BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - Tens of thousands of protesters held aloft candles and photographs of murder victims Thursday night, exhorting President Nestor Kirchner to get tough against rampant crime.
A smaller counter-rally by some 3,000 Kirchner's supporters blocks away warned against heave-handed approaches to crime. Police backed by water cannon trucks kept marchers from the two rallies apart.
Brazen daylight robberies, street shootings, bank robberies and kidnappings have alarmed Argentines, who long boasted that their capital was one of Latin America's safest, with its all-night cafes, tango bars, and suburban neighborhoods.
With Kirchner expected to campaign for re-election in 2007, his administration's record on crime has become the focus of many Argentines' anger. Kirchner has enjoyed approval ratings above 60 percent and is favored to dominate the 2007 race.
Juan Carlos Blumberg, a businessman who led more than 100,000 protesters to the steps of Congress in 2004 after his 21-year-old son, Axel, was killed in a botched kidnapping, was mobbed like a rock star as he took his place on a hastily built stage outside Government House on Thursday to tell Kirchner to get tough on crime.
"Crime is not a problem either of the left nor the right, but of all Argentines," Blumberg said. "Answers still do not appear ... and the wave of insecurity cannot be hidden under the rug. As for those government officials who deny that this problem of insecurity reins in our city, in the province of Buenos Aires and the rest of the country, clearly they are living ... on Mars."
He said he was uniting residents of poor and crime-ridden districts outside the capital with middle class professionals from affluent communities in an apolitical wakeup call to the nation's leaders.
"We will not be cowed, nor will we be broken, and we are awaiting answers," Blumberg said to the cheers of the tens of thousands who jammed the palm tree-lined Plaza de Mayo.
He is demanding a unified national police force, lowered age limits for charging minors with serious offenses, more jury trials and moves to prevent identity theft.
But others - recalllng the hardline military rulers who waged a "dirty war" in Argentina decades ago - said they fear a crackdown on crime could infringe upon basic civil liberties.
"The problem of public insecurity isn't resolved with an iron fist," said Luis D'Elia, a Kirchner aide. Society must first tackle poverty, public education and health problems to improve security overall, D'Elia said.
The countermarch was organized y Adolfo Perez Esquivel, who won the 1980 Nobel Prize for his human rights work during the 1976-1983 dictatorship.
Perez Esquivel recalled when a systematic state crackdown on dissent officially claimed nearly 13,000 lives. Human rights groups charge the toll was nearly 30,000 from the so-called Dirty War.
"We say 'yes' to fomenting solidarity in our society and 'no' to fear and repression," said Perez Esquivel. "Greater repression carries the risk of greater excesses on the part of the security forces."
Marcelo Arena, whose 10-year-old daughter was slain in a March 2005 robbery attempt, held up a photograph of his child at Blumberg's rally. He said his wife and two girls had driven home from a party when two teenagers pointed guns at them and one fired.
Both suspects were detained, but "we can't get a proper trial because the suspects are minors," complained Arena, charging that lenient laws for juveniles mean it will be difficult to achieve convictions.
Staring at the girl's picture, he sad: "Every day I think of her."
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