Buenos Aires Herald 
Updated at 8:46 p.m.
Former President Cristina Kirchner lead a Justicialist Party (PJ) event on Monday for Peronist Resistance Day, commemorating the 69th anniversary of the 1956 shooting in José León Suárez, which left five dead and seven wounded.
The event took place at the PJ headquarters, located at Matheu 130 in Buenos Aires. This was her second public appearance since she announced that she would run to be a local lawmaker in Buenos Aires Province. Her first appearance was on Saturday in Corrientes, where she endorsed Martín Ascúa’s candidacy for governor in the August 31 elections.
During her speech, she leveled strong criticism at current president Javier Milei’s economic model, and advocated for Peronist unity to build an alternative.
“Argentineans need to know they’re being lied to,” she told the event. “All the debt increases every day, and they [the government] are not paying it. Everyone, from business leaders to the media, knows that this model is unviable.”
“They already tried it in the 1970s with the coup d’état, and at that time, they eliminated political parties, unions, and 30,000 people disappeared,” the former president argued.
She also urged the Argentine public “to discuss where we are going.”
“There’s no Argentine who can tell me without looking me in the eye that it’s possible to grow in a country that’s constantly going deeper into debt, without anyone seeing a single peso.”
In the most notable excerpts of her speech, she defined herself as “a shot woman who lives” and thanked God for having survived the assassination attempt in 2022.
Kirchner awaits the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Vialidad case. She was sentenced to six years in prison and a lifelong ban on holding public office in December, 2022. If the Supreme Court upholds that ruling, she will have exhausted her appeals.
You may also be interested in: Analysis: When could the Supreme Court rule on Cristina Kircher’s Vialidad case?
Why Peronist Resistance Day is commemorated
Peronist Resistance Day commemorates the June 9, 1956 uprising against the Revolución Libertadora (Liberating Revolution) dictatorship, which had been in power since September 1955 after overthrowing Juan Domingo Perón. The uprising was led by General Juan José Valle and other Peronist military officers.
The uprising was bloodily suppressed. The Revolución Libertadora ordered the public execution of Valle and 17 other rebel soldiers and, at the same time, the clandestine execution of 18 civilians accused of participating in the uprising.
In this context, 12 civilians were shot at the José León Suárez garbage dump. Five died and seven escaped with injuries. The story was reconstructed by Rodolfo Walsh in his book “Operation Massacre.”
Additional reporting from The Herald’s sister publication, C5N.
