Operation Massacre (9 page)

 

17.
“Cheer Up”

12
:
45
a.m. They have let the prisoners off the bus at the District Police Department. They take them down a long corridor and lead them into an office on the left where there are a number of park benches, green ones, that the men start to sit on. The building appears to be under renovation. The walls of the room have been recently painted, and some of the painting materials are still around.

At first they don't pay attention to the prisoners, who are tossing around all kinds of speculations. Livraga sits down next to his friend Rodríguez and the first thing he does is ask:

—Big Guy, are you involved in anything?

Rodríguez shrugs his shoulders.

—I know just as much as you do.

Giunta and Mr. Horacio are perplexed. What intrigues them the most is that question they've heard repeated several times: Where is Tanco?

The three who were picked up on the streets, not at home, are falling to pieces in their explanations and regrets. One tirelessly repeats that he went to have dinner with some friends and on his way home, they grabbed him. Another was standing at the door of his girlfriend's house saying goodnight . . . The night watchman at the piping plant, an elderly man who still has his rubber boots on, is mumbling in an unintelligible Italian.

Mario Brión is thinking about his wife, who doesn't know anything and must be waiting for him: he has never come home so late.

Does Carlitos Lizaso remember that message he left for his girlfriend? “If all goes well tonight . . .”

Garibotti is sorry he listened to his friend Carranza, who is sitting next to him, quiet and dejected. Who knows now when they are going to let them go, maybe at daybreak or at noon the next day
 . . . C
arranza himself is remembering Berta's words: “Turn yourself in, turn yourself in . . .” Well, now he has been turned in. They might let the other guys go, but him . . . As soon as they look at his record, he'll be done for. Maybe he's thinking of that day he ran away from the officers in Tucumán. No one is watching the door and, even though the corridor is long, there is no one in sight. Maybe with a little bit of luck . . . But no, Berta's right. It's time for him to turn himself in and for them to do whatever they want with him. They're not going to kill him, that's for sure, not for some pamphlets and some conversations . . .

Gavino's worried. They're not going to let him go, either, now that they've got him. And he knows very well why they've got him. He'll get a year or two in jail until a new government comes to power and he is granted amnesty. Perhaps they'll send him to the south. Well, maybe it's better this way . . . maybe now they'll let his wife go . . . and not kill him on a night like this. He wonders if the rebellion . . .

Just then an officer appears and, addressing the two or three closest to him, asks:

—Fellas, are you political prisoners?

When he is met with hesitation in response, he adds:

—Cheer up. The rebelli
on broke out and we don't have contact with La Plata anymore.

La Plata is the only place where the fighting is going according to plan. The leader of the uprising, Colonel Cogorno, launches an attack on the Second Division Command and the Police Headquarters throughout the night. The attacking forces include the Seventh Regiment's company, three tanks under Major Pratt's command, and two or three hundred civilians.

The tanks position themselves to face Police Headquarters, but for some inexplicable reason only manage to blast the building two times. There are twenty-three men inside: afterward there will be thirty-five.

The shootout—which involves everything from small arms to heavy machine guns—is extremely violent, but the attackers can't manage to organize a proper assault. Maybe they're waiting for something that never actually happens. What we know for sure is that Colonel Piñeiro, fighting on the inside, makes it through the whole night.

The Second Division Command, two blocks away from Headquarters, is comparatively much more protected: it has about fifty men and a heavy machine gun set up in a dominant strategic position—on Fifty-Fourth Street, between Third and Fourth—so that they can stave off the advancing troops of the Seventh Regiment.

Among the men who are defending the Government with weapons in hand, we will mention one who did not make the papers.

His name is Juan Carlos Longoni. He is (was) a police inspector, a thin, stone-faced guy with a tough look in his eyes, a man of few words. He is laid off during the time of Peronism, but they take him back in
1955
. He comes to be assistant to the head of the Judicial Division, Doglia, Esq. . . .

That night Longoni is asleep at home when he hears the first shots. He gets up and, still dressing himself, steps out to the street. He hails a cab and asks to be taken to the war zone. In the thick of the shooting, the cab driver is so frightened that he faints. Longoni leaves him in Medical Care, goes on alone, and manages to join the Commando Unit. He asks for a gun and a combat position. They hand him a Falcon and let him choose whatever position he wants. He fights all night long.

That is the man that the Chief of Police of the Province will lay off—laid off again!—seven months later for supporting Doglia in his complaints regarding this case—the case of the prisoners who were still awaiting their uncertain fates in the San Martín District Police Department.

 

18.
“Calm and Confident”

1
:
45
a.m. The radio is also on in the office of Chief Inspector Rodolfo Rodríguez Moreno, chief of the San Martín District Police Department. The declaration of martial law has been replayed at
12
:
45
a.m.,
12
:
50
a.m.,
1
:
15
a.m.,
1
:
35
a.m. Now they are broadcasting it again.

About fifteen minutes ago, the Office of the Vice President of the Nation released the Communiqué No.
1
, which, for the first time, lets the country know some details about what is happening.

On behalf of the provisional president —the text reads— let it be known to the people of the Republic that at
11
:
00
p.m. on Saturday, uprisings erupted among some military units in the Province of Buenos Aires.

The Army, the Navy, and the Airforce, with support from the National Gendarmerie, the Coast Guard, and the Police immediately commenced operations to subdue the attempt at rebellion.

The rule of martial law has been decreed in the entire territory of the Republic.

We suggest that the people remain calm and confident in the power and strength of the Liberating Revolution.

Signed: Isaac F. Rojas, Rear-Admiral, Provisional Vice President.

One of the prisoners has asked permission to go to the bathroom; on the way, the guard escorting him lets him in on what's happening.

There is anxiety among the group when this man comes back with news that definitively confirms all the signs, suspicions, and fears that have been accumulating since eleven o'clock the previous night, when they heard the word “revolution” uttered for the first time from the mouth of the Police Chief himself. Gavino looks pale.

—When? —he insists.— When?

—Just now, it sounds like —they reply.

Gavino lets out a sigh of relief. He knows they can't do anything to him. He was arrested before martial law was instated so he couldn't have violated it.

Mario Brión has a terrible feeling.

—Who knows, they could kill us anyway . . .

Everyone looks at him askance. There is a pause. Then several of them talk at once:

—I went to have dinner at some friends' house, and on my way back . . . on my way back . . .

—Is saying goodnight to your girlfriend against the law? I didn't do anything, I don't know anything, they have to let me go . . .

In the impenetrable Italian of the old night watchman, a word stands out now, punctuating his speech at regular intervals, “
revoluzione . . . revoluzione . . .
”

Suddenly two policemen armed with carbines tell everyone to be silent. A change has come over the entire enormous building—it is hardly noticeable, but sinister. The guards' attitude, which until now has been carefree, has turned sour and surly. Voices that were ringing out in the corridor on and off dissolve into occasional echoes. Then, prolonged silences.

Unaware of everything, spilled over a bench, like some great black Neptune, Sergeant Díaz is snoring loudly. His wide thorax expands and collapses at an easy rhythm. Sleep coats his face with an expressionless mask.

The rest begin to look at him with annoyance, then horror.

 

19.
Make No Mistake . . .

2
:
45
a.m. Rodríguez Moreno's got a bad feeling. Why did these poor bastards have to come to him, of all people? And yet, there is some mysterious justification, some nod to destiny in the fact that this particular mission is going to fall to him.

Rodríguez Moreno is an imposing, difficult man with a rocky and troublesome history. Tragedy follows him like a doting dog. Even before
1943
, he was apparently involved in a horrifying event as chief of the Mar del Plata precinct, according to a number of sources. A hobo is brutally beaten in a cell one night and then thrown on a beach, completely naked in the dead of winter. He dies from the cold. They end up prosecuting Rodríguez Moreno and even send him to jail in Dolores. But then he is released. Because he was innocent, say his defenders. Because of political reasons, say his critics. The episode remains murky and forgotten.

And now this. Later, toward the end of
1
956
, 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: