Residents of Atamisqui have been occupying City Hall for the past 25 days, in an act of passive resistance to keep the mayor, Roberto Brandán, from returning to his post, now that the numerous charges against him have been dismissed (by courts that suffer -- according to a Justice Ministry report -- "a complete lack" of independence).

Brandán was facing more than 200 charges, including aggravated fraud, kidnapping of an underaged girl, abuse of authority and violation of the duties of public office. In 2003, the residents of Atamisqui, with the support of the ombudsman, successfully pressured for him to be prosecuted.

But after eight months of investigation by the courts, Brandán was released when the judge decided that the cases lacked merit. However, local residents kept him from returning to his office early this month by occupying City Hall.

The people of Atamisqui -- who number 3,000 in the town itself and 10,000 in the surrounding rural area -- do not trust the city council either, which is controlled by followers of the mayor, and are demanding that it also be taken over by federal authorities.

Brandán -- who belongs to the governing Justicialista (Peronist) Party and is a follower of Santiago del Estero's strongman, Carlos Juárez -- exercises enormous control over the local community, because he runs the municipal water cooperative, whose services are granted and cut off arbitrarily, according to local residents.

With their piped water cut off, many residents have had to resort to well water, and in the past few weeks an outbreak of hepatitis has appeared, said Gómez.

The residents occupying City Hall have organised themselves in day and night shifts around the clock.

While Brandán is enjoying a 60-day leave granted by the city council, an interim mayor appointed by the council has been unable to assume his duties. "It's a bizarre situation, because he is governing from his house, by cell-phone," said Gómez.

The people of Atamisqui are calling for the federal takeover of the regional government to be extended to the municipal authorities. But the provincial caretaker officials prefer to refrain from taking such a step for the time being.

The provincial under-secretary of government Lorenzino Mata "admitted to us that everything is so corrupt and perverted that as far as the national government is concerned, they would have taken over all of the municipalities in April, when they began to directly govern the province," said Gómez.

A source at the Ministry of the Government told IPS that the possibility of taking over the municipality is being studied. The local residents "have valid concerns," but "we are in dialogue with all of the parties. We do not want to make a wrong move," added the official, who asked not to be identified.

The reason city administrations accused of corruption have not been removed "is not because we are afraid to make a decision, but because we are trying to reach agreements, since the municipal governments are the only level of authority that were not intervened," said the source.

The crisis in Santiago del Estero peaked last year when two young women were murdered and suspicions fell on those close to then-governor Nina Aragonés, the wife of the 88-year-old Juárez.

A report by a mission sent by the Justice Ministry found that in the province there is no division of powers, the provincial legislature and justice system are subordinate to the executive branch, and there is a "complete absence" of judicial independence and impartiality.

In their October 2003 visit to the province, the national officials documented hundreds of complaints of torture, disappearances, murders, corruption and censorship. As a result, last April Congress approved Kirchner's proposal to order the federal authorities to intervene and rule the province for six months, which could be extended for a similar period.

The Kirchner administration designated then-Deputy Justice Minister Pablo Lanusse to govern the province.

Juárez and Aragonés were immediately arrested, and have been in and out of prison. There is scepticism regarding the possibility of bringing them to justice, since they personally appointed judges in the province for decades.

Last week, Juárez was released from prison in connection with a case involving forced disappearances committed in the 1970s. But on Wednesday, the couple were once again arrested in another case, on charges of illegitimate deprivation of liberty.

In the past few months, Lanusse and his ministers have uncovered serious irregularities in all spheres and at all levels of government.

It came out, for example, that a large proportion of children in the province were not immunised against polio due to the negligence of local authorities.

The caretaker health minister was forced to expressly prohibit practices that were routine in public hospitals in the province, such a placing two newborn babies in the same incubator or two women in labour, or recovering from giving birth, in the same bed.

The rule now is that if there are no beds available, patients must be taken to private clinics, under state responsibility.

Santiago del Estero is one of the poorest provinces in this South American country of 37 million. Fifty-eight percent of the provincial population of 720,000 lives below the poverty line, and the illiteracy rate stands at 8.6 percent, three times the national level.

The caretaker authorities suffered a major setback this week, when the Supreme Court cancelled a call for elections for a constituent assembly, ordered by Lanusse to rewrite the provincial constitution, which allows, for example, a political party that wins 38 percent of the vote to take 70 percent of the seats in the regional legislature.

The Supreme Court will determine whether the caretaker governor has the authority to promote a constitutional reform process.

The elections for a new governor are scheduled for March 2005. By then, the intervention, which was extended for a second six-month period, is supposed to have restored the credibility of the provincial institutions.

Some 15,000 people held a demonstration Wednesday in support of Lanusse, according to "conservative" estimates by the Santiago del Estero newspaper El Liberal.

Campesinos (peasant farmers) who have benefited by the suspension of the logging of forests, which Lanusse ordered, human rights organisations, Catholic Church leaders, farmers and teachers took to the streets Wednesday to demand elections and the constitutional reform.

"We want the reform because we want a clean Santiago, we don't want to be pushed around by politicians anymore," said campesino leader Rubén Sosa.

"The sane leaders will have to listen to the people," Santiago del Estero Bishop Juan Carlos Maccarone said in the demonstration.

The Catholic Church in Santiago del Estero is deeply committed to social causes. In 1998, Maccarone's predecessor, Gerardo Sueldo, died in a car accident that his relatives say was caused by Juárez's thugs.

The provincial government was already taken over in 1993, after thousands of enraged local citizens plundered and set fire to the regional government offices and real estate property belonging to the Juárez family. But two years later, the strongman once again won elections fraught with irregularities.

Gómez said the population of Santiago del Estero has traditionally been manipulated by handouts like bags of food, social plans or housing -- the same kind of politics practised by "Juarista" local authorities like the mayor of Atamisqui.

Over half of the population of the province depends on jobs in the public administration or on government assistance, a phenomenon seen as forming the basis of the system by which Juárez was able to dominate local politics since he was first elected governor in 1948.

"Since the federal government took over, the people of Santiago del Estero have lost their fear. There are still fears of participating, but Bishop Maccarone, like Bishop Sueldo, encourages church workers to support these neighbourhood assemblies to raise awareness about the need for citizen participation" and for people to speak out, said Gómez.

Cases of similar feudal-style family regimes are seen in other provinces of Argentina as well, most of them associated with the Peronists.

The cases include the Saadi family in the province of Catamarca, which was hit hard by a similar corruption and murder scandal in the 1990s, the Rodríguez Saá family in San Luis, the Romeros in Salta, the Sapags in Neuquén, the Romero Feris family in Corrientes, the Bravos in San Juan and the Menem and Yoma families in La Rioja.