The death of Nora Dalmasso isn’t just a thriller; it’s also rippling through Argentina’s notions of wealth and gated communities
Cox News Service
Sunday, July 22, 2007

By ANDREW MARRA
Cox News Service

RIO CUARTO, Argentina — If Nora Dalmasso had not been found strangled in an upscale neighborhood, behind security gates and high walls, no one supposes she would have become a household name in Argentina.

But few days pass without more news of her murder. The blue-eyed socialite’s death has dominated the country’s news channels in Laci Peterson-style ever since she was found in bed, strangled by the sash of her bathrobe.

The obsession with the death last November of an attractive, wealthy white woman would be familiar to any cable-news-watching American. But the fascination here is resonating in another way, rippling through Argentina’s perceptions of wealth and the gated communities that are expanding across the country.

The frenzy over the case thickened last month when investigators shocked the nation by charging Dalmasso’s 20-year-old son with his mother’s rape and murder. The Oedipal twist was all the Argentine media needed.

These days, Rio Cuarto, an idyllic university town of about 150,000, is beset by swarms of TV cameras that pipe every new development into homes across the country.

Gated communities, here called “countries” or “barrios privados,” have been springing up around Buenos Aires and in the nation’s interior as concerns about crime rise and the gap between rich and poor widens. As Argentina recovers from a 2001 economic crisis, the communities have become a source of envy, disdain and fascination for those who live outside their walls.

Dalmasso lived with her husband — a prominent doctor — and their two children in such a neighborhood, an upscale development called Villa Golf, a sprawl of one- and two-story barrel-tile roofed enclaves built around a golf course and tennis club.

At 51, she typified the stereotype of a woman who resides in such a place: a wealthy, attractive homemaker who, as it turned out, was unfaithful to her husband.

The mother of two had been having sex around the time she was killed, according to investigators. Her husband was on a golfing trip in nearby Uruguay.

Speculation initially centered on a kinky sex game that ended badly, fueling rumors of spouse-swapping and orgies unfolding behind the gates of the upscale community. Later, there were suspicions of an assassination, fueled in part by Dalmasso’s elderly mother’s cryptic remarks that her daughter was the victim of a mafia revenge-killing.

Then in February, investigators arrested a young painter who had done work in the house, saying he had confessed to the crime. His arrest sparked outrage. Residents claimed he had been scapegoated, intimidated into confessing to protect wealthier, politically connected potential suspects.

Hundreds of protesters rallied in Rio Cuarto to demand his release. A day later, police freed him and dropped the charges.

The frenzy calmed for a while but was reignited in June when investigators charged her son, Facundo Macarron, with murder and aggravated sexual abuse.

Gated communities in Argentina have become “a strong symbol of the changes occurring in the last few decades in the nation,” said Cecilia Arizaga, a sociologist at the University of Buenos Aires who has studied the rise of gated communities here.

They first became popular in the 1990s and continued spreading after the 2001 economic crisis. They are often seen as a symbol of a growing divide between rich and poor.

“There is a series of myths and notions about what happens in these private places,” Arizaga said.

The Argentine media was gonzo about the murder from the beginning. The case has all the classic elements: money, sex and intrigue.

Dalmasso was said to be a former beauty queen and well-known partier. Newspapers reported that a friend of her husband had admitted during the investigation to having been one of her lovers.

No one has offered an official motive for why Dalmasso might have been killed by her son, who is often shown on TV entering or leaving government buildings in silence. This has left a vacuum to be filled by all manner of speculation.

Investigators told the media that Macarron had a gay lover, who originally claimed he was with him in the nearby city of Cordoba at the time of the killing, but later recanted.

Officials, according to news reports, also say DNA evidence recovered at the crime scene matched the family’s genetic profile, although it has not yet been linked to any individual.

Dalmasso’s family has stepped up to defend Macarron, and on June 26 he spoke publicly for the first time to deny the charges.

Investigators earlier this month took blood samples from Facundo and other family members, local media reported. They are also awaiting further DNA analysis by the FBI in Washington.

The twists of the case have sparked protests that investigators are grasping at straws. Even the archbishop of Buenos Aires recently criticized officials of “accusing at random,” according to the newspaper La Nacion.

In addition to Dalmasso’s murder and another high-profile killing in a gated community near Buenos Aires, the Argentine media has focused recently on reporting robberies and other crimes that happen behind the walls.

“This is putting into question the arguments for security and demonstrating not the benefits buts the risks involved in closing yourself in and privatizing security,” Arizaga said. “You can become a victim of your own enclosure.”

In Rio Cuarto, where a carousel sits across from the antique cathedral in the city’s central plaza, the case is widely seen as highlighting the contrast between rich and poor.

“It was not an ordinary death,” said Noelia Oliva, 19, a homemaker and Rio Cuarto native. “It was in a ‘barrio privado,’ and it was a distinguished woman.”

Oscar Giordano, a 61-year-old resident of downtown Rio Cuarto, said he had long heard the tall tales of sex parties and spouse-swapping in Villa Golf and similar neighborhoods. They’re hardly believable, he said, but the revelations surrounding the murder have only reinforced them.

“There’s a perception that the rich do things that regular people don’t,” he said. “Everything’s more interesting when there’s money involved.”

Andrew Marra is a Buenos Aires-based freelance journalist.