It was supposed to be a silent march when demonstrators packed the streets of Buenos Aires.
But it didn’t take long for the chanting to start at Wednesday’s march through the Argentine capital. Some demonstrators called out, “Nisman is here!” Others chanted, “Long live the motherland!”
The march was organized by six prosecutors to honor the memory of Alberto Nisman, a special prosecutor whose mysterious death a month ago has shaken the South American nation.
Police said hundreds of thousands of people turned out for Wednesday’s march.
Many of them walked with umbrellas through a torrential downpour.
Nisman was found with a gunshot wound to his head in his apartment on January 18, a day before he was scheduled to testify before lawmakers about his accusations of a government cover-up that he said reached all the way up to the country’s President.
Authorities have yet to determine if his death was suicide or murder.
Among those attending Wednesday’s demonstration was Sandra Arroyo Salgado, Nisman’s ex-wife, a judge who has maintained that he never would have ended his own life.
She marched with their two teenage daughters at her side.
Nisman had alleged that President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner shielded Iranian officials accused of masterminding the bombing of a Jewish community center in 1994 that left 85 people dead.
His death has spurred a number of protests and speculation that the government could have had something to do with it.
Fernandez has denied the accusations against her and suggested forces conspiring against her government had him killed.
“They used him while he was alive, and then they needed him dead,” she wrote last month. “It’s that sad and terrible.”
The prosecutor who replaced Nisman formally accused the President of a cover-up last week.
But government officials say the accusations are politically motivated and that Nisman was killed in an effort to destabilize democracy in their country.
At an event with supporters last week, the President criticized the organizers of the march.
“We choose singing and happiness,” Fernandez said, “and leave silence to them.”