Operation Massacre

by Rodolfo Walsh

  And now this. Later, toward the end of 1956, there will be talk of a similar episode again in Mar del Plata, where he has been transferred to serve as Chief of the District Police Department. A Chilean pickpocket dies from being bashed around in a cell. Does it have anything to do with Rodríguez Moreno? They say it doesn’t . . . But disaster follows him. At the start of 1957 he led an operation in which an officer was killed, riddled with bullets from a machine gun fired by his fellow officers. An unfortunate incident, is how the papers put it.

  Next to him on that night of June 9 is his second-in-command, Captain Cuello. There are a number of contradictory accounts of this short, nervous man as well.

  —We’re going to take your statements —Rodríguez Moreno orders.

  The prisoners start to line up single-file in two groups. One group goes to the Chief’s office. The other, to the clerk’s office.

  Juan Carlos Livraga is unsettled. He doesn’t want to believe that his friend Vicente Rodríguez has screwed him over, but an awful suspicion keeps rolling around in his head. That’s why, when Rodríguez returns from giving his statement, Livraga gets up in a hurry and goes in before he is even called. He wants to be interrogated by the same person, to find out what his friend has said, to protect himself with his friend’s testimony.

  The interrogation is long and thorough. They ask him if he knew anything about the rebellion. He says he didn’t. He tells a long detailed story of how he arrived at the house in question. He stresses that he only went there to hear the fight. A clerk condenses everything into a pair of typed lines.

  He is shown a pile of white and light blue armbands with two letters printed on them: P.V.17 They ask him if he has seen them before. He says he hasn’t. The typist adds another line.

  They show him a revolver. They ask if it’s his.

  The question shocks Livraga. The gun is not his, but what’s strange is that they don’t know whose it is.

  They add two or three more lines to his statement. The long piece of paper curves over the roller and falls behind the machine. Livraga notices that several statements precede his on the sheet. The way he is oriented, facing the typist, he can still manage to make out a few upside-down lines. He calms down when he sees: “Rodríguez . . . accident . . . friend . . . fight . . . doesn’t know . . .” Rodríguez has given the same information. Other testimonies are similar. Giunta, who never forgets a face, is questioned by a “chubby, curly-haired officer with a handlebar mustache.”

  Gavino knows perfectly well that they are not going to believe him if he says he was also at Torres’s apartment by accident. He tries to find someone who will back him up. Carranza agrees. They both state that they are Peronist sympathizers who expected there would be an uprising and went to hear the news on the radio.

  —What were you doing in that house? —they ask Di Chiano.

  —What would I be doing . . . It’s my house.

  —What were you doing?

  —I was with my family, listening to the radio.

  —Nothing else?

  —Nothing else.

  Ever since Troxler and Benavídez arrived, they have been kept in a different office so as not to be mixed with the others. Their testimonies are shorter. After all, they did nothing more than ring a doorbell.

  —What are you going to do with us? —one of them asks.

  —I think they’re sending you to La Plata —is the vague reply.

  At 2:53 a.m., the Office of the Vice President of the Nation, Rear-Admiral Rojas, reads Communiqué No. 2 out loud, reporting that the rebellion in the Army Mechanics School has been quashed and the battle at the NCO academy at Campo de Mayo is being quelled. The message is broadcast across all the radio stations in the country.

  “Make no mistake —he concludes.— The Liberating Revolution will no doubt achieve its goals.”

  3:45 a.m. The interrogations have ended. Two officers stand up to talk near the door.

  —If this thing turns around, we can just let these guys go . . . —one of them says, turning his head towards the men.

  But the thing doesn’t turn around. On the contrary. The shooting dies down in La Plata. The rebels understand how impossible it would be to take over Police Headquarters or the military command: they have lost the race against time. People scram and desist when a naval airplane sends out a flare. This is only a small glimpse of what will happen when daybreak sets the flight of government machines in motion. At the Río Santiago Shipyard, the Marines are enlisted. The Chief of Police has finally joined the effort himself and brought backup.

  The prisoners at the District Police Department, nervous and drowsy, are shaking on the benches. The cold is brutal. Since three o’clock, the thermometer has been at 0°C. At this point, it looks like they are not going to transfer them from here tonight. Some try to curl up and sleep for a bit.

  That’s when they start calling them up again, one by one. The first one to come back says they took everything he had on him: his money, his watch, even his keys. He shows everyone the receipt he was given.

  Some manage to take precautions. Livraga, for instance, who has forty pesos, hides thirty in one of his socks. They give him a receipt for “A White Star watch, a key ring, ten pesos, and a handkerchief.” (Officer Albarello signs it.)

  Benavídez is given a receipt for “Two-hundred-and-nineteen pesos and forty-five cents, identity papers, and various items.” Giunta’s reads fifteen pesos, a handkerchief, and cigarettes.

  The one who has the most money is Carlitos Lizaso. Several witnesses saw him leave Vicente López that afternoon with more than two thousand pesos in his wallet. There was even someone who told him not to carry such a large sum on him. At the District Police Department, they log the amount at only seventy-eight pesos.

  Could he have done what Livraga did? Maybe. What we know for sure is that those two thousand pesos will disappear completely, in one pocket or another. Only a small part of the booty collected that night—money, watches, rings—will return to its owners.

  The atmosphere among the prisoners is getting heavier and heavier. One thing’s for sure: no one is thinking of letting them go.

  Footnotes:

  17DG: Abbreviation for “Perón Vuelve”—“Perón Returns.”

  20. Execute Them!

  4:45 a.m. It seems as though Rodríguez Moreno is trying to buy more time. He probably doesn’t think of killing ten or fifteen unlucky saps as a very pleasant way to spend his evening. He is personally convinced that more than half of them have nothing to do with anything. And he even has doubts about the rest. He has a tense exchange with the Chief of Police, who has already arrived in La Plata. The orders are strict: execute them. The alternative: be subject to martial law himself. It sounds like they are even talking about sending him an envoy with troops.

  At 4:47 a.m., they broadcast Communiqué No. 3 from the Office of the Vice President of the Republic:

  “Campo de Mayo has surrendered. La Plata is practically contained. In Santa Rosa, the cavalry regiment has been enlisted to defeat the last rebel group. Eighteen civilian rebels who tried to attack a precinct in Lanús have been executed.”

  The Marine Corps and the Police Academy lift the siege on Police Headquarters. The rebels disperse. Fernández Suárez arrives at the Government House, where Colonel Bonnecarrere has had no choice but to listen to the nearby shooting all night long, and they walk together toward Police Headquarters. They are walking up the wide staircase that looks onto Rivadavia Square when Fernández Suárez turns to a subordinate and, so that everyone can hear him, gives the order:

  —Those prisoners in San Martín should be taken out to a field and executed!

  Apparently that’s not enough. Fernández Suárez has to take the radio transmitter into his own hands.

  Rodríguez Moreno receives the command. It is incontestable. So he makes his decision. />
  21. “He Felt He was Committing a Sin”

  At the last minute, three of them get lucky: the night watchman, “the man who went to have dinner,” and “the man who was saying goodnight to his girlfriend.” They are pulled aside, given back their identity papers and personal items, and set free.

  Rodríguez Moreno will later say that they had been included in the order for execution but he released them “of his own accord.”

  They make the rest of them go outside. An assault car is parked in front of the Department, one of those blue trucks that are open on both sides and have wooden seats that cut across the middle. A police van waits a few meters back. Next to it, a small man in a raincoat is nervously rubbing his hands together. It’s Captain Cuello.

  The prisoners receive the order to get on the truck. There is still one who asks again:

  —Where are they taking us?

  —Don’t worry —is the cunning response.— We’re transferring you to La Plata.

  Nearly everyone has gotten on. Just then a strange scene comes to pass: it’s Cuello who impulsively shouts out of the blue:

  —Mister Giunta!

  Giunta turns around, surprised, and walks toward him.

  There is an almost pleading tone to Cuello’s deep, steady voice now.

  —But, Mr. Giunta . . . —he moves his arms a bit, his hands clenched— but you . . . you were in that house? You really were?

  Giunta realizes all of a sudden that he is asking him to say no. He just needs a syllable to let him go, to fix the situation somehow. Cuello’s face surprises him: it’s tense, he’s squinting a little, and a muscle twitches uncontrollably in one of his cheeks (“He knew I was innocent. He felt he was committing a sin by sending me to my death,” Giunta will later say, in his typically striking language).

  But Giunta can’t lie. Or rather: he doesn’t know why he has to lie.

  —Yes, I was there.

  The policeman brings his hand to his head. It’s a gesture that lasts a fraction of a second. But it’s strange . . . Then he pulls himself together again.

  —Okay —he says dryly.— Go.

  Giunta will not forget the scene. Without even noticing, he will continue to build upon it in his mind over the course of many more minutes. He has already conditioned himself, unknowingly prepared himself for what could happen. He has the professional habit of observing faces, studying their reflexes and reactions. And what he just saw in Cuello’s face is still shapeless and nebulous, but worrisome nonetheless.

  All of them have now gotten on. And again, the same enigma: How many were they in total? Ten, according to Livraga’s calculation. Ten, Mr. Horacio di Chiano will repeat. But they have not been counted. Eleven, Gavino will say. Eleven, both Benavídez and Troxler will estimate.18 But it’s clear that there are more than ten of them, and more than eleven, because in addition to those five, there’s Carranza, Garibotti, Díaz, Lizaso, Giunta, Brión, and Rodríguez. Twelve at least. Giunta will calculate twelve, a number confirmed by Rodríguez Moreno who, nevertheless, also mentions somebody “with a foreign name that sounded like Carnevali who later found asylum at an embassy.” Twelve or thirteen, Cuello will claim. But Juan Carlos Torres will say that, based on indirect testimonies, there were fourteen. And the Chief of Police of the Province, months later, will also speak of fourteen prisoners in Florida. If there were two extra men, one of them must have been the anonymous NCO that Torres mentions.

  And the guards? There are thirteen of them, according to one testimony. Based on information obtained from another source, they seem to be under the command of a corporal by the name of Albornoz, of the district of Villa Ballester. Is he the one Livraga will later see under extraordinary circumstances? We don’t know.

  There is one thing that truly stands out: the policemen are armed with Mausers alone. Given the kind of operation that they are carrying out and the circumstances under which they are doing so, it is nearly incomprehensible. Is this about some sort of opportunity, an “out” that Rodríguez Moreno is consciously or unconsciously going to give the prisoners? Or is it that there aren’t any machine guns in the District Police Department? There is no easy solution to this riddle. What’s certain is that, thanks to this fortunate circumstance—and to other equally strange ones that we’ll later encounter—half of those condemned to die will make it out alive.

  But they don’t know that they are condemned, and this outrageous cruelty ought to be highlighted in the list of aggravating and mitigating factors. They have not been told that they are going to be killed. What’s more, until the very last moment, there will be those who try to deceive them.

  The guards draw the canvas curtains that enclose the body of the police car, and the truck heads northwest. They are followed by the van holding Cuello, Rodríguez Moreno, and Officer Cáceres, along 9 de Julio Street and its continuation, Balcarce Street, which turns into Route 8. They cover 2100 meters—about fifteen somewhat populated blocks—before exiting at the first open lot, which is about a thousand meters long. From there the road veers off to the west.

  The prisoners don’t have the opportunity to observe these topographical details. They are traveling as though in a cell, in nearly total darkness. All they can see is the rectangle of paved road that the windshield up front lets through.

  It is bitingly cold. The temperature stays at 0°C. Those who suffer the most are Giunta, who is wearing just a jacket, and Brión with his white cardigan. They are sitting face to face on the left, Brión on the first double seat with his back to the driver, and Giunta in the second, looking forward. One of the clasps of the curtain that covers the doorframe is broken, and the fabric flaps against the truck with sharp blows, letting in a gust of freezing wind that cuts like a knife. They both turn to hold the curtain down and talk softly.

  —I think they’re going to kill us, Mr. Lito —Brión says.

  Giunta is still mulling over what happened with Cuello, but tries to console his neighbor.

  —Don’t think about those things, Mr. Mario. Didn’t you hear them say they were taking us to La Plata . . .

  If they could see anything, they would realize that they are getting farther and farther away from their alleged destination. Next to Giunta is Mr. Horacio. He also believes they are being taken to La Plata. In front of Mr. Horacio is Vicente Rodríguez, quiet and pensive. Gavino is sitting next to Carranza. He is afraid, while Carranza is trusting. The one who is also trusting, confident, even optimistic in all of this, is Juan Carlos Livraga. He is a bus driver who knows the roads, he should realize that they’re not taking them where they say they are. Still, he notices nothing.

  In the back seats are Lizaso, Díaz, Benavídez, Troxler . . . Troxler is tense, alert, trying to look out for the slightest indication that might let him know where he is. He is very familiar with the guards and used to dealing with them and giving them orders. Why don’t any of them want to look him in the eye? Julio Troxler must have noticed something in their behavior that made him so suspicious.

  The truck drives back into a populated area. On the left is a thousand-meter stretch unevenly scattered with houses. Then houses appear on the right as well. The road cuts diagonally across lots and streets for another thousand meters. And suddenly it widens and splits into two. Troxler almost jumps up in his seat. He has just figured out where they are. They are at the intersection of Route 8 and the Camino de Cintura highway.19 So, not only are they not going to La Plata, they are going in the opposite direction. And Route 8 leads to Campo de Mayo. And in Campo de Mayo . . .

  One particular incident interrupts his conclusions. The driver is feeling sick. He stops the truck, gets off, and looks like he’s vomiting. There is an exchange with those in the van.

  One of the prisoners—it’s Benavídez—offers to help.

  —If you want, I can drive —he says, completely innocently.— I know how to drive.

  The
y don’t pay attention to him. The driver gets back on. They set out again.

  “And in Campo de Mayo . . .” Troxler thinks to himself. But he is wrong. Because the assault car turns at a clear right angle onto the Camino de Cintura, it’s heading north!

  It is incomprehensible.

  Footnotes:

  18In his statement, Gavino lists the prisoners by name, including “N. N., a young man, approximately thirty-five years old, blond and mustached,” who must have been Giunta. But he leaves out Mario Brión. In contrast, the joint statement of Troxler and Benavídez (which is also in my possession) lists “Mario N.” but leaves out Giunta. The explanation that occurs to me is this: Gavino, Troxler, and Benavídez didn’t know Brión or Giunta from before. These latter two share certain physical similarities. Seeing them from one moment to the next in the semi-darkness of the truck, the men came to identify one with the other, combining two people into just one.

  19DG: Camino de Cintura, also known as Provincial Route 4, is a highway in the Province of Buenos Aires that encompasses the City of Buenos Aires.

  22. The End of the Journey

  It really is incomprehensible. What is Rodríguez Moreno thinking? Continuing west on Route 8, there is a four- or five-kilometer lot about ten blocks away, a true barren land in the night where there is even a bridge over a river—the perfect setting for what’s about to happen. And yet, they turn north towards José León Suárez and enter a semi-populated area where there are only wastelands, each about three or four blocks long.