Pablo Grillo’s clothes always have some reference to football. They are details – sometimes imperceptible, other times very noticeable – that show your map of passions and interests. At the patio of the Manuel Rocca Rehabilitation Hospital, in Segurola in 1900, he arrives with a jacket from the Olympique de Marseille in France and a pair of pants from Napoli in Italy. Both are teams from the south, ports and rebels. They share a working class origin and a tradition of resistance that Pablo chooses to carry on his body.
“They are all locked up,” says Pablo as soon as he appears with his colors and sees the audiovisual equipment of Time. He releases it with the mischief of someone who knows the job and the street. He immediately gets hooked on looking at lenses and cameras. He asks without losing his humor, a trait as powerful as the words he selects when speaking. “The memory is impeccable,” he will say a few minutes later, almost towards the end of the talk. He talks about his photographic equipment: the Nikon D800 that he used on March 12 to record the march of fans and retirees. Although he talks above all about him, who became a symbol of struggle and survival against the naturalized repression of the La Libertad Avanza government. A figure that reflects the evolution of violence and resistance of these military years of Argentina, which are also the cooperative years of Time.
-How are you after more than a year of recovery?
-I’m perfect, with my brain intact. I feel good.
-Are you looking forward to what?
-Wanting to shoot all the time.
-Did you just talk about that in vocational guidance class?
-Yeah. Photography, gardening and industrial design are the three things I like the most. I told him that if I can, I want to do all three. Something that brings together all three activities.
Grillo spent a year between Ramos Mejía and Rocca until receiving a medical discharge. He underwent nine operations and on March 13 this “new stage” began, as his family described online. Every Friday there were traffic lights in the Plaza Mariano Moreno de Remedios de Escalada. It took 58 days to ask to return home. The 59th, last Friday, was the last: Pablo was present along with the live bands, the serigraphs, colleagues, neighbors and friends from his neighborhood. Fabián, his old man, tells about other activities they have scheduled while accompanying Pablo at the Floresta public hospital where they now go twice a week. Today recovery focuses on improving robotic posture due to having spent a long time in bed, incontinence and physical and neurological fatigue.
Both Pablo and Fabián have questions, comments and adjectives when they are in the presence of the cameras. But they don’t want to be in front. Nor see each other. They want to look behind the lens: they share a fascination for knowing models, functions, qualities, brands and even prices.
-What is photography?
-It is an indispensable resource for life, because you save moments that can be erased over time. You can take something that is not going to be repeated and make it real on a sheet of paper. What else can photography be? That.
-The other day you went to the Sipreba press union, where there was an exhibition with your photos and you said that you were always interested in hands and reflections…
-In the hands and reflections I found things that are beyond what a photo can show. In the hands there are stories and in the reflections there are little things that happen, it is in each person’s imagination. For me, my hands and reflexes move a lot of things. Then I take photos of them. I mean, I take photos of that in a context. I can take you out like this, but your hands are going to be in the best place.
-What makes you happy?
-Today photography makes me happy. What makes me most happy is printing the photo. Have the resource, go and print it. Okay, money.
-That’s good about hands.
-They say a lot of things. The hand marks are revealing.
-Have you ever done an exhibition?
-Never. And I complained. He said: “How can they call this guy to exhibit photos and no one calls me!” Now everyone calls me.
-How do you see your production?
-I live it big. I don’t believe it either, but I have a good time because my photos are on display.
“Fuerza Pablo” became a message of encouragement during recovery. Also a slogan of demand to find those responsible for the repressive operation led by Patricia Bullrich that allowed Corporal Héctor Jesús Guerrero to fire a tear gas grenade at point-blank range. Pablo describes what happens to him when he hears that cry that became popular: “Butterflies grab me. It’s like falling in love. It’s the force that makes you stand up.”
-We have known you for a year through others, who is Pablo for you?
-What they told you, what did they tell you?
-Many things…
-Well, I am everything they told you. A little bit of each one. We’re not going to lie either: we are all that.
-And Mary and Fabián?
-There are two characters. They fight a lot among themselves, but my parents are two good guys. This year they wore number 10. They put on the shirt they had to wear: mine, Pablo’s. I don’t know if they fought over the number, I didn’t hear anything about that.
-Which one do you like?
-I like seven. I always played as a forward. But they must have fought over number 10.
-Do you see that March 12, 2025?
-Luckily I see it far away, it already happened a year ago. It was heavy. We didn’t go to take photos at a bombing. We went to what we always go to photograph, but this time there was a gas bomb.
-Why did you go?
-We had to be. The old people were there and they were getting beaten up. We had gone with the Red kids. He had re-summoned them. We were a couple, we could have been more Red but there were enough of us. We were the ones who wanted them to be there. In that sense it didn’t go wrong. Then everything else did go wrong, because two of them had to accompany me in an ambulance when it was not in the plans. Everything else, yes, was what had to be done.
-We were surprised to find a photo of you from 2018 in a march for layoffs in Télam.
-It was Sipreba’s, right? I had gone with a red shirt, we were all dark. I wore the Cuban one because it stood out. I even wore red hat.
-You were probably in many other marches, but you were not visible.
-They are going to start seeing me in all of them. Now yes, because I sign up for all of them and I am at the exhibition places because the photos are there. You will find me ahead, because the photos are ahead.
-On the 12th you were also ahead.
-And they broke my face.
-How was the return to the march on March 24?
-Hallucinatory. I got to be on stage in the Plaza with a lot of characters, all well-known. Several came and wanted to greet me alongside, for example, Baltasar Garzón. Or types that you think “how can it be”. It’s strong.
-What are you demanding from the government and Bullrich?
-Let your balls stop swelling, we are all grown up now. What they do is a shame. They disrespect us all the time. As Macri was at the time, although this is triple. Macri had a little more qualms at least. These nothing. The Adorni thing is shameful. They are misplaced.
-What do you expect to happen with the judicial case?
-In a moment the judges are going to have to put first into their work and have more enthusiasm.
-The claim will remain valid.
-Yes, the people have to complain and so do we. Justice moves based on pressure and the social climate.
-What do you hope for the future of Argentina?
-Let Cristina come back. I hope so. We were happy with her. I was happy. It’s my wish, forget it.
-And for your life?
-Have a job in photography like the colleagues who are here in the note. As a photographer or filmmaker, whatever, but with a SLR.
Pablo collapsed in Yrigoyen and Solís, a few meters from the Casa de las Madres in Plaza de Mayo, at 5:18 p.m. on Wednesday the 12th. Before 6 p.m. he entered the Ramos Mejía with a brain fracture with loss of brain mass. The Argra-affiliated photojournalist’s Nikon D800 ended up on the street. Finally – like Pablo – the SLR returned to the two-room apartment in Escalada.
-What happened to the memory of the camera you used on the march?
-I have it at home. The photos are amazing. The camera broke at the top, where the bullet hit. But the memory is impeccable.
-Did you see the photos again?
-Yes, in the broken camera. The memory is impeccable. It’s all stored there.
The judicial case, the gendarme and the role of Bullrich
This Thursday, the Federal Criminal and Correctional Court No. 1 called to update a report on the condition of Pablo Grillo, repressed with a gas cartridge fired by gendarme Héctor Jesús Guerrero in the brutal operation carried out by Patricia Bullrich in her (former) role as Minister of Security. The measure was ordered by Judge María Servini to the Forensic Medical Corps and experts from the defense and the complaint a few days after the Federal Court of Cassation ratified the prosecution for very serious aggravated injuries that weighs on Corporal Guerrero.
With the legal sponsorship of the legal teams of the Argentine League for Human Rights and CELS, Grillo’s family appeared in the case to be taken into account as a plaintiff in March 2025. More than a year after the violent episode, Servini is now expected to decide when the case will be brought to oral trial, a resolution that could be directed from the call established for this Thursday.
“We request that he be summoned to testify as a defendant, for attempted murder aggravated by functional abuse, abuse of authority and failure to fulfill the duties of a public official,” maintains the request about Guerrero promoted by the photojournalist’s family. At the same time, it demands an investigation into the criminal responsibility of Bullrich, among other officials of Javier Milei’s government.
“Public places save your life”
Fabián and Pablo are finishing up a photography workshop that they are going to do at the Manuel Rocca. Accompanied by Argra photojournalists who have yet to be defined, it will be aimed at the patients of the rehabilitation hospital itself. It is a way to contribute with what they received from public health. “The public place saves your life. Plus I work at the Evita Hospital. I have to go back. I’m looking forward to it, to do gardening, cut the grass and put up the benches. The work is good,” says Pablo and raises another flag around his story.
Their defense comes in a context of defunding and permanent attacks on workers in the sector. “There is no public thing? Let them come to Rocca,” asks the 36-year-old photojournalist and highlights all the people “who give their lungs to everything.”
His recovery took place in two municipal hospitals that depend on the Buenos Aires government and are supported by state resources.
