Operation Massacre (20 page)

 

Introduction

(to the first edition, March
1957
)

News of the massacre in José León Suárez first came to my ears by pure chance, on December
18
,
1956
. The news was not quite accurate, which was only fitting for the place where I heard it—a café. It suggested that a man who was allegedly executed during the Peronist uprising of June
9
and
10
of that year had survived and was not in jail.

The story sounded like a movie to me, primed for all sorts of exercises in disbelief. (It had the same effect on many people
,
which was unfortunate. An official of the armed forces, for example, whom I told about the events before publishing anything, described them in all sincerity as “a serialized novel.”)

But this kind of disbelief can be thinly disguised wisdom. The absolute nonbeliever can be as naïve as he who believes everything; at bottom, the two fall under the same psychological category.

I asked for more information. And the following day I met the first key player of the drama: Jorge Doglia, Esq. The interview with him left a strong impression on me. It may be that Doglia, a thirty-two-year-old lawyer, had his nerves shredded from waging a battle without respite for a number of months against the police “methods” he had witnessed as head of the Judicial Division of the Police Department for the Province. But he sounded utterly sincere to me. He told me about horrific cases of torture using the
picana
and burning cigarettes, of rubber and wire whips, of common criminals—usually “drifters” and pickpockets with no families to come looking for them—beaten to death in various precincts throughout the Province. And all of this under the regime of a “liberating revolution” that many Argentines received with hope because they believed it would put an end to abuses of police authority.

Doglia had fought valiantly against all of this, but now he was starting to feel defeated. Two months earlier, he had reported the illegal executions and the torture to a branch of Intelligence Services. But a bureaucrat there who could easily have spent the rest of his days looking up rules in basic textbooks for how to handle an informant—an ethical principle that we assume is basic knowledge for every branch of this kind—could think of nothing better than to expose him. Instead of protecting him, they put his life in danger, and he has received unequivocal death threats ever since.

Doglia presented a similar report to the Ministry of the Government of the Province that generated a stack of abstruse documents. Within this file—the prose worthy of Gracián in his weakest moments—a certain undersecretary comes to the conclusion that there is something there, but he isn't sure what it is.
43
At this juncture, the file keeps expanding, accumulating pages, dust, and rhetorical phrases. But, in short, nothing. In short, sloth and ineptitude when it is obvious how important it is for the matter to be resolved quickly and completely. This is what some of today's public servants have to offer.

Doglia did not put too much faith in journalism. He assumed the official newspapers were not going to take on such a prickly issue, and on the other hand he didn't want the voices of the opposition to exploit it for political reasons. He didn't expect very much from the same justice system that had just been presented with the surviving executed man as a plaintiff. From the very start, Doglia predicted:
1
) that the case would be claimed by a Military Court and
2
) that this motion would be approved. (The first happened promptly at the start of February
1957
. The second remained to be seen. Everything depended on what the ruling of the National Supreme Court would be on the jurisdictional conflict. By the time this book was being published, Doglia's second prediction had also come true.)

As for the surviving executed man, I acquired the first piece of concrete evidence that night: his name was Juan Carlos Livraga. On the morning of December
20
, I had in my hands a copy of the report that Livraga had filed. Later on, I was able to verify that his account of events was essentially accurate, though it contained a few significant omissions and inaccuracies when it came to details. But it was still too cinematic. Seemed as though it'd been pulled straight out of a movie.

And yet, the report was already a
fact
. What he alleged there could have been entirely false or not, but it was a fact: a man who said he had been executed in an unusual and illegal fashion was appearing before the reviewing judge to charge “whoever was responsible” with attempted homicide and assault.

There was something else. The document made mention of a second survivor, a certain Giunta, which opened up the immediate possibility of checking the facts that had already been reported. We were already quite far away from that first rumor overheard in a café thirty-six hours earlier.

That same afternoon the copy of the report landed in the hands of Mr. Leónidas Barletta, who ran
Propósitos
. Barletta spoke little and promised nothing. He only asked whether the circulation of this text might not disrupt the ongoing legal investigation. He received a reply stating that the most pressing concern was to use the right kind of publicity to protect the plaintiff's life, Doglia's life, and the lives of other witnesses who were thought to be in danger. Three days later, on the night of December
23
, the report was out in the streets, brought there by
Propósitos
.

In the meantime, on the twenty-first, I had my first encounter with Livraga in his lawyer von Kotsch's study. I talked to him for a long while, gathering information that I would later use for the story that came out in
Revolución Nacional
.

What I first noticed about Livraga, naturally, were the two bullet wound scars on his face (entry and exit wounds). This was also a
fact
. The circumstances under which he received these injuries could be discussed, but the fact that he had received them could not. Nonetheless, there was an official version that went so far as to claim, absurdly, that “no shots of any kind had been fired on him.”

What also came to mind immediately was the fundamental question of Livraga's innocence or guilt vis-à-vis the June
9
uprising. If he had been guilty, even in his intentions, was it normal, psychologically speaking, for him to appear before the judges and demand compensation? Wouldn't it have made much more sense for him to keep quiet, to thank God for making it out alive and gaining back his freedom? I believe a man has to feel
innocent
in order to present such a report against a Power as great as the Police Department of the Province. Of course, one could argue that everything is possible in abnormal psychology. But if there is something remarkable about Livraga, it is how normal he is and how reserved, how able he is to reason and observe.

Moreover, as I have already said, he was set free. This was also a
fact
. How could they let someone who was directly involved in the June incidents, a “revolutionary,” an executed man, be free? The only explanation was the innocence hypothesis. We were already getting further and further away from the “serialized novel,” which would from now on be perpetuated solely in official versions of the story.

I won't say here how the skein came untangled; how, starting with the first thread, we were able to stitch together a nearly definitive overview of what happened; how, starting from just one character in the drama, we were able to find almost all the rest. I would rather share the results we have obtained.

Over the course of the four months that this search has already lasted, I have spoken with the three survivors of the tragedy who are still at large in the country. I was the first journalist to reach all of them. I found and interviewed the third one even before anyone in the justice system did. I have figured out the names of three more survivors who are now in Bolivia, and the name of a seventh who is locked up in Olmos. I have stated and proven that a man who was recorded as dead in the official list of those executed (Reinaldo Benavídez), whose death certificate even exists, is perfectly safe and unharmed. Inversely, I was sorry to ascertain that another man (Mario Brión), who did not appear on that list and whom I harbored the hope of finding alive at one point, was killed by the firing squad.

I have spoken to witnesses who were there at every one of the stages that ended in the massacre. Some of the physical evidence in my possession has not yet reached its rightful recipient. I have obtained stenographic transcriptions of the Province Advisory Board's secret sessions in which the issue was discussed. I have spoken to the families of the victims and I have cultivated direct or indirect relationships with conspirators, political refugees and fugitives, alleged informers, and anonymous heroes. I can also say with confidence that I have always taken the greatest precautions to protect my informants, insofar as my obligation as a journalist has allowed. Throughout this entire process, I have benefited from the invaluable help of the person to whom this book is dedicated.

Of course, I am not trying to suggest that I was the first to arrive everywhere. I know that a legal investigation was carried out, and although I was not entirely privy to its conclusions, I have every reason to believe that it was very serous, efficient, and expeditious, up until the jurisdictional conflict got in the way. I hope that when the results of the case are made public—if they ever are—they can fill the unavoidable gaps in my story.

Some of the material gathered here appeared in the weekly publication
Revolución Nacional
, which was run by Dr. Cerruti Costa. I hope Dr. Cerruti will not think me ungrateful if I say that my having brought this material to him does not imply a preference or sympathy for his particular brand of politics. As a journalist, I am not that interested in politics. For me, it was a decision I was forced to make, which is not to say that I regret it. My first story about Juan Carlos Livraga had already been rejected by the various weeklies I had approached when Dr. Cerruti found the courage to publish it and use it as a launch pad for the series of stories and coverage about the executions that followed.

The suspicions that I anticipate raising oblige me to state that I am not a Peronist, have never been one, and do not have the intention of becoming one. If I were a Peronist, I would say so. I don't think that saying it would jeopardize my comfort or peace of mind more than this publication already does.

I am also no longer a supporter of the revolution that, like so many others, I believed was going to Liberate us.

I know perfectly well, however, that under Peronism I would not have been able to publish a book like this or the news articles that preceded it, or to even attempt to investigate police killings that were also taking place at the time. That's the little we have gained.

Most of us journalists and writers have come to consider Peronism our enemy in the last decade. And with very good reason. But there is something we should have realized: you cannot conquer the enemy without first understanding it.

In recent months, I've had to arrange first contact with these terrible beings—Peronists—who stir up newspaper headlines. And I have come to the conclusion (so banal that I am shocked more people don't share it) that, as mistaken as they may be, they are human beings and ought to be treated as such. Mainly, they should not be given reasons to keep following the wrong path. Executions, persecutions, and torture are reasons powerful enough to turn the wrong path into the right one at a certain point.

Most of all, I fear the moment when, humiliated and offended, they begin to be right. Right in a dogmatic way—in addition to being right in the sentimental or humane way that is already working in their favor and is, ultimately, where their dogmatism comes from in the first place. This moment is imminent; it will be unavoidable if this misguided politics of revenge, directed more at the working class than at anyone else, continues. Until now, every act of repression against Peronism has only worked to strengthen the case for it. That is not just regrettable: it is idiotic.

I will say again that this book does not have a political agenda, and its intention is certainly not to stir up completely futile hatreds. It is one among many other books that has a social agenda: to do away—in the short- or long-term—with murderers who have gone unpunished, with torturers, with
picana
“technicians” who remain in their posts despite changes in the government, with this posse of armed criminals dressed in uniform.

If people ask me why I have decided to speak now after keeping quiet as a journalist when others reported on government crimes under Peronism—though I never wrote a single signed or unsigned word in praise of Peronism, I was also never confronted with this level of atrocity—I will say with complete honesty: I have learned my lesson. But now my teachers are the ones keeping quiet. I have witnessed the willful silence of all the “serious press” in the face of this heinous massacre for many months, and I have felt ashamed.

People will also say that the José León Suárez execution was an isolated affair of rather minor importance. I believe the opposite. It was the perfect culmination of an entire system. It was one case among many; the clearest, not the most barbaric. I have learned things that are difficult to keep quiet about, but that would be unbearable to say right now. An excess of truth can madden and annihilate the moral conscience of a people. One day the complete, tragic story of the June killings will be written. That's when the shock will travel beyond our national borders.

Meanwhile, the Chief of Police who gave the order for this particular massacre is still in office.

This means that the battle against what he represents is ongoing. And I have the strong conviction that the final outcome of this battle will have an influence on the nature of our repressive systems in years to come; it will decide whether we live like civilized individuals or like Hottentots.