Updated Saturday 3.30 p.m.

Former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Security Minister Patricia Bullrich had a war of words on social media regarding the police presence outside the apartment where she is spending her six-year prison sentence. 

The former two-time president accused Bullrich of mounting a “completely illegal” police operation on Friday morning. Federal police officers stationed on the sidewalk of the building where Kirchner lives fenced up the surrounding premises. 

According to a post on X made by Kirchner, the operation had “the sole purpose of provoking conflicts which, until now, have never happened.” Peronist organizations had organized a banderazo (a “flag-a-thon” of sorts) outside the building. Due to the police presence, the Peronist leader redirected a protest that was supposed to take place outside her apartment in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Constitución to Parque Lezama in San Telmo.

Bullrich gave her version also on X, saying that officers were deployed due to “violent and noisy Kirchnerist activists turning the streets of the neighborhood” into a Peronist headquarters.

“The neighbors deserve to live in peace, enjoying their days with freedom and tranquility,” Bullrich wrote, adding that the federal forces would “maintain order … regardless of the threats from a political sector.”

War of words

The former president called Bullrich “Ms. Violence,” describing the security minister as someone “truly nefarious and capable of anything.” She also accused Bullrich of trying “to generate chaos” to “hide the economic and social disaster that our country is going through and that our people are suffering.” Kirchner also mentioned the 7.9% national unemployment rate for the first quarter, which the government published on Friday, the highest in four years.

“As in the worst times, we are about to return to double-digit unemployment rates,” Kirchner added, asking her supporters not to fall into Bullrich’s provocations. 

“The best and smartest thing to do, for what is going to be a long march in time, is to redirect the banderazo to the Parque Lezama auditorium,” she pleaded to her supporters. Hundreds of activists met there to listen to a recording of Kirchner, where she asked them not to go to their apartment, as there were “turtle heads with shields,” a derogatory way of referring to security forces.

On Wednesday, hundreds of thousands of Kirchner supporters gathered in Buenos Aires’ Plaza de Mayo to protest the conviction against the former president. Her supporters had also been gathering outside her apartment. Kirchner, who has also been permanently barred from public office, has consistently maintained her innocence and accused the prosecutors and judges involved in the case of being politically motivated.

Kirchner was expected to address her supporters on Friday, one day after a federal court ruled that she is allowed to step out onto her apartment’s balcony, something that the Peronist leader’s defense had said was not completely clear.

Cover photo: Mariano Fuchila