Operation Massacre(38)

29. A Dead Man Seeks Asylum


            Had Benavídez died? His friends, according to Troxler’s story, had hopes of finding him alive. Those hopes were dashed on the morning of June 12.

            All the newspapers published a communiqué from the government with the official list of “men executed in the region of San Martín.” And Reinaldo Benavídez was on it.

            Benavídez himself must have been the most surprised to find out, seeing how he had survived . . .27

            And yet, the explanation was very simple. It can be found in the blind irresponsibility that, from start to finish, has been behind this secret operation that was labeled as an execution.

            You just have to read the list of men executed in San Martín to understand that the government did not have the slightest idea who its victims were.

            They assumed Benavídez, who had been enjoying a clean bill of health ever since his escape from the garbage dump in José León Suárez, was dead. On the other hand, Brión, who had been killed, was not mentioned at all. They called Lizaso “Crizaso” and Garibotti “Garibotto.”

            It’s hard to believe that they were able to make so many mistakes in a list of barely five names—names that corresponded to five people who were officially executed by the government, no less.

            The odd thing is that none of these macabre mistakes have been corrected, even after I reported them. So, officially, Benavídez is still dead. Officially, the government never had anything to do with Mario Brión.

            But on November 4, 1956, the newspapers reported that the previous day, Reinaldo Benavídez had gone into exile in Bolivia.

            Yes, the very same.

            The “dead man.”

            ***

            The families of the victims were not spared any trouble, humiliation, or uncertainty.

            One of his brothers had a feeling that Lizaso was going to meet his tragic end based on things he had heard; he walked from precinct to precinct in search of concrete news. At seven o’clock on the morning of June 12, when the news was already in the papers—and had been announced by Radio Mitre the night before—he went to the San Martín District Police Department. They had the cold-blooded cynicism to tell him that they didn’t know Carlitos and to send him out to the Bureau of Investigation on what they knew was a wild-goose chase. From there he was sent to the Military District. And from there to Campo de Mayo, where the Head of the Military Camp came to speak with him:

            —The only thing I can tell you for sure —he informed him— is that no civilians have been executed here.

            He went to Florida’s Second Precinct, then to the Army Department. No one knew anything. At the Government House, General Quaranta refused to see him.28 Finally an Air Force officer, Major Valés Garbo, took pity on him and, with a few booming commands over the phone, succeeded in getting the police thugs to let go of the innocent kick that they were getting out of all this.

            ***

            In Florida on the night of the eleventh, a police squad went to Vicente Rodríguez’s house to retrieve the murdered dockworker’s ID booklet. His wife, who still did not know anything, received a summons from the Department on the twelfth for the following day.

            At the District Police Department, they made her wait for an hour before an officer tended to her. She had not read the papers. She asked again about her husband, asked if he was in jail . . . That’s when the officer looked her up and down.

            —Are you illiterate? —he asked disdainfully.

            Let it be noted: when tormenting a poor woman, there are advantages that literacy can offer.