Filo.explica│Ten years after the tragedy of Once

It was 8.33 a.m. on Wednesday, February 22, 2012. Train 3772 of the Sarmiento line, with plate number 16, entered platform 2 of the Once terminal station but could not stop its march. The formation hit the terminal’s bumpers. The tragedy was a fact. The train was packed with people. The first three cars were the most affected. The fact showed that the conditions in which railway users travelled were nowhere near the best. But with the tragedy of Eleven all that took on another relevance. At that time, the concession of the Sarmiento line was owned by the company Trenes de Buenos Aires, also known as TBA, owned by the Cirigliano family. Immediately, the eye of public opinion was placed on the company and on the officials who were in charge of the area: Juan Pablo Schiavi and Ricardo Jaime, former secretaries of Transport, and Julio De Vido, former Minister of Planificación.La Tragedy of Eleven involved two trials. The first, with a sentence in 2014, convicted 21 people, including 18 businessmen who were part of the concession, two officials and the train driver of the accident. The second trial was held in 2018, and in it Julio De Vido, then Minister of Planning of the Nation and main defendant for his responsibility in the accident, was acquitted. In 2020, the Supreme Court upheld the convictions of 18 defendants. In the 2015 ruling, the judges ruled that the operating conditions of the train were poor because the public funds that were received were not intended to improve the service. And it was detailed that the officials had not controlled the destination of those funds. Beyond the political and business responsibilities, the focus was on Matías Córdoba, the training driver. Why? Because he admitted to having been responsible for the fact by disconnecting the emergency brake. The Tragedy of Eleven is, above all, a set of stories of people whose lives were cut short forever. People who that morning went to work, or to study, or who took their children to school. People who had dreams, longings, illusions. Among the victims of the Tragedy of Eleven were people of six nationalities: 42 were Argentines, 5 Paraguayans, 2 Bolivians, 1 Chilean, 1 Chinese and 1 Peruvian. There were from four-year-olds to older adults. Ten years after one of the greatest railway tragedies in Argentine history, the feeling remains of impunity, despite the 18 convictions. Julio De Vido was acquitted. Juan Pablo Schiavi, a former transportation secretary, was paroled for serving two-thirds of his sentence. Marcos Córdoba, the machinist of the tragedy, received the same benefit. The only official linked to the tragedy who remains imprisoned is Ricardo Jaime.

Original source in Spanish