Looters ransacked shops and supermarkets in riots that left one dead late Tuesday after police demanding a pay rise refused to patrol Argentina’s second largest city, Cordoba.
Looters ransacked shops and supermarkets in riots that left one dead late Tuesday after police demanding a pay rise refused to patrol Argentina's second largest city, Cordoba.
Provincial governor Jose Manuel de la Sota said 52 people were arrested, while medical sources said dozens were treated for injuries in local hospitals.
The slain man, a 20 year old, was shot in the chest and pronounced dead on arrival at Cordoba's San Roque hospital, the hospital's director Daniel Mercado told a local radio station Wednesday.
It is unclear whether the victim was participating in the looting or a bystander, Mercado said.
Looters, some on motorcycles, ransacked stores and supermarkets as they took advantage of the absence of police, local TV footage showed. Some vandals even entered private homes to demand money, victims said.
A group of students in the Villa Allende university district, on the outskirts of the city, took to the streets with hockey sticks to defend against the assailants, they told local journalists.
By morning, calm had mostly returned to the city, though there were isolated incidents put down by neighbors, television footage showed.
School and public transportation had been shut down preemptively, officials said, and shops, banks and gas stations were closed as residents stayed home, local media reported.
"This was not poverty-motivated looting -- there has been no stealing of food. The presence here has been criminal," Pedro Torres, Cordoba's Auxiliary Bishop told local TV.
Some 3,000 police out of Cordoba province's 22,000-strong force had refused to leave their police stations to go on patrol Tuesday.
Officers want higher salaries and better working conditions, said a lawyer for the police, Miguel Ortiz Pellegrini.
In the Cerveceros neighborhood, a wife of one of the policeman refusing to work offered "apologies to the neighbors," but pledged the job action would continue "until there is a solution."
Governor de la Sota demanded the policemen come back to work Wednesday, threatening punishment to those who did not.
He also accused the government of President Cristina Kirchner of ignoring his pleas for help.
Kirchner's chief of staff, Jorge Capitanich, said the provincial government had "exclusive" responsibility for the situation.
"The situation must be monitored to see what mechanisms of cooperation are possible, but we can't substitute responsibilities," Capitanich said.
But Security Secretary Sergio Berni announced Wednesday he was deploying 2,000 gendarmes to the province.
De la Sota, who returned from Panama to deal with the situation, belongs to a dissident faction of the ruling Peronist party.
Cordoba province, with a population of 3.5 million, is Argentina's second largest after Buenos Aires province. Cordoba is a big farm producer and a lure for tourists who come to enjoy its countryside.
