Let’s return now to Livraga. When this man, already arrested, gets on a bus at 11:30 p.m. on June 9, he is, despite everything, protected by Article 18 of the Constitution, which says that “No inhabitant of the Nation can be punished without a trial governed by the law that was in effect prior to the act that gave rise to the proceedings . . . or deprived of the judges appointed by law before the act for which he is tried.”
What does Livraga do to lose these rights? Nothing. And yet, he loses them, and this is one more of the phases of legal monstrosity validated by the Court’s ruling and by the military “trial”—two stones along the same path because in 1957 you did not need to be a genius to know that Lieutenant Colonel González was not going find Lieutenant Colonel Fernández Suárez guilty.
This, then, is the irremovable stain that soils a government, a justice system, and an army equally:
That the men arrested in Florida were punished, condemned to death without trial; that they were deprived of the judges appointed by law before the act that gave rise to the case, and under law instated subsequent to the act in question; and that there was in fact no act and no justification for any of it.
No amount of finagling will manage to erase the horrific evidence showing that the government of the Liberating Revolution retroactively applied a martial law that was instated on June 10 to men who were arrested on June 9.
And that is not execution. It is murder.
36. Epilogue
One of my concerns upon finding out about this massacre and telling its story while the executioners were still in power was to keep it separate, to the extent possible, from the other executions, whose victims were primarily military personnel. Here was an incident that the Liberating Revolution could not even respond to with sophistries.
This approach forced me to make a specific allegation instead of a historical argument. It meant presenting the Liberating Revolution and its heirs to date with the borderline case of an unjustified atrocity, and asking them a question: Did they acknowledge the atrocity as their own, or did they explicitly disapprove of it? The only way to show that they had not authorized it was to punish those responsible and offer moral and material compensation for the victims. Three editions of this book, about forty published articles, a bill presented to Congress, and countless smaller initiatives have all served to pose the question to five successive governments over the course of twelve years. The response has always been silence. The ruling class that these governments represent supports this act of murder, accepts it as a part of itself, and does not punish anyone for it simply because it does not want to punish itself.
The executions of military personnel in the barracks were, of course, just as barbaric, illegal, and arbitrary as the civilian executions in the garbage dump.
The six men who, following Colonel Yrigoyen’s orders, attempted to establish Valle’s command in Avellaneda, put up no resistance when they were caught. They are executed in the Lanús District Police Department at dawn on June 10.
Colonel Cogorno, the leader of the uprising in La Plata, is executed during the first minutes of June 11 in the Seventh Regiment barracks. The civilian Alberto Abadíe, wounded in the skirmish, is first treated. Then, at nightfall on the twelfth, he is ready for the firing squad, which he has to face in the Bosque de La Plata park.
On June 10 at noon, Colonels Cortínez and Ibazeta, along with five junior officers, are tried at Campo de Mayo. The court, presided over by General Lorio, decides that the case does not warrant the death penalty. The Executive Power completely disregards res judicata and passes Decree 10.364, which condemns six of the seven accused men to death. The order is carried out at 3:40 a.m. on June 11 near an embankment.
At the same time, the four NCOs who had momentarily taken control of the Army Mechanics School are executed there, and the three NCOs of the Palermo Second Regiment who were also allegedly “involved” are executed in the National Penitentiary. Sometime afterward, I spoke to the widow of one of these men—the military band sergeant Luciano Isaías Rojas. She told me that on the night of the uprising, her husband had been sleeping beside her at their home.