Operation Massacre(68)
Of course, I am not trying to suggest that I was the first to arrive everywhere. I know that a legal investigation was carried out, and although I was not entirely privy to its conclusions, I have every reason to believe that it was very serous, efficient, and expeditious, up until the jurisdictional conflict got in the way. I hope that when the results of the case are made public—if they ever are—they can fill the unavoidable gaps in my story.
Some of the material gathered here appeared in the weekly publication Revolución Nacional, which was run by Dr. Cerruti Costa. I hope Dr. Cerruti will not think me ungrateful if I say that my having brought this material to him does not imply a preference or sympathy for his particular brand of politics. As a journalist, I am not that interested in politics. For me, it was a decision I was forced to make, which is not to say that I regret it. My first story about Juan Carlos Livraga had already been rejected by the various weeklies I had approached when Dr. Cerruti found the courage to publish it and use it as a launch pad for the series of stories and coverage about the executions that followed.
The suspicions that I anticipate raising oblige me to state that I am not a Peronist, have never been one, and do not have the intention of becoming one. If I were a Peronist, I would say so. I don’t think that saying it would jeopardize my comfort or peace of mind more than this publication already does.
I am also no longer a supporter of the revolution that, like so many others, I believed was going to Liberate us.
I know perfectly well, however, that under Peronism I would not have been able to publish a book like this or the news articles that preceded it, or to even attempt to investigate police killings that were also taking place at the time. That’s the little we have gained.
Most of us journalists and writers have come to consider Peronism our enemy in the last decade. And with very good reason. But there is something we should have realized: you cannot conquer the enemy without first understanding it.
In recent months, I’ve had to arrange first contact with these terrible beings—Peronists—who stir up newspaper headlines. And I have come to the conclusion (so banal that I am shocked more people don’t share it) that, as mistaken as they may be, they are human beings and ought to be treated as such. Mainly, they should not be given reasons to keep following the wrong path. Executions, persecutions, and torture are reasons powerful enough to turn the wrong path into the right one at a certain point.
Most of all, I fear the moment when, humiliated and offended, they begin to be right. Right in a dogmatic way—in addition to being right in the sentimental or humane way that is already working in their favor and is, ultimately, where their dogmatism comes from in the first place. This moment is imminent; it will be unavoidable if this misguided politics of revenge, directed more at the working class than at anyone else, continues. Until now, every act of repression against Peronism has only worked to strengthen the case for it. That is not just regrettable: it is idiotic.
I will say again that this book does not have a political agenda, and its intention is certainly not to stir up completely futile hatreds. It is one among many other books that has a social agenda: to do away—in the short- or long-term—with murderers who have gone unpunished, with torturers, with picana “technicians” who remain in their posts despite changes in the government, with this posse of armed criminals dressed in uniform.
If people ask me why I have decided to speak now after keeping quiet as a journalist when others reported on government crimes under Peronism—though I never wrote a single signed or unsigned word in praise of Peronism, I was also never confronted with this level of atrocity—I will say with complete honesty: I have learned my lesson. But now my teachers are the ones keeping quiet. I have witnessed the willful silence of all the “serious press” in the face of this heinous massacre for many months, and I have felt ashamed.
People will also say that the José León Suárez execution was an isolated affair of rather minor importance. I believe the opposite. It was the perfect culmination of an entire system. It was one case among many; the clearest, not the most barbaric. I have learned things that are difficult to keep quiet about, but that would be unbearable to say right now. An excess of truth can madden and annihilate the moral conscience of a people. One day the complete, tragic story of the June killings will be written. That’s when the shock will travel beyond our national borders.