—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:
17 DG: Abbreviation for “Perón Vuelve”—“Perón Returns.”