Operation Massacre (14 page)

 

31.
The Rest is Silence . . .

The telegram addressed to Mr. Pedro Livraga, Florida, said:

State of health of your son good in Olmos La Plata. He can be visited on Friday 9 to 11 or between 13 and 17 hrs. Only parents, sons or siblings carrying their appropriate identity papers. Col. Victor Arribau.

It was telegram number
110
, and it had been sent from the Government House at
7
:
30
p.m. and received at
8
:
37
p.m. It was Monday, July
2
,
1956
.

Juan Carlos was still in Moreno. But it was clear already that his fate was being decided by the Pink House and not La Plata Police Headquarters. On Tuesday the third, they transferred him to Olmos. And his parents—who had assumed he was dead—anxiously counted down the days until Friday.

At last they saw him. They found it hard to recognize him: he had lost ten kilos, his face erased by bandages. That said, ever since his arrival at the penitentiary, he had been treated humanely and given appropriate medical attention. His health had actually improved considerably during these few days.

Giunta was also recovering from his anxious depression. At first, he'd been suffering a great deal from being grouped with the ordinary prisoners. That's when he decided to speak with the director of the penitentiary and recount his strange odyssey to him. The director—a kindhearted man who was later replaced—looked pensive.

—Many have come to me with that kind of story —he finally replied.— But they're not always true. If what you're saying is true, we'll see what can be done . . .

He ordered for him to be transferred to the political prisoner block. Giunta felt better there. The prisoners included communist and nationalist militants, union leaders, even a journalist, and with them at least he could talk, even if he wasn't interested in debates about politics or labor.

Afterward, Livraga arrived. Giunta didn't remember him. Juan Carlos, on the other hand, had held onto a crisp image of Livraga. The experience they shared brought them closer together. At first, Livraga had preferred to stay with the ordinary criminals: he still feared for his life and thought he had a greater chance of going unnoticed among them. Later his worries subsided and he asked to be moved to the other block.

Among the prisoners, one La Plata lawyer's name kept coming up: von Kotsch, Esq. They mentioned cases of prisoners who had been set free thanks to his intervention. Máximo von Kotsch, Esq., a thirty-two-year-old attorney actively affiliated with the
Radical Instransigente
Party, did indeed devote his well-known dynamism to the defense of detained union members.
31
Among them were the numerous oil workers tortured by the Province of Buenos Aires Police. Giunta and Livraga asked to speak with him, and von Kotsch, Esq., listened with awe to the story of what happened in the early morning hours of June
10
in the outskirts of José León Suárez. He agreed to defend the two survivors at once and, given the lack of a judicial process—they were at the disposal of the Executive Power—and of any real reasons that might justify their imprisonment, requested that they be set free.

On the night of August
16
,
1956
, the prisoners of the political block were getting ready for bed when they heard a guard's voice order:

—Quiet, people! —and then:— If I call your name, come out with all your things.

A shiver ran through the block. Some would be set free, others would stay. Everyone listened eagerly while those whose names were called gathered their things together in a frenzy.

—. . . Miguel Ángel Giunta . . . —the guard rattled off,— Juan Carlos Livraga . . .

They were the last two on the list. They looked at each other in disbelief. They embraced. Then the same thought occurred to them simultaneously. Maybe it was a ruse to kill them. But there, leaning against a column outside the prisoners' block, was von Kotsch, Esq., waiting for them. He was smiling. Giunta says he will never forget that moment.

That same night, the lawyer took them to La Plata's Police Headquarters to get their release papers approved. In Giunta's box for “Grounds,” there was an expressive line of typed dashes.

There had been, in fact, no grounds for trying to execute him. No grounds for torturing him psychologically to the limits of what a person can endure. No grounds for condemning him to hunger and thirst. No grounds for shackling and handcuffing him. And now, there were no grounds—only by virtue of a simple decree, No.
14
.
975
—for restoring him to the world.

***

Giunta and Livraga owed their freedom and even their lives not only to the efforts of von Kotsch, Esq., but to a happy circumstance. They were not, as they previously thought, the only surviving witnesses of “Operation Massacre.” The Province of Buenos Aires Police had tried to catch the other fugitives and recover all the evidence, mainly the receipts issued by the San Martín District Police Department. If they had accomplished that, it is likely that everything—both people and things—would have disappeared in one final, silent act of carnage. But their attempt had failed and “Operation Massacre,” even without Giunta and Livraga, was going to be widely publicized both here and abroad.

Gavino sought asylum in the Bolivian embassy before the last echoes of the executions had stopped ringing out. He was carrying the receipt with him when he left for that country.

Julio Troxler and Reinaldo Benavídez could not be arrested either. In mid-October, they took refuge in the same embassy, and on November
3
, an airplane took them to La Paz. On October
17
, a tall and dark-skinned man walked calmly to the entrance of the embassy at
500
Corrientes Street. Two policemen dressed as civilians hurtled themselves onto him and even got a hand on him. But they were too late: Juan Carlos Torres, the tenant of the apartment in back, had just escaped Fernández Suárez's clutches and was now on foreign ground. In June
1957
he, too, left for Bolivia.

Mr. Horacio di Chiano was in hiding for four months before returning timidly to his house in Florida. The terrifying experience had left him deeply scarred. They had wanted to kill him at close range. For countless seconds, beneath the headlights of the police van, he had waited for the coup de grâce that never came. He had not committed a crime, but he was on the run. He had lost his job after seventeen years of service and now he was squandering his savings to support his family. He will never understand anything about what happened.

Livraga and Giunta went back to work. Livraga helped his father laying bricks; Giunta returned to his old job.

Sergeant Díaz was not completely spared the fury that was unleashed that night in June. He was held prisoner for many months in Olmos.

In the cemeteries of Boulogne, San Martín, Olivos, and Chacarita, modest crosses serve as reminders of the fallen: Nicolás Carranza, Francisco Garibotti, Vicente Rodríguez, Carlos Lizaso, Mario Brión.

In Montevideo, soon after hearing the news, Mr. Pedro Lizaso, Carlitos's father, passed away. In his final days he was heard repeating, over and over again:

—It's my fault . . . It's my fault . . .

At the end of
1956
, Vicente Damián Rodríguez would have fathered his fourth child. His wife, hopeless and consumed by misery, resigned herself to his loss.

The massacre left sixteen children without fathers: Carranza's six, Garibotti's six, Rodríguez's three, and Brión's one. These little children who, for the most part, were doomed to a life of poverty and resentment, will know one day—they already know—that the “liberating” and “democratic” Argentina of June
1956
was on a par with Nazi hell.

That is where the ledger stands.

In my view, though, what best symbolizes the irresponsibility, the blindness, and the disgrace of “Operation Massacre” is a little piece of paper. A rectangle of official paper, twenty-five centimeters long by fifteen centimeters wide. It is dated several months after June
9
,
1956
, and, after being run by all the local province police stations—including that of the Province of Buenos Aires—it is issued in the name of Miguel Ángel Giunta, the surviving executed man. His name and ID number appear over the background of a white and light-blue-colored shield. Above, it reads: Argentine Republic – Ministry of Interior – Federal Police. And then, in larger letters, four words: “
Certificate of Good Conduct.
”

Footnotes:

 

Part Three

The Evidence

 

32.
The Ghosts

Rodríguez Moreno was an exhausted and bewildered man when, at six o'clock in the morning on June
10
, he informed La Plata Police Headquarters by radio that the order for execution had been carried out. Would he mention that more than half the prisoners had escaped? He opted to keep quiet.

At Headquarters, no one was sleeping. They asked for a list of the executed men. And now Rodríguez Moreno really had no choice but to send the list of the five dead.

—And the others? —bellowed Fernández Suárez.

—They escaped.

We will never know exactly what happened in the Chief of Police's office when the distressed Chief Inspector came in to deliver his report. In a statement before the judge seven months later, Rodríguez Moreno will say that he “was treated severely” by Fernández Suárez.

The Chief of Police's problem is easy to explain, but difficult to solve. He has arrested a dozen men before martial law was instated. He has executed them without trial. And now it turns out that seven of these men are alive.

Judging by what he does next, it is clear that he understands his situation. The first thing he does is scatter the killers and the witnesses. He sends Rodríguez Moreno and Cuello to the Mar del Plata District Police Department, and later he will send Commissioner De Paula (who saw Livraga in Moreno) to the precinct in Bernal.

On June
12
, the papers publish a list—provided by the national government—of five “men executed in the region of San Martín,” with the mistakes that I already noted. The report does not say who arrested them, who ordered for them to be killed and why; it does not so much as allude to the escape of the other seven. An interesting precaution.

But Fernández Suárez feels compelled to talk. There are some who ask why he was not at Headquarters when the attack began, why he left the building undefended, why he only came back when the situation was resolved. Some will suggest that the Chief of Police was hedging his bets that night and that the executions he later ordered were his alibi. He brings in the press and, according to the June
11
and
12
La Plata newspapers, explains to them:

“It was only by fortunate coincidence that I happened to be outside the Department during the uprising. During the emergency, I had traveled to the town of Moreno, where the accidental explosion of a bomb led us to discover a house belonging to the engineer Sarrabayrouse, who was affiliated with the Peronist party. We confiscated thirty-one high-powered time bombs from his arsenal. I was in the middle of this operation on Saturday when I was informed that a secret meeting that included General Tanco had taken place in a house in Vicente López.

“The operation led to the arrest of fourteen individuals, but the aforementioned member of the military was not apprehended.
At
11
:
00
p.m., when I was in that house
, I found out about the revolt at the Mechanics School and in Santa Rosa.”

Not a word about the final destination of these individuals. Who would connect the dots between a group of “men executed in the region of San Martín” and an apartment in Vicente López?

And yet, Fernández Suárez has already given himself away. Because the crucial thing that he says here before anyone has even accused him of anything is that he arrested these individuals at
11
:
00
p.m.
An hour and a half before martial law was instated
.

It looks like Fernández Suárez will be able to sleep soundly. For nearly four months, no one asks him for any explanations.

But when the bomb explodes, it's not two thousand kilometers away, it's not across a border that has already been opened and closed for three survivors.

It's in the Chief of Police's very office.

At the start of October
1956
, Naval Information Services inform him, confidentially, that one of his own men has denounced him.

Fernández Suárez does not need to walk ten paces to find the culprit. It is Jorge Doglia, Esq., head of the Police Judicial Division.

—The only case during my tenure —F. S. will later say, deeply dejected— of a man from the street becoming a chief inspector.

This is true. For the police, Doglia is a “man from the street,” just like Fernández Suárez, who appointed him. A man genuinely committed to civil rights and liberties (thirty-one years of age, a
Radical Intransigente
at the time), Doglia the lawyer has taken that fleeting slogan from '
55
seriously: “The Rule of Law.” But right after he assumes his post, he learns that the prisoners giving him their statements complain of torture and bear traces of their punishment. He brings the problem to Fernández Suárez, who first pretends to be shocked and later mocks him openly.

The he goes to the second-in-command, Captain Ambroggio, and shows him photos of the prisoners who, by the look of it, have been whipped with wires. The second-in-command looks at the photos with a critical eye.

—That's not wire —he explains.— That's rubber.

Now Doglia knows what to expect. The problem is systemic, so the only thing he can do is document it. In August or September he meets Livraga. Then he goes to Naval Information Services and all his cards are revealed.

There is a heated exchange between Doglia and the Chief of Police. Fernández Suárez openly threatens him. On the tenth of October, Doglia presents his indictment again, this time before the Governance Ministry of the Province.

Doglia's indictment has two parts to it: the first refers to the system of torture; the second, to the illegal execution of Livraga. On this point, Doglia cannot know more than what Livraga himself tells him, which is that they wanted to execute him and a bunch of other people, the majority of whom he did not know by name, and that he and Giunta escaped.

Fernández Suárez strikes back by accusing Doglia of “having gone to an organization outside the department to report acts committed in the heart of the police department.” He fabricates a shameful allegation with the support of the Governance Ministry and the Attorney General, Dr. Alconada Aramburú. On January
18
,
1957
, Doglia's name will appear in the papers, flanked on one side by the name of a policeman who was a drunk, and on the other by the name of a policeman who had committed acts of torture. All three of them were removed from their offices “for ethical reasons.”

But Doglia spoke to Eduardo Schaposnik, the socialist representative for the Advisory Board, and at the beginning of December, in a secret session, the charges are made again, this time from Schaposnik's lips.

On December
14
, it is Livraga himself who appears in court to sue “whoever was responsible” for attempted homicide and damages.

Fernández Suárez starts seeing ghosts. On December
18
, in a fit of courage, he appears in front of the Advisory Board to rebut Schaposnik.