“We are waiting for you to finish your 5th grade room”

The town of 9 de Julio remains silent and has a wound that bleeds, and that he does not believe can be closed. Everyone, to a greater or lesser extent, knew Loan Danilo Peña (5), the little one who carries two weeks missing after a lunch in the field at his grandmother Catalina’s house. The anguish, disappointment and anger can summarize (although not entirely) what these neighbors have been experiencing since June 13.

The tears of Karen Aquino They are inevitable. She barely says, “I’ve been your garden teacher since the four-year-old room and now in the five-year-old room,” she breaks down. Then, she expresses: “I have immense pain, sadness, but the hope that she will return, that she will soon be with us in the garden and that he’s going to finish his five-hour room to start primary school.”

The initial level school teacher 9 de Julio, the school with 400 students, is one of the visible faces of the marches that take place night after night in the streets. He never stopped demanding Loan’s appearancenor to ask those involved in the case to confess what happened.

“Loan is very restless, he was one of the children who got into the most mischief in the garden, he liked to participate, be with his classmates, play in outdoor activities,” Karen describes him. He finds it difficult to express himself about the baby without getting emotional.

confess to Clarion that one of his greatest fears is that this happens again to another of the kids at school. For this reason, he explains that they greatly reinforced security in that place, that the doors were open before and now they can no longer even be trusted to take them out to the patio. The concern extended to the educational community, because families are deeply affected by the Loan case.

“We continue teaching. The first days There were many questions among his companions; We work on it, we talk about it, we are receiving support. Then it became a little easier for us to explain to our classmates, because they also brought information from the house, they listen to the news, the family conversations, but now they are a little calmer about the subject, which is a little bit is fearful, because It could happen to anyone”says Karen.

Both she and other residents of 9 de Julio who are interviewed by this newspaper they live a double pain. It is not only the lack of Loan, but it is also the surprise of knowing that those involved are people that many of them knew, respected and conceived as “protectors” from town.

“From the beginning things were handled poorly. Because a baby can’t be lost. They can lose ten minutes, fifteen. The baby can’t walk that far. On top of that, the people immediately mobilized. They spent the whole night searching. But I can’t blame anyone because Justice has to determine that. I can draw my own conclusions. But they took the baby”says Oscar Ibarra, a municipal employee who works in the plaza.

He quickly remembers María Victoria Caillava, whom he sometimes crossed paths with in the town: “She worked in the municipality, I worked in the municipality. We passed each other, we greeted each other. Not much with her husband (Pérez), because he wasn’t seen around town as much. You don’t expect who they were”.

It also points to the role of former commissioner Walter Maciel. He comments that the man, as soon as he arrived on July 9, received asylum for several weeks in the church of parish priest Cristian González.

“(Maciel) had nowhere to go and he (González) gave him shelter in the parish house. Lately the priest is not being seen, because the church community quarreled with the priest,” says Ibarra. This is clarified by other neighbors consulted: the priest is not giving mass since at least June 20.

Some justify it by pointing out that it is taking charge of the parish of Chaverría, a nearby town; Others doubt whether his disappearance has to do with his relationship with the detained Maciel.

Ibarra adds: “I was at the inauguration of the police station recently. Minister Buenaventura Duarte said ‘Take care of the kids, because drugs have arrived in town’. Two months later, the Loan thing happened”.

In a neighborhood of 9 de Julio that is under construction, Clarion He finds the house of Luis Alberto González, the vice mayor. “Today you are around here and people are afraid, he who has children is afraid. There was a little soccer field, today there is nothing. Many children are not attending primary school because they are afraid, Parents are afraid”, he introduces.

Asked about Maciel’s management during his months as commissioner of 9 de Julio, González was blunt: When he arrived, everything changed, for the worse. He appeared with an idea of ​​imposing an order that was nothing more than a disaster.

“Generated discontent with Macielso much so that there were ladies who were going to take their children to a little school that was 5 kilometers away and they went by motorcycle, but those motorcycles were not stolen, what happened was that sometimes the documentation for the license plate was not in process and he did not give those ladies the opportunity to start the license plate process, do you know what he did? He sent the staff, he kidnapped their motorcycles and those ladies had to walk 5 kilometers,” describes the vice mayor.

And it refers to the internal complaints that 16 subordinates did against him: “If your own staff is doing that to you it is because you created an upset, he created an upset. And the Loan case burst that anger that had been accumulated. He also hindered the investigation and Justice says so, not me. A while ago he wanted to set the rules of the game as he saw fit, and when he had to play for a very delicate case, it did not”.

-Also… Maciel came with a background.

-Yeah. He apparently came with an impeccable portfolio. In that case we are very respectful, both the mayor and what concerns me. I am president of the Deliberative Council, made up of a body of three councilors. And we always receive when there is a change of boss, but logically we did not find out the record it can have. I had three or four conversations with him, he as commissioner, I as vice president, and then we had a little breakupbecause I felt and feel that at that moment I had to defend the 16 police officers who were going through a difficult circumstance in their work (NdR: the complaint for mistreatment against Maciel).

González focuses on the pain that Loan’s family is going through. He keeps hoping that she will find him and that she will clarify everything now that The federal court accepted its jurisdiction in the case.

Regarding Caillava, a former municipal official and one of the accused, he states: “We know her, she works at a secondary school, she is a custodian, therefore has dealings with boys “These are women from 13 years old and up. She is a woman who took her granddaughter to school every day. That is what surprises me and surely everyone is surprised. The decision that she should take over the Production Directorate was accepted by all the partners (Editor’s note: she is referring to the members of Sumemos, the alliance that won the municipal elections), it was not something that was decided only by the mayor.”

The married couple’s house of Victoria Caillava and Carlos Pérez is the first in a tour that Clarion. The four houses of those involved in the Loan case are a distance of about 300 meters one from the other.

As previously reported by this newspaper, Caillava occupied a seat in the Deliberative Council and was the municipal auditor for two years, after the mayor was dismissed. Until she was arrested, she was the municipality’s Director of Production.

“They are very ambitious. She (Victoria) is with a mayor, another year she goes with the other, she turns around. She is with a politician and if she sees that she is not going to reach the municipality, she goes with the other. He (Pérez) is a guy with a bad character. When she got together with this man, she changed a lot,” says a neighbor who prefers to reserve his identity for fear of threats.

After leaving the priest’s asylum, Maciel moved to a house that is about 300 meters from Caillava and Pérez’s house.

The other two houses of the accused are concentrated in a very small radar: that of Mónica Millapi – Daniel “Fierrito” Ramírez, and of Laudelina Peña – Antonio Benítez. Also only about 300 meters separate one from the other.