in Barrio Las Flores, a poor neighbourhood in southern Rosario. On 19 December, the Santa Fe Provincial Police raided the area of the school to suffocate an evolving protest, with people picketing and blocking a nearby major avenue. Lepratti and two other members of the school staff climbed to the roof of the school to assess the situation, and amid the shooting, they demanded that the police cease fire: "Don't shoot, there are children inside."
According to witnesses and the investigation conducted later by the Internal Affairs Department of the police, a patrol car belonging to the Radioelectrical Command of Arroyo Seco
stopped by the school, and two police agents got off and fired at the roof. One of them, Ernesto Esteban Velázquez, killed Lepratti. The cause of death was a 12.70 mm caliber shotgun
bullet which went through his trachea
. Lepratti was quickly taken to the Roque Sáenz Peña Hospital
but died before arriving there.
The repression of protests took four casualties in Rosario that day. On 20 December, amid violent demonstrations, looting and riots in the major Argentine cities, President De la Rúa resigned.
On Lepratti's case, a witness claimed that she had filed a denunciation of shooting in a police station, but the personnel had refused to take it in writing. The records of the police station stated that Lepratti had died in an exchange of fire. The time, the jurisdiction of the station, and the witness retelling of the situation later in court did not match. Furthermore, the police car showed two bullet impacts which could not have been made from the roof of the school, but appeared to have been done later to match the police version. Finally, the police made up a charge of resistance to authority on the part of Lepratti.
Based on the coincidence between the bullet types, and following the testimony of the two witnesses, officer E. E. Velázquez was indicted by judge Osvaldo Barbero. Velézquez first claimed that the shots that killed Lepratti were done before he and his companion, sergeant Rubén Darío Pérez, left their vehicle. Then he changed his statement, claiming he had only shot upwards into the air. The forged police records claimed that the patrol car had been shot at by unknown attackers, who had escaped after dissuasive fire. Nine officers were indicted for the alteration of the records, but they refused to speak.
One of these, sergeant Jorge Alberto Orué, eventually caved in. Before a judge, he declared that Velázquez was already aware that Lepratti was dead when he returned there after the shooting, but that he insisted he had used rubber bullets. Later that day, Orué said, several high-rank officers (including the head of the Arroyo Seco Radioelectrical Command, Velázquez's superior, and others not belonging to the station's staff) came and gathered behind closed doors at the police station. It was then, presumably, that the fake records were written and the cover story was devised.
Ernesto Esteban Velázquez was tried for murder, and the prosecutor asked for a 18-year prison term. Velázquez was found guilty of murder and sentenced to 14 years on 5 August 2004 by judge Ernesto Genesio. The sentence was immediately appealed, but it was ratified on 30 September 2005. The provincial state was additionally sentenced to pay AR$
145,000 (around US$50,000) in reparations to Lepratti's family. Velázquez's senior officers, the presumed authors of the orders to suffocate the protest, were not tried. With regards to officer Pérez, who was beside Velázquez at the time of the murder, the evidence was deemed not enough to merit prosecution.
In 2003 Lepratti's former house was turned into a culture house (Bodegón Cultural Casa de Pocho), which includes a Popular Library. The library published a book, Pocho vive ("Pocho Lives"), with collaborations including Father Montaldo's stories about the daily work of Lepratti, details of the investigation of his murder, and an analysis of groups of marginalized people brought together by solidarity.
A square located in Barrio Ludueña, near Lepratti's house, was renamed Plaza Pocho Lepratti, and the Carnival
season, along with Lepratti's birthday, is celebrated there every year by a murga
and by rock bands, formed in part by local young people that he coached and taught. The commemoration of Lepratti's birth in 2006 gathered more than 6,000 people.
In 2003, the municipality of Rosario opened a public primary healthcare center in Barrio Las Flores, with the name of Pocho Lepratti, besides the school where he was killed.
In 2004, Rosario audiovisual producer Francisco Matiozzi made a documentary film
, Pochormiga about Lepratti, which was awarded the Best Documentary Film Award at the Rosario Latin-American Video Film Festival, among other awards and special mentions. The title, a conflation of Pocho and the Spanish word hormiga ("ant"), alludes to Lepratti's minuscule but busy and perseverant work.
It was shown in the Congreso de laS LenguaS
(a counter-cultural meeting held in parallel with the Third International Congress of the Spanish Language
), and in public theaters and culture centers in Rosario and Buenos Aires
. It received the Best Short Subject
Film on Human Rights Award at the Third FEISAL Festival in Buenos Aires in June 2005, an accomplishment that earned it more international coverage. In November 2005, it was presented at the Deliberative Council of Rosario, and 250 copies were given to public schools of the city.
Popular folk-rock composer León Gieco
, well-known for his involvement in social causes, wrote a song dedicated to Lepratti, El ángel de la bicicleta ("The Angel of the Bicycle", alluding to Lepratti's main means of transportation). The video shows scenes of the December 2001 riots and the police repression, along with people writing graffiti
about Lepratti.
Such graffiti, most commonly the phrase Pocho vive ("Pocho lives"), the picture of an ant, or a winged silhouette (an angel) riding a bicycle, have sprung up in Rosario's walls, including the downtown.
On the fourth anniversary of the riots, a demonstration in Rosario demanded punishment for the nine deaths occurred in the days between 18 December and 21 December 2001 in Santa Fe, of which only the direct responsible of Lepratti's has been tried. A statement, read in part by Lepratti's sister Celeste, claimed that there was a defined operational scheme coordinated by the national government to repress protests with lethal force. They laid down the blame for Santa Fe's murders on then-governor Carlos Reutemann
, and criticized the workings of the Judicial Branch, which let many policemen and officials free and slowed down or paralyzed the investigations.
In 2006 the Deliberative Council of Concepción del Uruguay, Lepratti's birthplace, approved a project to build a commemorative monument. A contest of ideas was opened in September, to decide on its design. The municipality of Concepción del Uruguay had already named a street in Lepratti's homage.
Rosario
Rosario is the largest city in the province of Santa Fe, Argentina. It is located northwest of Buenos Aires, on the western shore of the Paraná River and has 1,159,004 residents as of the ....
, province
Provinces of Argentina
Argentina is subdivided into twenty-three provinces and one autonomous city...
of Santa Fe
Santa Fe Province
The Invincible Province of Santa Fe, in Spanish Provincia Invencible de Santa Fe , is a province of Argentina, located in the center-east of the country. Neighboring provinces are from the north clockwise Chaco , Corrientes, Entre Ríos, Buenos Aires, Córdoba, and Santiago del Estero...
, Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
, and who was shot and killed by the Santa Fe Provincial Police during the December 2001 riots
December 2001 riots (Argentina)
The December 2001 uprising was a period of civil unrest and rioting in Argentina, which took place during December 2001, with the most violent incidents taking place on December 19 and December 20 in the capital, Buenos Aires, Rosario and other large cities around the country.- Background :The...
, while he tried to stop police agents from firing at a school.
Early years and work
Lepratti was born in Concepción del UruguayConcepción del Uruguay
Concepción del Uruguay is a city in Argentina.It is located in the Entre Ríos province, on the western shore of the Uruguay River, some 320 kilometers north from Buenos Aires. Its population is about 65,000 inhabitants .-History:...
, Entre Ríos
Entre Ríos Province
Entre Ríos is a northeastern province of Argentina, located in the Mesopotamia region. It borders the provinces of Buenos Aires , Corrientes and Santa Fe , and Uruguay in the east....
, and studied Law between 1983 and 1985, while at the same time serving as a cooperator of the Salesians of Don Bosco
Salesians of Don Bosco
The Salesians of Don Bosco is a Roman Catholic religious order founded in the late nineteenth century by Saint John Bosco in an attempt, through works of charity, to care for the young and poor children of the industrial revolution...
. After that, he entered the Ceferino Namuncurá Salesian Seminary in Funes, Santa Fe
Funes, Santa Fe
Funes is a small city in the , located within the metropolitan area of Greater Rosario, about 15 km west from the center of the city of Rosario. It has a population of about 15,000 inhabitants....
(a town in the Greater Rosario
Greater Rosario
Greater Rosario is the metropolitan area of the city of Rosario, in the province of Santa Fe, Argentina. This metropolis has a population of about 1.5 million , thus being Argentina's second most populated urban settlement, after Buenos Aires....
area), as a coadjutor brother. He studied Philosophy and became a professor.
The students of the seminary were customarily taken to visit nearby places to get in contact with the everyday reality of the poor and work with them. Lepratti eventually asked to extend this practice to constant work among the poor, but his superiors told him that he needed to take vows of obedience and keep studying. Due to this, after five years he left the seminary and went to live in a villa miseria
Villa miseria
A villa miseria is a form of shanty town or slum found in Argentina, mostly around the largest urban settlements. The term is a compound noun made of the Spanish words villa "village, small town" and miseria "misery, dejection"...
or shanty town
Shanty town
A shanty town is a slum settlement of impoverished people who live in improvised dwellings made from scrap materials: often plywood, corrugated metal and sheets of plastic...
in Barrio Ludueña, Rosario. In the parish led by Father Edgardo Montaldo, he created and coordinated a number of child and youth groups, organizing camping excursions, workshops, etc. He worked as a kitchen assistant in the associated facilities that provided food for the poor children in the villa, and taught philosophy and theology in the parochial school.
The murder
At the end of 2001, Argentina was nearing the peak of an economic crisisArgentine economic crisis (1999-2002)
The Argentine economic crisis was a financial situation, tied to poilitical unrest, that affected Argentina's economy during the late 1990s and early 2000s...
marked by long-term recession
Recession
In economics, a recession is a business cycle contraction, a general slowdown in economic activity. During recessions, many macroeconomic indicators vary in a similar way...
and massive unemployment
Unemployment
Unemployment , as defined by the International Labour Organization, occurs when people are without jobs and they have actively sought work within the past four weeks...
. On 18 December, riots
December 2001 riots (Argentina)
The December 2001 uprising was a period of civil unrest and rioting in Argentina, which took place during December 2001, with the most violent incidents taking place on December 19 and December 20 in the capital, Buenos Aires, Rosario and other large cities around the country.- Background :The...
and looting
Looting
Looting —also referred to as sacking, plundering, despoiling, despoliation, and pillaging—is the indiscriminate taking of goods by force as part of a military or political victory, or during a catastrophe, such as during war, natural disaster, or rioting...
of supermarkets and stores, initiated by activists who requested food, broke out in Rosario and Greater Buenos Aires
Greater Buenos Aires
Greater Buenos Aires is the generic denomination to refer to the megalopolis comprising the autonomous city of Buenos Aires and the conurbation around it, over the province of Buenos Aires—namely the adjacent 24 partidos or municipalities—which nonetheless do not constitute a single administrative...
. President Fernando de la Rúa
Fernando de la Rúa
Fernando de la Rúa is an Argentine politician. He was president of the country from December 10, 1999 to December 21, 2001 for the Alliance for Work, Justice and Education ....
dictated a state of emergency
State of emergency
A state of emergency is a governmental declaration that may suspend some normal functions of the executive, legislative and judicial powers, alert citizens to change their normal behaviours, or order government agencies to implement emergency preparedness plans. It can also be used as a rationale...
, suspending constitutional guarantees, and violent repression ensued.
Lepratti lived in the villa miseria in Ludueña but was doing daily volunteer work in a school located in Barrio Las Flores, a poor neighbourhood in southern Rosario. On 19 December, the Santa Fe Provincial Police raided the area of the school to suffocate an evolving protest, with people picketing and blocking a nearby major avenue. Lepratti and two other members of the school staff climbed to the roof of the school to assess the situation, and amid the shooting, they demanded that the police cease fire: "Don't shoot, there are children inside."
According to witnesses and the investigation conducted later by the Internal Affairs Department of the police, a patrol car belonging to the Radioelectrical Command of Arroyo Seco
Arroyo Seco, Santa Fe
Arroyo Seco is a city in the province of Santa Fe, Argentina. It has about 24,000 inhabitants according to the . Its name is the same as a neighbouring creek...
stopped by the school, and two police agents got off and fired at the roof. One of them, Ernesto Esteban Velázquez, killed Lepratti. The cause of death was a 12.70 mm caliber shotgun
Shotgun
A shotgun is a firearm that is usually designed to be fired from the shoulder, which uses the energy of a fixed shell to fire a number of small spherical pellets called shot, or a solid projectile called a slug...
bullet which went through his trachea
Vertebrate trachea
In tetrapod anatomy the trachea, or windpipe, is a tube that connects the pharynx or larynx to the lungs, allowing the passage of air. It is lined with pseudostratified ciliated columnar epithelium cells with goblet cells that produce mucus...
. Lepratti was quickly taken to the Roque Sáenz Peña Hospital
Roque Sáenz Peña Hospital
The Roque Sáenz Peña Hospital is a public municipal hospital in Rosario, province of Santa Fe, Argentina. It serves as a secondary referral hospital for the South and Southwest Districts of the city...
but died before arriving there.
The repression of protests took four casualties in Rosario that day. On 20 December, amid violent demonstrations, looting and riots in the major Argentine cities, President De la Rúa resigned.
Investigation of the murder
A Non-Governmental Investigative Commission was assembled in July 2002 to bring light on the alleged murders committed by the police in Santa Fe. It was determined that a substantial coverup had taken place.On Lepratti's case, a witness claimed that she had filed a denunciation of shooting in a police station, but the personnel had refused to take it in writing. The records of the police station stated that Lepratti had died in an exchange of fire. The time, the jurisdiction of the station, and the witness retelling of the situation later in court did not match. Furthermore, the police car showed two bullet impacts which could not have been made from the roof of the school, but appeared to have been done later to match the police version. Finally, the police made up a charge of resistance to authority on the part of Lepratti.
Based on the coincidence between the bullet types, and following the testimony of the two witnesses, officer E. E. Velázquez was indicted by judge Osvaldo Barbero. Velézquez first claimed that the shots that killed Lepratti were done before he and his companion, sergeant Rubén Darío Pérez, left their vehicle. Then he changed his statement, claiming he had only shot upwards into the air. The forged police records claimed that the patrol car had been shot at by unknown attackers, who had escaped after dissuasive fire. Nine officers were indicted for the alteration of the records, but they refused to speak.
One of these, sergeant Jorge Alberto Orué, eventually caved in. Before a judge, he declared that Velázquez was already aware that Lepratti was dead when he returned there after the shooting, but that he insisted he had used rubber bullets. Later that day, Orué said, several high-rank officers (including the head of the Arroyo Seco Radioelectrical Command, Velázquez's superior, and others not belonging to the station's staff) came and gathered behind closed doors at the police station. It was then, presumably, that the fake records were written and the cover story was devised.
Ernesto Esteban Velázquez was tried for murder, and the prosecutor asked for a 18-year prison term. Velázquez was found guilty of murder and sentenced to 14 years on 5 August 2004 by judge Ernesto Genesio. The sentence was immediately appealed, but it was ratified on 30 September 2005. The provincial state was additionally sentenced to pay AR$
Argentine peso
The peso is the currency of Argentina, identified by the symbol $ preceding the amount in the same way as many countries using dollar currencies. It is subdivided into 100 centavos. Its ISO 4217 code is ARS...
145,000 (around US$50,000) in reparations to Lepratti's family. Velázquez's senior officers, the presumed authors of the orders to suffocate the protest, were not tried. With regards to officer Pérez, who was beside Velázquez at the time of the murder, the evidence was deemed not enough to merit prosecution.
Legacy of Lepratti
Claudio Pocho Lepratti soon became a symbol of social activism and of the fight against injustice and repressive authorities.In 2003 Lepratti's former house was turned into a culture house (Bodegón Cultural Casa de Pocho), which includes a Popular Library. The library published a book, Pocho vive ("Pocho Lives"), with collaborations including Father Montaldo's stories about the daily work of Lepratti, details of the investigation of his murder, and an analysis of groups of marginalized people brought together by solidarity.
A square located in Barrio Ludueña, near Lepratti's house, was renamed Plaza Pocho Lepratti, and the Carnival
Carnival
Carnaval is a festive season which occurs immediately before Lent; the main events are usually during February. Carnaval typically involves a public celebration or parade combining some elements of a circus, mask and public street party...
season, along with Lepratti's birthday, is celebrated there every year by a murga
Murga
Murga is a form of popular musical theatre performed in Uruguay and in Argentina during the Carnival season. Murga groups operate in Montevideo and at the Buenos Aires Carnival, though to a lesser extent than in Montevideo; the Argentine murga is more centred on dancing and less on vocals than the...
and by rock bands, formed in part by local young people that he coached and taught. The commemoration of Lepratti's birth in 2006 gathered more than 6,000 people.
In 2003, the municipality of Rosario opened a public primary healthcare center in Barrio Las Flores, with the name of Pocho Lepratti, besides the school where he was killed.
In 2004, Rosario audiovisual producer Francisco Matiozzi made a documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
, Pochormiga about Lepratti, which was awarded the Best Documentary Film Award at the Rosario Latin-American Video Film Festival, among other awards and special mentions. The title, a conflation of Pocho and the Spanish word hormiga ("ant"), alludes to Lepratti's minuscule but busy and perseverant work.
It was shown in the Congreso de laS LenguaS
Congreso de laS LenguaS
The Congreso de laS LenguaS was a cultural event that took place in Rosario, Argentina, from 15 November to 20 November 2004...
(a counter-cultural meeting held in parallel with the Third International Congress of the Spanish Language
Third International Congress of the Spanish Language
The Third International Congress of the Spanish Language was a cultural event that took place in Rosario, Argentina, on 17, 18 and 19 November 2004....
), and in public theaters and culture centers in Rosario and Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
. It received the Best Short Subject
Short subject
A short film is any film not long enough to be considered a feature film. No consensus exists as to where that boundary is drawn: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all...
Film on Human Rights Award at the Third FEISAL Festival in Buenos Aires in June 2005, an accomplishment that earned it more international coverage. In November 2005, it was presented at the Deliberative Council of Rosario, and 250 copies were given to public schools of the city.
Popular folk-rock composer León Gieco
León Gieco
Raúl Alberto Antonio Gieco, better known as León Gieco is a pop-folk music composer and interpreter. He is known for mixing popular folkloric genres with Argentine rock, and for lyrics with social and political connotations...
, well-known for his involvement in social causes, wrote a song dedicated to Lepratti, El ángel de la bicicleta ("The Angel of the Bicycle", alluding to Lepratti's main means of transportation). The video shows scenes of the December 2001 riots and the police repression, along with people writing graffiti
Graffiti
Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....
about Lepratti.
Such graffiti, most commonly the phrase Pocho vive ("Pocho lives"), the picture of an ant, or a winged silhouette (an angel) riding a bicycle, have sprung up in Rosario's walls, including the downtown.
On the fourth anniversary of the riots, a demonstration in Rosario demanded punishment for the nine deaths occurred in the days between 18 December and 21 December 2001 in Santa Fe, of which only the direct responsible of Lepratti's has been tried. A statement, read in part by Lepratti's sister Celeste, claimed that there was a defined operational scheme coordinated by the national government to repress protests with lethal force. They laid down the blame for Santa Fe's murders on then-governor Carlos Reutemann
Carlos Reutemann
Carlos Alberto Reutemann , nicknamed "Lole", is an Argentine former racing driver , and later a politician in his native province of Santa Fe, for the Justicialist Party....
, and criticized the workings of the Judicial Branch, which let many policemen and officials free and slowed down or paralyzed the investigations.
In 2006 the Deliberative Council of Concepción del Uruguay, Lepratti's birthplace, approved a project to build a commemorative monument. A contest of ideas was opened in September, to decide on its design. The municipality of Concepción del Uruguay had already named a street in Lepratti's homage.