Operation Massacre

by Rodolfo Walsh

  All three of them seem to have their eyes fixed on the same spot. Giunta lowers his head and discovers his muddy shoes, his pants torn up from the getaway.

  But now the train is arriving. He jumps on. The strangers get on behind him. Giunta starts to walk through the train cars. Two of the men have sat down. But the third is following him, nearly stepping on his heels.

  Giunta acts with remarkable clarity of mind: he slows down his step so that the man is practically touching him, and then sits down all of a sudden—or rather, he drops like a rock—in the first seat that he finds on the right.

  The stranger sits down as well. In the same row of the empty car, in the seat on the left.

  Giunta doesn’t look at his pursuer. He fixes his gaze on the dark window in an effort to make out the movements of the image reflected in it. He almost jumps up from his seat. Because the Stranger—could it be a coincidence?—is doing the same thing, watching him in his own window.

  Will this night never end? Giunta is in despair. The train leaves Villa Ballester behind. The stranger keeps cunningly observing him. They reach Malaver. A few minutes later they are in San Andrés.

  Once more, Giunta’s instincts work in his favor. He decides in a flash. He waits for the train to start moving again, to pick up some speed. Then he jolts up, runs to the door, pulls it open in one go, walks down the platform steps, and throws himself off . . .

  It’s a miracle he doesn’t kill himself. As soon as he puts pressure on his foot, the ground forces him to take giant leaps that he has never had to in his life. In his discombobulated puppet dash—ten meters, twenty meters—he brushes against a privet hedge that leaves long scratches on one arm. But the train is far away by now, lost like a glowworm in the dark.

  And Giunta is—or believes he is—safe.

  ***

  Julio Troxler has hidden himself in a nearby ditch. He is waiting for the shooting to end. He sees the police cars drive away. Then he does something incredible. He goes back!

  He goes back, dragging himself stealthily and calling out quietly to Benavídez, who escaped from the assault car with him. He doesn’t know if he survived.

  He gets close to the bodies and starts turning them over one by one—Carranza, Garibotti, Rodríguez—looking at their faces in search of his friend. Pain grips him when he recognizes Lizaso. He has four holes in his chest and one in his cheek. But he doesn’t find Benavídez.24

  The bodies were still warm. He probably doesn’t see Horacio di Chiano, who continues to play dead not too far from there. He understands that there is nothing left to do there, and starts walking in the direction of José León Suárez.

  He is almost at the station when he sees Livraga coming towards him, teetering and covered in blood. At the same moment, an officer from the nearby police station was making his way towards the wounded man, shouting: “What’s going on? What’s going on?”

  —They executed us . . . they fired some shots at us —Livraga mumbled, among other insults and unintelligible mutterings.

  The officer held him under his armpits and helped him walk towards the station. Along the way, they passed by Troxler.

  For the third time this evening, the former police officer was recognized by one of his old colleagues.

  —Hey Troxler! How’s it going? —the other guy shouts, passing by.

  —Good, you know . . . —he replies.

  He is about to keep walking when he sees a truck with Army soldiers approaching. As always, Julio Troxler does the most natural thing: he heads to a short line of early risers who are waiting for a Costera bus and joins it. He doesn’t plan on boarding the bus—besides, he doesn’t even have five cents on him—but he knows he will attract less attention there.

  It seems fated. Because the truck stops just in front of the line. Without stepping out, an officer yells:

  —Fellas, you haven’t heard any shots, have you?

  The question seems addressed to everyone, but it’s Troxler that the officer is looking at, it’s him that he is addressing, for a very simple reason: he is the tallest in line.

  Troxler shrugs his shoulders.

  —As far as I know . . . —he says.

  The truck takes off. Troxler leaves his place in line and starts to walk. He doesn’t have any money for the bus; a basic sense of prudence stops him from asking a stranger for money, or even for permission to call his friends . . .

  He’s exhausted and frozen cold. He hasn’t eaten anything since the night before. He walks eleven hours straight through Greater Buenos Aires, which has morphed into a desert without water or shelter for him, a survivor of the massacre.

  It is six o’clock in the evening when he reaches a safe haven.

  Footnotes:

  24Troxler recounts that “. . . he found Carlos Lizaso along the way . . . in the place where the truck had been, in a supine position, with half of his body on the road and the rest of it in the ditch alongside it . . . he checked to make sure he wasn’t still alive . . . he crossed the road and, on the path that leads to the German Club, found Rodríguez in the middle of the street next to a large puddle of blood, then Carranza, and, on the right side . . . another corpse that he couldn’t identify . . .”

  26. The Ministry of Fear

  The “coup de grâce” that they delivered to Livraga went straight through one part of his face to another, crushing his nasal wall and his teeth, but missed his vital organs. His youth and his athleticism served him immeasurably: he never lost consciousness even though his face was swelling up and he was in a great deal of pain. The intense cold of the frost seemed to keep him awake.

  He hears a new round of shots. It is probably the execution of Lizaso, the only one that seemed to have been formally carried out. Some evidence allows us to assume that the guards had him restrained up until the last minute, that they lined the squad up in front of him and fired according to regulation. The unlucky young man did not get the chance to even think of fleeing. Or, what’s more likely: at the crucial moment, he preferred to face his executioners courageously. What we know is that he was facing them when they fired at him, right in the middle of his chest.

  Livraga hears the police cars driving away and waits. He is still not moving. Only when several minutes have passed does he try to get up. He rests his right arm on the ground; it has another bullet wound in it.

  Now an endless torment begins: fear and physical suffering will follow one after the other and eventually become one. There will be a moment when Livraga will regret having survived.

  He manages to get up. He walks. He makes his way to the garbage dump where he saw Giunta escape and looks for him. There is something foolish and pathetic about this search. It’s as though he cannot believe in anyone in this world anymore, as though the only person he can trust is the man who has been through the same experience. (Much later on he will find Giunta at last—in Olmos.)

  After a long detour through open fields, he returns to the main road. He is leaving a trail of blood behind him. He approaches a village. There are several lights. He sees a train station sign: José León Suárez. Someone tries to ask him something, but he keeps going without answering. He is exhausted. He’s going to fall down. Somebody manages to take him in his arms.

  It’s a police officer.

  At that moment, the thought of an unending nightmare must have occurred to Livraga: the cycle of being arrested, executed, arrested, executed again . . .

  Yet, he had finally found himself with a human being.

  The officer—whom we have already seen greeting Troxler—did not even ask him why he was wounded. He hurried him onto a jeep, put a guard by his side to look after him and, placing himself in front of the wheel, set out in a mad race to the nearest hospital.

  They passed the bodies on the way. The officer stopped the car in its tracks and ordered the guard to step out and investi
gate.

  —They’re dead —the guard announced.

  The policeman turned toward Livraga.

  —Tell me the truth, man, what happened?

  Instead of answering, Livraga vomited up a mouthful of blood. The policeman didn’t hesitate any longer. Leaving the guard standing on the road, he hit the accelerator.

  27. An Image in the Night

  Mr. Horacio doesn’t know how long he was playing dead. Half an hour? An hour? His sense of time was completely altered. All he knows is that he did not leave the spot where he’d fallen until it started to get bright out. That was probably at around seven-thirty. On June 10, the sun rose at 7:57 a.m.

  He lifted his head and saw the field covered in white. Along the horizon, he could make out a solitary tree. Nine months later he was surprised to find out that it was not just one tree; rather, the branches of several trees at the far end of an undulating terrain were creating this optical illusion. Incidentally, the detail proved to this writer—if I still harbored any doubts—that Mr. Horacio had been there. The only place from which that strange mirage can be observed is the site of the execution.25

  On one side of the “phantom tree,” at the edge of the town of José León Suárez, he spotted the chapel whose bells he had heard ringing when they were about to deliver the coup de grâce . . .

  He stood up and made a great effort to start running in that direction. He was numb. The cold was brutal. At 8:10 a.m. the temperature was -3°C.

  Along the way he came to a muddy ditch that was impossible for him to get past. He had to grab a sheet of corrugated metal from a pile of garbage and place it across like a bridge.

  Leaving the wasteland behind, he went into town. He walked about eight blocks. He thought it was only two. He saw a bus heading down a cross street. He thought it was red. It was yellow. He thought it was the number 4. It was the number 1.

  He got on.

  —Where does this go? —he asked, just like Giunta.

  —To Liniers.

  In a small pocket of his pants he had salvaged a small sum of money from the ravenousness of the police. He was able to pay for his ticket. It sounds like a fairytale: they gave him a ticket with a palindromic number on it . . .

  He got off in Liniers. He walked into a bar. He ordered a coffee. They were still warming up the machine so there wasn’t any. He went to another bar. They gave him a double espresso and a double shot of sugar cane spirits there.

  Only then did he feel like his soul was returning to his body.

  ***

  How did Sergeant Díaz escape? We can only speculate. What we know for sure is that, two months after the massacre, he was still alive, hidden in a house in Munro. That’s where the police commissioner of Boulogne arrested him. He was sent to Olmos. He is the only survivor I was never able to reach.

  And the “NCO X”? Did he exist? Who was the man that Troxler and Benavídez saw being shot dead in the truck? One of the twelve whom we already know of, but who was a stranger to them? The mystery remains to this day.

  Without a doubt, the massacre left five dead, one critically wounded, and six survivors.

  ***

  The sun had come up over the dreadful scene of the execution. The corpses were scattered along the main road. Several had fallen into a ditch, and the blood in the stagnant water seemed to transform it into an unbelievable river floating with strands of brain matter. A good while later, they emptied one truck of tar there and another of lime . . .

  There were Mauser cartridges everywhere. For many days after the fact, the boys of the neighborhood sold them to curious visitors. Faraway houses were left with marks from stray bullets.

  The first to stop by the road that morning were unsuspecting townspeople on their way to work. After that, word spread through the town and a horrified, sullen crowd began to congregate around the atrocious sight.

  Completely absurd accounts of what had happened were circulating in hushed voices.

  —They were students —one person declared.

  —Yes, they were going to attack Campo de Mayo . . . —said another.

  Most were silent. The men took off their hats, a woman crossed herself.

  Then everyone saw a new, long and shiny car coming along the road. It stopped suddenly in front of the group and a woman peeked her head out the window.

  —What’s going on? —she asked.

  —These people . . . They’ve been executed —they responded.

  She made an ironic gesture.

  —Very well done! —she remarked.— They should kill all of them.

  An astonished silence settled over the crowd. Then something traced the form of a parabola in the air and crashed onto the polished bodywork of the car in a cloud of dirt. After the first clump made contact, there was another, and then came the deluge. Howling and furious, the crowd surrounded the car. The driver managed to floor it.

  The dead bodies were left out in the open until ten in the morning. At that point an ambulance came and took them to the San Martín polyclinic, where they were flung carelessly into a warehouse. Rodríguez was riddled with bullets; Garibotti had just one bullet wound, in his back. Carranza had many, including in his legs . . .

  The night watchman at the depot was accustomed to the sight of dead bodies. When he arrived that afternoon, though, there was something that deeply shocked him. One of the executed men had his arms out by his sides and his head leaning on one shoulder. He had an oval face, blond hair, the beginnings of a beard, a melancholic expression, and a trail of blood coming from his mouth.

  He was wearing a white cardigan. It was Mario Brión and he looked like Christ.26

  The man stood there dazed for a moment.

  Then he folded Brión’s arms across his chest.

  Footnotes:

  25I had been very intrigued by this topographical trace that Mr. Horacio kept mentioning and that I had never managed to observe during my three or four visits to the garbage dump. That was until I went with him one day. Soon enough, after the two of us had looked for it for a good while, I saw it. It was fascinating, worthy of a Chesterton story. Moving fifty paces in any direction, the optical effect would disappear, the “tree” would split into many trees. At that moment I knew—it was an unusual kind of proof—that I was at the scene of the execution.

  26The night watchman’s exact words to Mario’s father many months later.

  28. “They’re Taking You Away”

  The police officer drove Livraga to the San Martín polyclinic, where he received his first treatments. Juan Carlos did not lose consciousness: for hours, doctors and nurses heard him repeat his story. Afterward they took him to the recovery room on the third floor.

  The nurses, risking their jobs—and maybe even more: martial law was still in effect—protect the wounded man in every way imaginable. One secretly calls Juan Carlos’ father and tells him to come see his son immediately because he is “unwell.” Another hides his clothes; she knows Livraga is telling the truth and assumes that his sweater with the bullet hole in its sleeve can be used as evidence. Yet another hides the receipt from the San Martín District Police Department, which would later serve as the introductory document for the criminal proceedings.

  Juan Carlos’ mother has just been operated on and is in a different hospital; they don’t tell her the news. Mr. Pedro Livraga, on the other hand, goes to see his son immediately, accompanied by two cousins and Juan Carlos’s brother-in-law. These four individuals sign a statement in the polyclinic’s numbered registry book declaring that they have seen Juan Carlos alive and that his state, although certainly serious, does not in any way imply a fatal outcome.

  This was a good precautionary measure to take because that afternoon or that night—for Livraga time has turned into the mere progression of pain—a corporal from the local police department comes in to keep wa
tch and, finding himself faced with Livraga, looks once at him and then keeps staring, as if he doesn’t want to believe that he is alive.

  The policeman’s face looks somewhat familiar to Livraga. He can’t be sure, but he thinks he has seen him before. Could it be Corporal Albornoz who was in charge of the firing squad? It’s not such an important question.

  But the corporal—a dark-skinned man—has a big mouth. He talks to the nurses:

  —They’re going to take this one in again. Don’t tell him, poor guy.

  The nurses tell him. And the torture begins again.

  The policeman, in the meantime, is looking for something. The receipt. He asks for Livraga’s clothes. They don’t give them to him. He gets angry and pointedly asks for the little piece of paper, which provides proof of the crime. No one knows anything.

  No one except for Pedro Livraga who, upon returning to his house that night, mysteriously finds it in the pocket of his overcoat.

  And he holds onto it until six months later when it reaches the hands of the judge.

  Meanwhile, Juan Carlos’ life is hanging by a very thin thread. There is no doubt that the local police want to get rid of him, the witness. But first they need to solve the “small” problem of the other survivors, who are being savagely pursued. If they can catch all of them, they will execute them again, taking the greatest precautions . . . But if even one escapes their clutches, it will be useless to get rid of the rest of them.

  Livraga is no longer resisting, no longer protesting. When they put him on a stretcher that night and a nurse says to him in tears: “They’re taking you away, kid,” he’s already given up. So much suffering just to die.

  They roll him out covered in a sheet, like they would a dead man. They load him onto a jeep and take him away.

  ***

  In San Andrés, Giunta took a bus that brought him to his brother’s house in Villa Martelli, where he found refuge and released some anxiety by telling his incredible story.