In his essays on Dante, Borges treats the concept of the “murderer” as an abstraction, arguing that the concrete reality is the individual who acts within a web of circumstances, like Raskolnikov. However, the Ricardo Barreda case was one of the femicides associated with men’s delusions of power and righteousness.
Dentist Ricardo Barreda killed his wife, Gladys McDonald, his mother-in-law, Elena Arreche, and his 2 daughters, Cecilia and Adriana, with a shotgun at his home in La Plata on November 15, 1992. He collected the shells, changed his clothes, ate at a restaurant, met with a woman, and went to the beach at Punta Lara. He returned home that evening and staged a burglary; he told the hospital that burglars had broken in and that there were bodies in the house. The police soon suspected Barreda. During questioning, Barreda showed them where the weapon was and described the murders.
The first trial took place 9 months after the massacre. The media focused on the personality of 56-year-old Barreda rather than on the victims. He was reported to have told his lawyer, “Living with those women was hell,” and that his wife had wished for his death. Reports based on his claims of humiliation transformed the killer profile into a “victim” narrative. The courthouse entrance was packed with Barreda’s supporters.
Why it matters
The case offers an example of how a reporting style focused on the perpetrator’s personality and alleged humiliation in femicide cases can push the victims into the background. The effort to explain Barreda’s individual circumstances can be linked to Borges’s objection to the abstract concept of the killer; however, this approach also makes visible the boundary between itself and the victim narrative that justifies the killing of the four women. The support outside the courthouse demonstrates that this narrative was not confined to the news framing and was also reflected in the public reaction. Nevertheless, the text contains no more concrete evidence regarding the scope or frequency of the coverage, or how the victims were represented, to conclude that the media distorted the incident. Although this omission makes the direction of the criticism understandable, it leaves open a generalizable assessment of the media.