“We are all Kevin” (image courtesy of La Garganta Poderosa)
Residents of Villa 21-24 (known as Zavaleta) in the Buenos Aires neighbourhood of Barracas, together with social and human rights organisations, demanded justice on the first anniversary of the murder of Kevin Molina.
The protest took place in front of the Security Ministry in Recoleta yesterday afternoon. Organisations such as La Poderosa, Madres de Plaza de Mayo Línea Fundadora, CELS, Corriente Villera Independiente, among others, came together to repudiate institutional violence under the slogan ‘We are all Kevin’.
Nine-year-old Kevin was killed by a stray bullet in his house on 7th September 2013, during a shootout between two rival gangs in a nearby house, in Villa Zavaleta. In three hours, more than 100 shots were fired, with no response from prefectura, even though their base was less than 150 metres away.
Roxana and Claudio, Kevin’s parents, expressed their reasons to protest in a document they read during the demonstration: “Because Kevin had seven little siblings who miss him; because he was hiding under a table, inside his house [when he was killed].”
Over the weekend, La Poderosa also revealed the existence of eight calls made from Villa Zavaleta between 8.25 and 9.38am on 7th September 2013 to the police phone line, which exposed the inaction by the security forces during the shootout that killed Kevin. The records also show two conversations between the phone operator and a policeman at 8.58 and 9.02am, with the police officer claiming that the situation in Villa Zavaleta is calm, despite the phone operator informing him that “we got in touch with the caller, sir. And he can hear shots right now.”
“That Saturday they [gendarmería and prefectura] freed the area [for gangs] to act with total impunity, for others to resolve their business with shots,” wrote Paola Vallejos, a writer at La Garganta Poderosa. After the incident, and in light of the lack of protection awarded to the residents, they established a model of ‘popular control on the security forces’.
A year on, no one has been charged with the murder of Kevin.
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