While the Buenos Aires government invested over $7.5 billion in the operation, a strict prohibition was issued to cover up that thousands of agents had to sleep on cardboard in the street and patrol unarmed
The disastrous management of Kirchnerism in the Province of Buenos Aires has once again exposed its most authoritarian and degrading side. In the face of the resounding collapse of the security operation deployed for the historic visit of Pope Leo XIV to the town of Luján, the government led by Governor Axel Kicillof and his Security Minister, Javier Alonso, resorted to open threats and institutional censorship to silence the complaints from the security forces. While the official narrative attempted to sell an impeccable deployment that mobilized 30,000 public servants with a staggering budget exceeding 7.5 billion pesos, the reality on the ground showed thousands of officers subjected to abandonment and precarious and inhumane working conditions.
Faced with the imminent leak of images that exposed state contempt, the Buenos Aires authorities circulated an intimidating directive aimed at intimidating police personnel. Through an official circular from the Ministry of Security of the Buenos Aires Police, the ruling elite decreed that “the dissemination, publication, reproduction or viralization, without the proper authorization, of images, videos, audios, photographs, writings or any other type of material related to police activity is prohibited”.
Statement from the Buenos Aires Police
The strict prohibition extended its tentacles over “all content related to police personnel, service provision conditions, procedures, operations, facilities, vehicles, dependencies, and any circumstance related to the performance of police functions”, cynically arguing that the measure seeks to “preserve the institutional image” and the “safety of personnel”.
The Kirchnerist management ordered the heads of the departments to supervise the reliable notification of all personnel under their charge. The official text specified coercively that the prohibition applies to “all digital platforms and media, such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp (including statuses), and any other social network or messaging application, as well as private groups and any other digital dissemination space”.
To tighten the screws of ideological control, the order warned that “no officer may share, forward, publish or provide third parties with material of this nature”, setting a mandatory deadline of Monday the 16th of the current month to submit the actions taken under warning.
Axel Kicillof, governor of Buenos Aires.
Behind the official gag, the complaints and material leaked by the agents themselves revealed the magnitude of the contempt of the Buenos Aires state towards its workers. Despite the high budget cost of the event, hundreds of Buenos Aires police officers had to remain cramped in the mud inside makeshift tents, sleeping on gym floors, patios, basketball stadiums, in front of houses, by the roadside, or directly on the asphalt in the public thoroughfare. Faced with the shortage of beds and the presence of worn-out mattresses, many officers resorted to gathering cardboard from the trash to use as a mattress in the open air.
The police suffered from the lack of chemical toilets and basic sanitary facilities, being forced to consume water stored in tanks exposed to the elements. In terms of food, the troops received expired and spoiled meals after enduring exhausting shifts of more than 48 consecutive hours on duty. This negligence was compounded by the payment of a ridiculous per diem of only $60,000 daily, which represented a miserable compensation of $300,000 for 5 days of work in extreme conditions, contrasting sharply with the waste of resources by the government elite.
Buenos Aires Police
To make matters worse, provincial authorities ordered the withdrawal of the service weapon from part of the personnel involved in the operation, leaving the officers unarmed in the face of possible assaults in the public thoroughfare. In stark contrast to the suffering of the force, Governor Axel Kicillof was seen at the Museum of Fine Arts in Luján alongside Minister Javier Alonso, Archbishop Jorge Eduardo Scheinig, and Mayor Leonardo Boto. There, Kicillof stated that “this is not just another visit, it is a historic event and an occurrence of enormous spiritual, human, and social significance”, demagogically asserting:
“In the face of individualism, his voice of enormous power reminds us that we cannot get used to injustice, normalize cruelty, or build a society based on indifference and the abandonment of the most vulnerable”. It is worth noting that while the Government of Javier Milei promotes fiscal responsibility in the use of funds, the official discourse cited the legacy of Pope Francis to mask the severe cuts affecting the officers.
Buenos Aires Police
However, the heartbreaking words of the agents crushed the official narrative. One officer reported on social media: “It wasn't enough for them to urinate on us, they wiped their genitals on us; this is the police of the province, which survives thanks to the people and the effort and will that each guard puts in. This is not new for us, we live thrown away, we are used to surviving with what we have and can. We search in the trash for cardboard to lie down on the floor to sleep”.
Another indignant agent added: “It's a disgrace what we are living. Some of us have been over 48 hours without being able to sleep or hygienize ourselves, and now we have to stay awake until tomorrow. The meals are expired, in bad condition, and they don't even pay us a per diem. They paid 300,000 pesos for 5 days in those conditions”. While the operation deployed 1,200 health workers, 45 ambulances, 8 mobile health units, 12 medical posts, 8 reference hospitals, 4 field hospitals, 2 medical helicopters, 12,000 police officers, 10,000 volunteers, 51 care posts, and 30 Eucharistic tents, the priority of Kirchnerism was to imprison the truth behind a shameful censorship statement.
