Argentina - May 14, 2023

About the lawsuit on the Villazo, in which the victims and families of the workers murdered during the big struggle of the 70s demand justice…

Enough impunity of the State and all the repressive institutions at the service of the big capital!

They are all guilty!

Workers and Popular Courts to judge and punish all the genocidists of yesterday and repressors of today!

 

In March 1975, the city of Villa Constitución was occupied by over 4,000 police officers, the "Pumas" (a para-state paramilitary organization in Santa Fe province), the Gendarmerie, the intelligence services, the Triple A (the main Peronist paramilitary organization, directly commanded from the Social Ministry, with the co-operation of both state personnel -including the Minister himself- and the Union bureaucracy) and the Peronist Youth Union. This operation, also supported by the Air Force, Prefecture and other repressive forces who carried out a brutal repression and massacre, was ordered by the government of Isabel Perón to halt the worker and popular uprising, which had started a few years before with the Cordobazo. Thus, already in 1974, the bourgeoisie had started organizing fascist gangs that attacked the metal workers who had set up their struggle committees, carrying out strikes, occupying factories, assemblies, etc., which they began to centralize in coordinator bodies, against the bureaucracy and the hunger plans of the Peronist government. This situation drove the bourgeoisie crazy, which together with the government called to exterminate the “red serpent of Paraná”. This plan to perpetrate these crimes had the participation of the big bosses of the three steel factories: Acindar (today Arcelor Mittal), Marathon and Metcon and the union bureaucracy of the National UOM (Metakworkers Unión), Lorenzo Miguel, also with the complicity of the church. These events were already anticipating the coup against the working class that would come later in '76 to crush the revolutionary uprising that had begun in Argentina in '69 as part of the '68-'74 upsurge.

In the Villazo trial that is being carried out in the Federal Courts of Rosario, of which the complainants are victims and families of the murdered workers, 25 people are investigated accused for the crimes of unlawful deprivation of freedom, homicide and torture. Though, such a massacre against the working class was not committed by only 25 accused!

They are all guilty. The state, its repressive forces, the fascist gangs, the union bureaucracy, the board of directors and owners of the factories! MURDERERS!
The burden of the proof must be reversed: everyone to jail until they prove their innocence!
This case has been in prosecution for 10 years in the Federal Courts of Rosario. About a year ago, it was elevated to oral and public hearings, which should have started at the end of 2022, but it was not carried out.
What the complainant victims and family members are demanding with actions before the Courts is that a date be promptly set for the oral trial, which should be transferred to the courts of the city of Villa Constitución, because it was the place where the events took place and because the surviving victims are now elderly persons. But the judges have already shown who they favor, for example, by authorizing one of the defendants, Carmen Grossolin, a former federal police officer, to go on vacation abroad, a waiver that y later canceled due to the repudiation generated at that time. Also before, another of the defendants, Roberto Pellegrini, a member of the Acindar board of directors during the 1970s, used his benefit to house arrest to walk freely around the streets of the city in 2021.

While there is still no justice for the workers of Villazo, those who have had impunity are the State and its repressive apparatus under Peronist-Kirchnerite, UCR (conservative Civic Union Radical Party), and Macrist governments to persecute and imprison worker fighters, to disappear and murder membrrs of the youth and worker vanguard, such as Kosteki and Santillán, the 40 martyrs of 2001, Daniel Solano, Santiago Maldonado, Mariano Ferreyra, etc.,  to persecute and condemn worker activists César Arakaki, Daniel Ruiz, the Las Heras oil workers and hundreds more! There are over 7000 worker and popular fighters prosecuted for fighting!

We don’t forget, don't forgive and don't reconcile because the spilled blood won’t be bargained! To the killers, prison now! To the comrades, freedom!
The true justice for the martyrs of Villazo, for the tortured and disappeared, will be served by the workers, in the first place the metalworkers taking to the streets, self-organizing in base assemblies, and toppling down the union bureaucracy that follows the path of Lorenzo Miguel and his likes, the murderers of the workers of Villa. This is how we would advance in setting up Worker and Popular Courts, integrated by relatives of the disappeared and by militant worker organizations.
It is necessary to break all subordination to the union bureaucracy of Furlán, who together with Cristina Fernandez, has vindicated Lorenzo Miguel, secretary general of the UOM in the 70s. Before the catastrophe of unstoppable inflation, the increase in production rates, ongoing labor flexibilization, we must now call a general assembly of the Villa section with base delegates with a mandate to vote on a fighting plan and promote unity with all the sectors in struggle.

We need to organize the resistance to the fierce war declared against the workers by setting up congresses of grassroots delegates from all sectors in struggle, self-organized and with self-defense committees, independent of the sell-out bureaucrats, to demand “Justice for the workers of Villazo!” And let this be the banner of struggle for the entire labor movement.
Expropriation without compensation and under worker control of all the properties of the bosses involved in the crimes of the workers and popular fighters!
Dissolution of the repressive forces! Out with the Peronist-Radical-bosses judges!