The Americas | Bello

Questions surround a gun attack on Argentina’s vice-president

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is the country’s most divisive politician

Argentina is a country of political theatre and of conspiracies, both real and imagined. Think, for example, of Eva (“Evita”) Perón, the actress turned darling of the descamisados (shirtless ones) who died aged just 33 and whose embalmed body was stolen by army officers who abhorred her and feared her seductive influence from the grave. Or think of the political murders which remain unsolved. One was the bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires in 1994 which killed 85 people. Two decades later Alberto Nisman, a prosecutor, filed charges against the then president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, for covering up an Iranian connection to the bombing (she said this was “absurd”). The night before he was due to present his case his body was discovered lying in a pool of blood at his flat. The authorities said he had committed suicide. Many believe he was murdered.

This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline “The gun that failed to fire”

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