Qualla: Attempted Assassination of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

Attempted Assassination of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner: Introduction

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sangianense, CC BY-SA 4.0. The trigger was pulled, and nothing happened. On the night of 1 September 2022, on a sidewalk in the elegant Recoleta district of Buenos Aires, a man pushed a loaded semi-automatic pistol to within inches of Vice President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner's face and squeezed. The gun did not go off. In that fraction of a second - the difference between a jammed mechanism and a fired round - Argentina avoided its first assassination of a senior leader in decades. The country has been arguing about what happened on that corner ever since.

Image: Sangianense | CC BY-SA 4.0

Attempted Assassination of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner: A Week of Vigil Outside Her Door

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Graciasalbertico22, CC BY-SA 4.0. For nearly a week, the streets of Recoleta had not been quiet. In August 2022, federal prosecutors had asked the courts to sentence Fernandez de Kirchner to twelve years in prison and bar her from public office, accusing her of steering public works contracts during her presidenc...

Image: Graciasalbertico22 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Attempted Assassination of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner: Inches From Her Face

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, CC BY 2.0. At 8:50 that evening she returned from presiding over a session of the Senate and stepped into the throng of well-wishers, pausing to sign copies of her memoir, Sinceramente. In the press of bodies and outstretched books, a man named Fernando Andre Sabag Montiel raised a pistol a...

Image: Unknown author | CC BY 2.0

Attempted Assassination of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner: The Man on the Corner

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Graciasalbertico22, CC BY-SA 4.0. The arrested man was a thirty-five-year-old delivery and rideshare driver, born in Brazil and living in Argentina since childhood. His life, as it surfaced in the days afterward, was a portrait of grievance and drift: a previous arrest for carrying a knife, tattoos of fascist sym...

Image: Graciasalbertico22 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Attempted Assassination of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner: A Country Divided Over What It Saw

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Graciasalbertico22, CC BY-SA 4.0. The day after, the government called citizens to the Plaza de Mayo, and enormous crowds filled the historic square under banners reading 'Enough hate.' Foreign leaders and political opponents alike condemned the attack, and the Chamber of Deputies passed a unanimous resolution re...

Image: Graciasalbertico22 | CC BY-SA 4.0