Read Operation Massacre Online
Authors: Rodolfo Walsh,translation by Daniella Gitlin,foreword by Michael Greenberg,afterwood by Ricardo Piglia
Tags: #Argentina, #Juan Peron, #Peronist, #true crime, #execution, #disappeared, #uprising, #secret, #Gitlin, #latin america, #history, #military coup, #Open Letter to the Military Junta, #montoneros
The results of these policies have been devastating. During this first year of government, consumption of food has decreased by
40
percent, consumption of clothing by more than
50
percent, and the consumption of medicine is practically at zero among the lower class. There are already regions in Greater Buenos Aires where the infant mortality rate is above
30
percent, a figure which places us on par with Rhodesia, Dahomey, or the Guayanas. The incidence of diseases like Summer Diarrhea, parasitosis, and even rabies has climbed to meet world records and has even surpassed them. As if these were desirable and sought-after goals, you have reduced the public health budget to less than a third of military spending, shutting down even the free hospitals while hundreds of doctors, medical professionals, and technicians join the exodus provoked by terror, low wages, or “rationalization.”
You only have to walk around Greater Buenos Aires for a few hours before quickly realizing that these policies are turning it into a slum with ten million inhabitants. Cities in semi-darkness; entire neighborhoods with no running water because the monopolies rob them of their groundwater tables; thousands of blocks turned into one big pothole because you only pave military neighborhoods and decorate the Plaza de Mayo; the biggest river in the world is contaminated in all of its beaches because Minister MartÃnez de Hoz's associates are sloughing their industrial waste into it, and the only government measure you have taken is to ban people from bathing.
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 investmentâthese 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 dollarsâthe equivalent of half of Argentina's exportsâhave 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 principalâwhile military wages have secretly increased by
120
percent since Februaryâproves 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 Juntaâwhich follow the formula of the International Monetary Fund that has been applied indiscriminately to Zaire and Chile, to Uruguay and Indonesiaârecognize 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 MartÃnez 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 MartÃnez 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 basisâit 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 propagandaâa distorted reflection of the evil acts being committedâwere 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.
Â
Rodolfo Walsh. - I.D.
2
845022
Buenos Aires, March
24
,
1977
Footnotes:
51
Walsh 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.]
52
DG: Walsh's younger daughter, MarÃa 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”).
53
DG: MarÃa Estela (“Isabel” or “Isabelita”) MartÃnez 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.
54
In 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.
55
The 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.”
56
Cadena Informativa
, message No.
4
, February
1977
.
57
A 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 Ãngel 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.”
58
During 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.
59
Letter from IsaÃas Zanotti, circulated by ANCLA, the Clandestine 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.
)
60
A “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.
61
José López Rega was appointed Minister of Social Welfare in 1973 under Perón; after Perón's death, López Rega became the heart of Isabel MartÃnez de Perón's political program. The Triple A (Argentine Anticommunist Allianceâ
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 MartÃnez 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.
62
Foreign 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.”
63
General 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 MartÃnez's Minister of Interior and former Chief of Police, accused him of “faking” his kidnapping.
64
DG: This Argentine death squad was similar in nature to López Rega's
Triple A
and was responsible for hundreds of deaths during the 1970s.
65
DG: José Alfredo MartÃnez 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.
66
Lieutenant 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
.
67
Swiss Banks Union data from June
1976
. The situation grew even worse afterward.
68
ClarÃn
newspaper.
69
Among 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.
70
DG: MartÃnez 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 (“oligarquÃa 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.
71
Prensa Libre
, December
16
,
1976
.