It’s a necessary precaution because the site is configured in such a way that, from the metallic door that grants access to the apartment, a man armed with a simple revolver could control the entire corridor. He could make it difficult for several whole minutes for any potential enemy to enter. With a machine gun, the position could be held for hours.
Yet when the police—who at that same moment are inspecting a bus at the Saavedra Bridge stop—arrive, no one will show even the slightest resistance. Not a single shot will be fired.
But is there anybody else, aside from those already mentioned? It will be hard to find a witness who remembers everyone; those who would be able to are either missing or dead. We can only guide ourselves with clues. Torres, for instance, will say that there were two more men. He knew that one of the men was an Army NCO. As for the second man, he didn’t even know that much.
Other indirect testimonies also mention the NCO. And they specify: sergeant. The descriptions are confusing and divergent. It seems he got there at the last minute . . . No one knows who brought him . . . Hardly anyone there knew him . . . Someone, though, will see him again, or will believe he sees him, hours later, at the moment when he gets hit with a bullet and collapses.
And the second man? We don’t even know if he existed. Or what his name was, or who he was. Or if he is alive or dead.
With respect to these two men, our search came to a dead end.
It’s a few minutes to eleven. The radio is broadcasting the undercards of the boxing match. The group playing cards falls silent when the commentator announces the presence of Lausse the champion and Loayza the Chilean in the ring.
In the meantime, Giunta has arrived at the apartment in front at around ten-thirty. A perfect calm reigns over Mr. Horacio’s house. Señora Pilar talks to them for a few minutes before turning in. Her daughter Nélida is preparing mate for the guest while Mr. Horacio turns on the receiver.
If he happens to tune in to State Radio, the official voice of the Nation, he will find that they have just finished playing a Bach concert and that at 10:59 p.m., they begin playing a Ravel concert . . .
At around the same time, twenty men have just finished gathering at Florida’s Second Precinct to carry out a mysterious operation.
When Officer Pena finds out who is leading the men, he thinks: Something big.
The word revolution has not yet been uttered. Certainly not on Radio Splendid, where you can hear the tense voice of Fioravanti, the commentator relaying the first moves of the match, over the buzzing of the crowd.
It’s a short and violent fight, and by the second round the outcome seems practically decided. It lasts less than ten minutes in total. Somewhere in the middle of the third round, the champion knocks Loayza out for the count.
The owner of the house and Giunta looked at each other with smiles of satisfaction.
Giunta was drinking a glass of gin and getting ready to go. From the bedroom, Señora Pilar asked her husband for a hot water bottle. Mr. Horacio went to the kitchen, filled up the bottle, and was coming back with it when they heard violent knocks on the door. They sounded like blows made with the butt of a gun or a rifle.
The shout sounded out in the silence of the night:
—Police!
Part Two
The Events
14. Where is Tanco?
Mr. Horacio is so taken aback that he doesn’t even manage to put down the hot water bottle. He runs, turns the key in the lock, and before he can unhook the chain, the door is pushed in violently from the other side, the bolt jumps, and he is shoved, surrounded, mobbed by the throng of policemen and individuals armed with weapons big and small, who in a few seconds flood all the rooms of the house, and whose voices are soon heard in the patio and the corridor that leads to the back. Everything happens at the speed of lightning.
The one in charge is a tall, heavyset, dark-haired, mustached man with a striking sense of authority. He brandishes a .45 caliber pistol in his right hand. He shouts in a deep, husky voice that makes him sound drunk at times. He is wearing light pants and a short, olive green jacket: it is the uniform of the Argentine Army.
Mr. Horacio has taken a step back, terrified. He manages only to put his hands up, still holding onto the hot water bottle that at this point is burning his fingers. The leader of the group knocks it out of his hand with a smack.
—Where is Tanco? —he shouts.
The head of the household looks at him, not understanding. It is the first time he has heard the name of the rebel general whose dramatic escape from the wall in front of the firing squad people will only hear about a few days later. The leader of the group pushes him aside and walks up to face the other one, to face Giunta.
Giunta is simply petrified. He is still in his chair, open-mouthed, eyes enormous, unable to move. The leader approaches him and deliberately, delicately, puts the gun to his throat.
—Don’t be smart with me! —he says to him in a deep voice.— Put your hands up!
Giunta puts his hands up. Then he hears that mysterious question for a second time, the one that keeps being repeated like a nightmare. Where is Tanco. Where is Tanco?
His stunned silence earns him a blow that nearly knocks him off his chair. We will see this left-handed punch—which is protected by the menacing weapon that the right hand is brandishing—again. It seems to be a favorite of the man who is using it.
The scene was electrifying and it happened fast. What follows happens just as fast and in the form of a crackling of commands:
—Grab that old guy and this other guy and take them out to the car!
They don’t even have time to object. They are taken out and thrust into a Florida precinct car, a Plymouth. A red bus and a light blue police van with a mobile radio are parked on the same sidewalk.
In the meantime, it seems that a man has escaped from the patio of the building—Torres—and someone else—Lizaso—has tried to do the same and failed.
The patio belongs to the apartment in front, but is connected in a roundabout way to the back through a little door. The little door opens into the corridor, the one with the privet hedge.
The whole episode is confusing and no two versions of it are alike. A consolidation of all the different versions suggests that Torres, accompanied by Lizaso, was walking to Mr. Horacio’s apartment, taking the same route as usual, to ask if he could use the phone, which he did quite regularly. It was then that they heard and maybe saw the police arriving.
Torres doesn’t hesitate. The fence around the patio is not very high. He jumps it in one try and flees through the neighboring buildings. In his frenzied dash, he jumps over hedges and roofs, rips his clothes, seriously wounds his hand and neck—he’ll never know how—zigzags across blocks and blocks, finally gets on a bus and, bleeding and exhausted, finds shelter. In a way, he was the first survivor.
There are three versions of Carlitos Lizaso’s story. The first is that he was able to reach a nearby piping plant where the night watchman would not let him hide, which in turn led to his capture. The second is that he was caught in the patio after the fence collapsed under his weight. The last is that he did not even try to escape. The only thing we know for sure is that he was arrested.
In the meantime, the same astounding and savage scene has taken place in the back apartment. The police encounter no opposition when they enter. No one budges. No one protests or even resists. The guard Ramón Madialdea will state later that “a gun with a pearl handle” was confiscated here. That weapon (if it existed) was the only one in the house.
They order them onto the street, one by one. The leader of the group is waiting for them there, quick to shout at them again, punching and kicking them as they load them onto the bus. He hammers Livraga in the stomach with the barrel of the gun, yelling:
—So you were going to start a revolution, huh? With that face?
He said the same thing to Carlitos Lizaso. He begins asking everyone their names. You can tell by his gesture of disdain—the “Come on, move!” that he uses to push them toward the bus—that most of them mean nothing to him. But Gavino’s name is like a revelation to him. His face lights up with joy.
He grabs him forcefully by the neck and in one swift movement inserts the barrel of the gun in his mouth.
—So you’re Gavino! —he howls.— So you’re . . . !
His finger trembles on the trigger. His eyes are radiant.
—Tell me where you’ve hidden him —he orders sternly.— Where is Tanco! Now, right away, because I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you right here! It’s no skin off my back!
The barrel of the gun clatters between Gavino’s teeth. A trail of blood flows from his split lip. His eyes are glazed over with fear.
But he doesn’t tell him where Tanco is. Either he is a hero, or he hasn’t the slightest idea where the rebel general is . . .12
They tell Giunta and Di Chiano to get out of the car and make them get on the bus too. At the last minute, three more men who have been arrested nearby get on as well. One is the night watchman at the piping plant. Another is a driver who happened to be passing by. And the third is a young man who was saying goodnight to his girlfriend at her house . . .
The bus—the fortieth one on the 19 line—sets out with its usual driver, Pedro Alberto Fernández, whom they detained for their use forty-five minutes ago. The prisoners don’t know where they are going or why—except for maybe one or two of them—they are being taken.
But one of them will manage to hear a revealing part of a conversation between the guards.
“That one,” the one leading the operation, the Army man dressed in uniform, the even-handed dealer of kicks and blows, the one whom everyone addresses respectfully as “sir,” while referring to him by a more familiar nickname from a distance—that man was the chief of the Police Department of the Province of Buenos Aires, (RET) Lieutenant Colonel Desiderio A. Fernández Suárez.
***
Señora Pilar and her daughter believe they are living a nightmare that will not end. The house is still being invaded by men searching the furniture and the drawers, interrogating them, and shouting at the top of their lungs. More commands come in from outside, sharp as bullets.
Amid all of this, though, they happen to witness a strange incident. The Chief of Police goes back, picks up the phone, and speaks in an altered voice. They manage to catch only a few snippets of the conversation and the name of a woman:
—. . . A total success . . . Amazing . . . It looks like they started something down south too . . . Tell Cacho to take care of herself . . . Yes, a total success . . .
After the conversation has ended, he joins the others in searching the house. Nélida tries to step away from the bedroom where the Chief of Police is looking for revolutionary schemes among her undergarments, or maybe for Tanco himself. But he makes her come back, “so that later she doesn’t say something’s missing.”
The first phase of “Operation Massacre” has passed quickly. It is barely 11:30 p.m. At that exact moment, State Radio, the official voice of the Nation, cuts Ravel’s music short and starts playing Igor Stravinsky’s 6489/94 recording.
Footnotes:
12The reconstruction of this scene is based on indirect testimonies. Months later, in a signed statement that is in my possession, Gavino himself confirmed it with these words “. . . most of us were beaten, especially the undersigned, by the Chief of Police, who hit my head, mouth, and left pectoral, so many times that I fell to the floor where he and several guards started to kick me, screaming loudly, tell me where Tanco is or I’ll kill you. When they got tired of beating me, the Chief picked me up by my hair, pulling a bunch of it out, and said: So you’re the famous Gavino, tonight we’re executing you. Then he went through my pockets and took my ID and about five hundred pesos, which were never returned to me.”
15. Valle’s Rebellion
Far from there, the real uprising is now raging furiously.
In June of 1956, the Peronists that had been overthrown nine months earlier staged their first serious attempt to regain power through a revolt led by military officers, with some active civilian support.
The proclamation signed by Generals Valle and Tanco explained the root of the uprising by giving an exact description of the state of things. The country, it claimed, “is living under a harsh and merciless tyranny”; people are being persecuted, imprisoned, and exiled; the “majority party” is being excluded from public life; people are living under the “totalitarian monstrosity” of Decree 4161 (which prohibited even mentioning Perón); the Constitution has been abolished so as to get rid of article 40, which prevented “the surrender of public services and natural resources to international capitalism”; the aim is to subject workers to “the will of capitalism” through starvation, and “to have the country regress to its most ruthless colonial period by handing over its most basic economic resources to international capitalism.”
Stated in 1956, this was not just accurate: it was prophetic. Valle’s proclamation was unusual in its lack of hypocrisy. It did not make the usual pleas for Western and Christian values or any jabs at communism, but it also did not overlook the attack on unions by “elements known for agitating in the service of ideologies or international interests.”
Compared to this analysis, the policy portion of the proclamation was weak. It sacrificed, perhaps inevitably, ideological content for emotional impact. In short, it proposed a considered return to Peronism and Perón by transparent means: elections within no more than 180 days, with all political parties participating. The economic policy of the platform, unsurprisingly, contradicted its previous criticism by assuring that there would be “full guarantees for foreign capital that is either already invested or will be invested,” etc.
The proclamation illustrated the two elements that characterized Peronism in those early days of the resistance: first, it had a clear ability to perceive the ills that it suffered due to its being the popular majority party; second, it was remarkably ambiguous when it came to diagnosing the causes, to turning itself into a true revolutionary movement, and to leaving campaign slogans and pretty words to the enemy once and for all.
Of course Valle acted, and gave his life, which means more than words ever could. Understanding his actions is easier today than it was ten years ago; it will be even easier in the future. Valle’s figure will continue to grow and take the place it deserves in the people’s memory, together with the conviction that his movement’s success would have saved the country the shameful phase that followed, this second década infame that we are now living in.13
The story of the uprising is short. Less than twelve hours pass between the time that the operations begin to when the last rebel group is defeated.
In Campo de Mayo, the rebels—led by colonels Cortínez and Ibazeta—have taken control of both the NCO academy infantry group and the services group of the first armored division. The occupation of the NCO academy fails after a short shoot-out, though, and the attack is left isolated.14
At eleven o’clock at night, a group of NCOs revolt in the Army Mechanics School, but have to retreat after a shoot-out.
In Avellaneda, in the surrounding area of the Second Military Region Command, rebels and policemen engage in two or three skirmishes. The police arrest some of the rebels. Next they burst into the Industrial School and surprise Lieutenant Colonel José Irigoyen, who is with a group trying to set up a command there for Valle and a secret transmitter. The repression is devastating. Eighteen civilians and two military officers are sent to a summary court-martial in the Lanús District Police Department. Six of them will be executed: Irigoyen, Captain Costales, Dante Lugo, Osvaldo Albedro, and two brothers, Clemente and Norberto Ros. Leading this operation is the second-in-command at the district police department,
Lieutenant Commander naval pilot Salvador Ambroggio. Chief Inspector Daniel Juárez is the one administering the coups de grâce at will. For the purposes of intimidation, the government announced at daybreak that eighteen people had been executed.
In La Plata, a bomb thrown at a shoe store downtown appears to be the sign the rebels are waiting for. In the Seventh Regiment, Captain Morganti calls the company under his command to action. Groups of civilians take over the telephone exchanges. Astounded passersby along the main streets see a number of Sherman tanks go by, followed by troops in armored trucks that are headed at full speed to the Second Division Command and the police station. There are barely twenty guards, not well-armed, at the station. Not even the police chief or second-in-command are there: the former is inspecting Mr. Horacio di Chiano’s furniture in Florida, and the latter is leading the repression in Avellaneda and Lanús.
The most spectacular battle of the entire attempt at rebellion is about to begin. Around a hundred thousand shots will be fired, according to an unofficial calculation. There will be a half-dozen killed and some twenty wounded. But the rebel forces, whose superiority in terms of military equipment at first seems overwhelming, will not come away with even the most fleeting success.
Ninety-nine out of every hundred people in the country are unaware of what’s going on. In the very same city of La Plata, where the shooting continues incessantly all night long, there are many who keep sleeping and only find out about it the following morning.
At 11:56 p.m. State Radio, the official voice of the Nation, stops playing Stravinsky and puts on the marching song that they usually use to end their programming. The voice of the announcer bids his listeners goodnight until the following day at the usual time. At midnight the broadcast is interrupted. All of this is confirmed on page fifty-one of State Radio’s registry book of announcers that was in use at the time and is signed by the announcer Gutenberg Pérez.
Operation Massacre Page 7