You have not been much wiser it comes to the abstract goals of the economy, which you tend to call “the country.” A decrease in the gross national product of around 3 percent, a foreign debt reaching $600 dollars per inhabitant, an annual inflation rate of 400 percent, a 9 percent increase in the money supply within a single week in December, a low of 13 percent in foreign investment—these are also world records, strange fruit born of cold calculation and severe incompetence.
While all the constructive and protective functions of the state atrophy and dissolve into pure anemia, only one is clearly thriving. One billion eight hundred million dollars—the equivalent of half of Argentina’s exports—have been budgeted for Security and Defense in 1977. That there are four thousand new officer positions in the Federal Police and twelve thousand in the Province of Buenos Aires offering salaries that are double that of an industrial worker and triple that of a school principal—while military wages have secretly increased by 120 percent since February—proves that there is no salary freezing or unemployment in the kingdom of torture and death. This is the only Argentine business where the product is growing and where the price per slain guerrilla is rising faster than the dollar.
6. The economic policies of this Junta—which follow the formula of the International Monetary Fund that has been applied indiscriminately to Zaire and Chile, to Uruguay and Indonesia—recognize only the following as beneficiaries: the old ranchers’ oligarchy; the new speculating oligarchy; and a select group of international monopolies headed by ITT, Esso, the automobile industry, US Steel, and Siemens, which Minister Martínez de Hoz and his entire cabinet have personal ties to.70
A 722 percent increase in the prices of animal products in 1976 illustrates the scale of a return to oligarchy, launched by Martínez de Hoz, that is consistent with the creed of the Sociedad Rural as stated by its president, Celedonio Pereda: “It is very surprising that certain small but active groups keep insisting that food should be affordable.”71
The spectacle of a Stock Exchange where, within one week, some have enjoyed 100- and 200 percent gains without working; where there are companies that doubled their capital overnight without producing any more than before; where the crazy wheel of speculation spins in dollars, letters, adjustable values and simple usury calculates interest on an hourly basis—it all seems rather strange, considering that this government came in to put a stop to the “feast of the corrupt.” By privatizing banks, you are placing the savings and credit of the country in the hands of foreign banks; by indemnifying ITT and Siemens, you are rewarding companies that swindled the State; by reinstalling fueling stations, you are raising Shell’s and Esso’s returns; by lowering customs tariffs, you are creating jobs in Hong Kong or Singapore and unemployment in Argentina. Faced with all these facts, you have to ask yourself: Who are the unpatriotic people being referred to in the official press releases? Where are the mercenaries who are working for foreign interests? Which ideology is the one threatening the nation?
Even if the overwhelming propaganda—a distorted reflection of the evil acts being committed—were not trying to argue that this Junta wants peace, that General Videla is a defender of human rights, or that Admiral Massera loves life, it would still be worth asking the Commanders-in-Chief of the 3 Branches to meditate on the abyss they are leading the country into under the pretense of winning a war. In this war, even killing the last guerrilla would do nothing more than make it start up again in new ways, because the reasons that have been motivating the Argentine people’s resistance for more than twenty years will not disappear but will instead be aggravated by the memory of the havoc that has been wreaked and by the revelation of the atrocities that have been committed.
These are the thoughts I wanted to pass on to the members of this Junta on the first anniversary of your ill-fated government, with no hope of being heard, with the certainty of being persecuted, but faithful to the commitment I made a long time ago to bear witness during difficult times.
Rodolfo Walsh. - I.D. 2845022
Buenos Aires, March 24, 1977
Footnotes:
51Walsh sent this letter, dated March 24, 1977, by post to the editorial departments of local newspapers and to foreign press correspondents. On March 25, 1977, Walsh was kidnapped by a “Work Group” and has been missing ever since. (DG: Once the dictatorship of 1976 began, Work Groups (grupos de tarea) were formed to carry out the extermination of any individuals considered enemies of the state. These groups, composed mainly of men with experience in the military, state security, or the police department, were notorious for kidnapping victims, torturing them, killing them, and leaving no trace of their bodies.)
The letter was not published by any local media, but it gradually came to be distributed abroad. Ever since the letter was reissued in 1984, De la Flor has included it as an Appendix in all reprints of Operation Massacre. [Edición de la Flor Editor’s Note.]
52DG: Walsh’s younger daughter, María Victoria (“Vicki”) Walsh, was a journalist who became involved with the Montonero movement even before her father did (see Note 5). She died on her twenty-sixth birthday, September 28, 1976, in a shootout. With her group on the rooftop of a house entirely outnumbered by over a hundred men and a tank on the ground, she chose to take her own life. Walsh writes further of Vicki’s death and his feelings of loss in two letters, both published in 1976: “Carta a Vicki” (“Letter to Vicki”) and “Carta a mis amigos” (“Letter to My Friends”).
53DG: María Estela (“Isabel” or “Isabelita”) Martínez was Juan Perón’s third and final wife. She served first as his vice president from 1973 to 1974 and, after her husband’s death in 1974, as the interim President of Argentina until the military coup of March 24, 1976.
54In January 1977, the Junta began publishing incomplete lists of new prisoners and of those “released,” the majority of whom were not actually released; they have been charged and are no longer under the Junta’s jurisdiction, but remain in jail. The names of thousands of prisoners are still a military secret and the conditions that allow for their torture and subsequent execution remain unchanged.
55The Peronist leader Jorge Lizaso was skinned alive; a former member of Congress, Mario Amaya, was beaten to death, and the former member of Congress Muñiz Barreto had his neck broken in one blow. One survivor’s testimony: “Picana on my arms, hands, thighs, near my mouth every time I cried or prayed . . . Every twenty minutes they would open the door and you could hear the saw machine they said they’d use to make cold cuts out of me.”
56Cadena Informativa, message No. 4, February 1977.
57A precise version of events appears in this letter from the prisoners at the Remand Center to the Bishop of Córdoba, Monsignor Primatesta: “On May 17, five fellow prisoners are taken out under the pretext of a trip to the infirmary and then executed: Miguel Ángel Mosse, José Svaguza, Diana Fidelman, Luis Verón, Ricardo Yung, and Eduardo Hernández. The Third Army Corps reported that they died in an attempted escape. On May 29, José Puchet and Carlos Sgadurra are taken out. The latter had been punished for not being able to stand on his feet, as he had suffered a number of broken bones. Later they are also reported as having been executed in an attempted escape.”
58During the first fifteen days of military government, sixty-three bodies turned up, according to the papers. This makes for an annual projection of fifteen hundred. The assumption that the number could double is based both on the fact that since January 1976, the data in the press’s hands has been incomplete, and also on the fact that there has been a general increase in repression since the coup. What follows is a plausible overall estimate of the number of deaths caused by the Junta. Dead in combat: six hundred. Executed: thirteen hundred. Executed in secret: two thousand. Miscellaneous: one hundred. Total: four thousand.
59Letter from Isaías Zanotti, circulated by ANCLA, the Clandesti
ne News Agency. (DG: Walsh founded this underground news agency in June of 1976, less than a year before his death, in response to the increasingly limited access to information regarding State terrorism and corruption in Argentina.)
60A “program” run by Admiral Mariani, Head of the First Aerial Brigade of Palomar, between July and December of 1976. They used Fokker F-27 planes.
61José López Rega was appointed Minister of Social Welfare in 1973 under Perón; after Perón’s death, López Rega became the heart of Isabel Martínez de Perón’s political program. The Triple A (Argentine Anticommunist Alliance—Alianza Anticomunista Argentina) was a facet of this program: throughout the 1970s, its death squads sought out and eradicated elements of the Left or any suspected enemies of the State. General Jorge Rafael Videla, Admiral Emilio Eduardo Massera, and Brigadier General Orlando Ramón Agosti were responsible for the military coup that ousted Isabel Martínez de Perón in 1976. Videla then served as the de facto President of Argentina from 1976 to 1981, overseeing one of the most brutal eras in the country’s history.
62Foreign Minister Vice Admiral Guzzetti admitted in an article published by La Opinión on October 3, 1976, that “the terrorism of the right is not terrorism as such” but rather “an antibody.”
63General Prats, President Allende’s last Defense Minister, killed by a bomb in September 1974. The former Uruguayan members of parliament Michelini and Gutiérrez Ruiz were found riddled with bullets on May 2, 1976. The body of General Torres, former president of Bolivia, turned up on June 2, 1976, after General Harguindeguy, Isabel Martínez’s Minister of Interior and former Chief of Police, accused him of “faking” his kidnapping.
64DG: This Argentine death squad was similar in nature to López Rega’s Triple A and was responsible for hundreds of deaths during the 1970s.
65DG: José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz was Minister of the Economy during the years that Videla served as de facto president (see Note 61). He is known for leading Argentina in the direction of less state intervention in the economy and more free-market capitalism. He froze wages in an effort to decrease inflation, but in doing so brought on heavy speculation and social unrest. He maintained relationships with foreign investors abroad, and was criticized for depending too heavily on foreign investments and loans, on corporations and big money, while neglecting the effects of his ambitious economic decisions on the welfare of the middle class. One of his lasting legacies was an enormous increase in Argentine foreign debt.
66Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Ildebrando Pascarelli, according to La Razón on June 12, 1976. Chief of the First Artillery Group of Ciudadela, Pascarelli is the one allegedly responsible for thirty-three executions that took place between January 5 and February 3 of 1977.
67Swiss Banks Union data from June 1976. The situation grew even worse afterward.
68Clarín newspaper.
69Among the national leaders who were kidnapped are Mario Aguirre of ATE, Jorge Di Pasqual ve of Farmacia, Oscar Smith of Luz y Fuerza. The number of union leaders from metal and naval industries who have been kidnapped and murdered has been particularly high.
70DG: Martínez de Hoz’s 1976 policy was similar to the formula prescribed by the IMF that Walsh mentions here. The general idea was to restructure the State’s economic program, cutting down on domestic spending and any State regulation, to allow for growth through the international economy. The old ranchers’ oligarchy (“oligarquía ganadera”) refers to cattle-ranching families that owned Argentine land and gained high social status starting in the nineteenth century. De Hoz himself came from such a family.
71Prensa Libre, December 16, 1976.
Glossary
Berta Figueroa: Nicolás Carranza’s widow.
Captain/Commissioner-Inspector Benedicto Cuello: Second-in-command to Rodríguez Moreno, Commissioner of the San Martín District Police Department at the time of the execution.
Carlos Lizaso: Works with his father at an auction house. On the night of the José León Suárez execution, he leaves his girlfriend a note that says “If all goes well tonight . . .” Killed on site at twenty-one years old.
Chief Inspector Rodolfo Rodríguez Moreno: Chief of the San Martín District Police Department who obeyed the order from Fernández Suárez to carry out “Operation Massacre.”
Colonel Bonnecarrere: Appointed by the Liberating Revolution to the highest position of State authority in the Province of Buenos Aires.
Colonel Desiderio A. Fernández Suárez: Chief of Police of the Province of Buenos Aires, responsible for ordering the executions at José León Suárez.
Commissioner F. Ferrairone: Replaces Commissioner Gregorio de Paula as commissioner of the Moreno precinct after the José León Suárez execution.
Commissioner Gregorio de Paula: Commissioner of the Moreno precinct at the time of the José León Suárez execution.
Doctor Carlos Chiesa: Police medic at the Moreno precinct.
Eduardo Schaposnik: Socialist representative for the Advisory Board of the Province of Buenos Aires who reports on alleged cases of torture within the justice system.
Enriqueta Muñiz: Walsh’s right hand in the investigation.
Florinda Allende: Francisco Garibotti’s widow.
Francisco Garibotti: Father of six and longtime railroad worker. Killed at thirty-eight years old in the José León Suárez execution.
Horacio di Chiano: Works as an electrician, lives with his wife and daughter, around fifty years old at the time of the José León Suárez execution. He survives and hides in his basement, consumed by fear.
Jorge Doglia, Esq.: Head of the Police Judicial Division at the time of Operation Massacre.
Juan Carlos Livraga: Critically injured survivor of the José León Suárez execution. He was nearly twenty-four years old and a bus driver at the time. Livraga’s formal accusation was published in the newspaper Propósitos.
Juan Carlos Torres: Tenant of the apartment where most of the victims of the José León Suárez executions were gathered on the night of June 9, 1956.
Judge Belisario Hueyo: Judge from La Plata who, aside from Walsh himself, most avidly seeks justice in the case of “Operation Massacre.”
Judge Viglione: Judge for the Province of Buenos Aires who is appointed to adjudicate Walsh’s charges against Police Commissioner Fernández Suárez.
Julio Troxler: Twenty-nine-year-old Peronist and former police officer. He survives the José León Suárez execution and goes into exile in Bolivia.
“Marcelo”: a.k.a. Marcelo Rizzoni, an informant for Walsh in the investigation who never forgives himself for Carlos Lizaso’s death and becomes a terrorist.
Mario Brión: Working man who lives with his wife and son. Killed at thirty-three years old in the José León Suárez execution.
Máximo von Kotsch, Esq.: Lawyer who represented survivors Giunta and Livraga.
Miguel Ángel Giunta: Critically injured survivor of the José León Suárez execution. Works at a shoe shop.
Nicolás Carranza: Father of six, Peronist, and fugitive. Killed in the José León Suárez execution.
Norberto Gavino: Fugitive from the law whose wife was taken hostage on account of his subversive activity. He is around forty years old at the time of the José León Suárez execution. He survives and goes into exile in Bolivia.
Ovidio R. de Bellis: Replaces Rodríguez Moreno as Chief of the San Martín District Police Department
Pedro Livraga: Father of Juan Carlos Livraga.
Reinaldo Benavídez: Around thirty years old at the time of the José León Suárez execution. Survives and goes into exile in Bolivia.
Rogelio Díaz: NCO who served as a sergeant, has retired from the Navy at the time of the José León Suárez execution. He survives.
Señora Pilar: Mr. Horacio’s widow.
Vicente Damián Rodríguez: Dockworker and father of three. Killed at thirty-five years old in the José León Suárez execution.
Afterword
For many of us, Rodolfo Walsh serves as a synthesis of what one would call the political tradition in today’s Argentine literature: he was a great writer who pushed the question of the intellectual’s civic responsibility to its limit. He started by writing detective stories à la Borges, and went on to write longer works based on true crimes that made him a threat in the eyes of the State. Operation Massacre (1957) is one of the great Latin American texts of documentary literature. In a 1970 interview, speaking about another one of his works in which he exposed a true, unpunished crime, he told me:
A journalist asked me why I hadn’t made a novel out of this subject that seemed so suitable for a novel. What he was clearly hiding was the notion that a novel on this subject is better or in a higher category than an indictment about this subject. I think that translating an indictment into the art that is the novel renders it inoffensive, namely, consecrates it as art. On the other hand, building upon a document or a testimony allows for every degree of perfection: immense artistic possibilities emerge from the process of selection and the work of investigation.
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