After rumours, twists and turns, Alberto Fernández ended up accepting the resignation of Elizabeth Gómez Alcorta, the first minister of Women, Gender and Diversity of Argentina. The now former official, in any case, remarked that she presented her resignation “indeclinably”, after almost three years of management, in rejection of the violent operation with which federal forces evicted a Mapuche community in Río Negro, where — she denounced — “obvious violations of human rights” were committed. The President and Gómez Alcorta spoke on several occasions before her departure was finalized, and she even agreed at one point to continue in office, convinced by Fernández. But then she ended up going back to her initial decision. From the Casa Rosada they assured that it is not yet defined who will replace her.
In a letter addressed to the president and the chief of staff, Juan Manzur, Gómez Alcorta stressed that the territorial conflict with native peoples in Villa Mascardi merited “a forceful political response” from the Government. The lawyer and feminist activist, last survivor of the four women who made up the cabinet that took office in 2019, defended, in turn, the “historical and cultural transformation that our government produced in terms of visibility and prioritization of the gender and diversity agenda ”.
The reports about the resignation of Gómez Alcorta began on Thursday afternoon. Close to her they explained that the then minister had already made the decision to leave the cabinet and met with Fernández around 3 pm, in Quinta de Olivos. The President tried to convince her to change her mind and she succeeded. Shortly after leaving the presidential residence, Gómez Alcorta began to receive calls from journalists who consulted her about her resignation – they told from her surroundings – and she interpreted that the versions of her arose from the Casa Rosada itself. She called Fernández again to express her discomfort and they agreed to talk later. The new dialogue did not come to fruition. After learning that the President had gone to visit the National Flower Festival and to see the film with students Argentina, 1985, Gómez Alcorta decided to resign without declining. This was reported to Fernández at night.
The departure of the official was made official on Friday morning by presidential spokeswoman Gabriela Cerruti, with a brief statement.
“There is no replacement or names in dance,” sources from the national government explained to Page 12. “Surely”, they added, during the long weekend there could be news. One of the names that circulated as soon as Gómez Alcorta’s departure was known was that of Maria Christina Perceval, former senator for Mendoza, former Argentine ambassador to the United Nations and current Secretary for Equality and Diversity Policies in the Women’s portfolio. From Perceval’s environment they claimed to be unaware of the information.
The letter
The portfolio led by Gómez Alcorta intervened as soon as the arrests in Villa Mascardi of Mapuche women with their children became known, despite the fact that they did not have access to the file in which the eviction was ordered from the lands that the Lafken Winkul Mapu community claims as ancestral and it has occupied since 2017. In line with human rights organizations, the ministry publicly questioned the rejection of the releases, the incommunicado detainees, that they had not had contact with a lawyer and did not even know what they were accused of when the transferred to the Ezeiza women’s prison. The other side of that picture, which Gómez Alcorta defined as “extremely worrying” were the statements by Aníbal Fernández, defending the operation because “there were no attacks of any kind, not even a scratch.”
“The publicly known events unleashed in Villa Mascardi due to the eviction ordered against the Lafken Winkul Mapu community, in which women and children were arrested with the participation of federal forces, I find them incompatible with the values that I defend as a political project”, argued Gómez Alcorta in his resignation. It questioned that “the imprisonment, the denial of release for all of them and even more so for a 40-week pregnant woman, the incommunicado detention, and the transfer to more than 1,500 kilometers from her place of residence constitute obvious violations of human rights,” and He stressed that “regardless of the direct responsibility” of Judge Silvina Domínguez, the situation “deserves a forceful political response from the National Executive,” which never came. “Personally, I feel that with this fact a limit has been crossed, so I must step aside so that another person can take over the important responsibility of being in charge of this Ministry,” he said.
The now former minister added that “nothing of the above eliminates everything that has been done by this government in gender and diversity policies to date”, and stressed that the Ministry is “internationally recognized for the achievements and innovative policies promoted in such a short time ”.
repercussions
Estela Diaz, Minister of Women, Gender Policies and Sexual Diversity of Buenos Aires, expressed her respect for Gómez Alcorta’s decision and agreed that the detention of Mapuche women in Villa Mascardi and their transfer to the Ezeiza prison “violates human rights that our country defend”. The transfer of the detainees to more than 1,500 kilometers from their territory “represents punishment and torture for these women, which keeps them isolated and away from their ties by order of a patriarchal justice, which defends the interests of a minority,” she stressed. . The government official of Axel Kicillof framed the operation and resignation in “a time of spiraling and vertiginous growth of political violence, which also has a key component that is gender violence.”
The referent of Mothers of Plaza de Mayo Founding Line, Nora Cortiñas, confessed that it generated “a feeling of satisfaction that finally in an event like this someone resigned.” Faced with “this brutality with which she sees herself acting, she has the dignity to say ‘I can’t stand this.’ I thought it was a nice gesture. She is in a Ministry to protect women, although all ministries are to protect all the people, ”she stressed. “One says: ‘And such a minister does not resign?’ For example, Aníbal Fernández, saying that they had not repressed and they had. Denying that there was repression is really a failed act”, she affirmed, and regretted that Argentina is “becoming a country of savages, where the police are only instructed to kill, to repress”.
“I regret Eli’s decision, I had a daily job with her. The cabinet loses a very capable and committed official and militant,” he declared. Gabriel Katopodis, Minister of Public Works. Regarding the operation that led to the resignation, he said he understood that Gómez Alcorta “has a position on what happened”, he assumed that “he must have more information than I do on details of the procedure and the actions of the justice”, and differentiated the ” violent procedures with death tolls” during the macrismo of Tuesday’s eviction because “in general, a responsible process was guaranteed.” “These are always complex situations, but the government and Peronism will always be a guarantor of rights,” said Katopodis.