Plenty has been revealed about who tried to shoot Argentinian Vice President Cristina Kirchner two weeks ago while she greeted her fans near her doorstep, with four arrests already ordered by Judge María Eugenia Capuchetti.
But behind the immediate perpetrators hangs the specter of larger violent organizations, whose links with the suspects and more mainstream right-wing leaders will likely be at the center of the Argentinian agenda for years to come.
First, the facts from the case: Fernando Sabag Montiel, the would-be-shooter, has already been indicted. Not only is there video and DNA evidence proving his role in the crime scene, but prosecutors have even opened a new investigation against him after finding child sexual abuse images on his mobile phone.
Mr. Sabag’s girlfriend, Brenda Uliarte, is currently seen as the crime’s instigator, after multiple chats with a close friend in which she speaks in great detail about her plans to kill Ms. Kirchner.
“Today I will become [Argentinian independence hero José de] San Martín, I will send someone to kill Cristina. I’m tired of everybody talking and doing nothing,” Ms. Uliarte told her friend on August 27. “The son of a bitch went back inside before I could shoot her,” Ms. Uliarte also lamented, minutes after Ms. Kirchner gave a speech in public. The friend has also been arrested.
Footage of both women stalking Ms. Kirchner’s apartment in the build up to the September 1 assassination attempt was leaked to the press, and has been used as evidence to order their detention.
The fourth person under custody is Mr. Sabag and Ms. Uliarte’s boss, in what they allege to be a street cotton candy sales venture, but which many believe to be a front for a criminal enterprise.
The “Cotton Candy Gang,” as the Argentinian press has christened them, stood around Ms. Kirchner’s apartment for days and nights without making any sales. The supposition is that they were gathering intelligence about the attack they were planning.
What’s clear is that Ms. Uliarte’s viral TV appearances before the attack, speaking about how their wildly successful candy venture allowed her to stop living off state aid programs, was based on false pretenses, although the purpose of those staged stories is still not fully understood.
Investigators, television crews, and even Kirchnerite sympathizers who were supporting the vice president near her apartment are currently browsing footage of the week of the incident, looking for obvious associates of the fake salesmen lurking around Ms. Kirchner’s building.
A second circle
While the gang of supposed street salesmen is clearly implicated, many curious coincidences point to a second group of suspects.
The group is known as Revolución Federal, and was formed in May 2022 with the clear stated goal of staging violent acts against key members of the government.
Among their most notable public appearances was a rally at the Buenos Aires Obelisk on July 9, when they showed up with a home-made guillotine and placards calling for all government members to be “jailed, killed, or exiled.” In an August 18 protest, they threw flaming torches at the Casa Rosada.
Ms. Uliarte was among the small group of protestors who took part in the August 18 stunt, although Revolución Federal leaders claim not to know her.
Despite this, public recordings of Revolución Federal’s Twitter Spaces show their leaders describing almost step by step what would end up happening to Ms. Kirchner a few days later.
“I saw Cristina today greeting her militants, and I was telling myself … it’s a shame that they know who I am already, because otherwise I could infiltrate them for a week, sing the Peronist anthem with them, wait until she comes down [from her apartment], and then make history. I would get lynched afterwards. But I would make history,” Jonathan Morel said on August 26, six days before Mr. Sabag carried out that fantasy almost exactly to the letter.
Mr. Morel owns the carpenter shop in which the guillotine and torches were manufactured, and is one of Revolución Federal’s founders. In an interview before the attacks, Mr. Morel said “our goal is to make them scared of being Kirchnerites.”
Until earlier this week, his Twitter bio also read: “23 years old. Retailer. Bullet to the Kirchnerites.”
Political links
Strikingly, Mr. Morel’s store took payments for ARS 1,760,000 (USD 6,400) from the family of former Central Bank chief Luis Caputo, appointed under Mauricio Macri’s center-right administration and part of the larger Caputo family, which includes Mr. Macri’s best friend Nicolás Caputo.
That information, plus the surprising leniency shown during Revolución Federal’s violent rallies by the opposition-controlled Buenos Aires City police, has raised all kinds of suspicions among Kirchnerite circles in the aftermath of the attack.
The intrigue even includes people who until very recently were seen as mere colorful characters, such as Ms. Kirchner’s upstairs neighbor, a fervent critic of her administration who made frequent media appearances talking about how she disliked her neighbor’s policies, showing off the anti-Kirchnerite placards she hung from her balcony.
The woman, Ximena de Tezanos Pintos, invited members of Revolución Federal to her apartment in the week of the attack, and even rented a room in her flat to the group’s lawyer.
“Thinking about how the biggest mafia chief in Argentina is right below my feet,” wrote Revolución Federal member Gastón Guerra on Instagram after posting a selfie from Ms. Tezano de Pintos balcony on August 28.
Mr. Guerra was already facing a court case for attacking Economy Minister Sergio Massa’s car during his inauguration, and is heavily linked with some of Argentina’s top libertarian influencers.
With all this in mind, Ms. Kirchner filed a request this week to become a plaintiff in the investigation. “We want to make sure that the case is only closed when it has to be closed. With everyone [that had a role in the attack] behind bars,” the vice president’s lawyer José Ubeira said.