Increasingly frequent and tragic railway accidents in Argentina, like this week’s crash, show that the rail system, run by private companies that receive hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies from the state, constantly ignores warnings from inspectors and fines, observers say.

 

"Another catastrophe could happen at any time," former socialist lawmaker Héctor Polino, founder of Consumidores Libres (Free Consumers), a citizens group that has filed numerous complaints against the companies running the railways, told IPS.

The debate on the state of Argentina’s privatized and heavily subsidized rail network has flared up again in the wake of the Wednesday Feb. 22 crash, when a packed commuter train slammed into a retaining wall at a railway terminus in Buenos Aires.