Meanwhile, the Chief of Police who gave the order for this particular massacre is still in office.
This means that the battle against what he represents is ongoing. And I have the strong conviction that the final outcome of this battle will have an influence on the nature of our repressive systems in years to come; it will decide whether we live like civilized individuals or like Hottentots.
I know the Chief of the Police Department of the Province of Buenos Aires has expressed great curiosity—which I presume remains unsatisfied—about the author of the articles allegedly attacking him. The truth, I must say, is that I had no intention of attacking him personally; I was attacking him only to the extent that he constitutes one of the two faces of Civilization and Barbarism as articulated by a great Argentine one century ago.44 It is precisely this face that needs to disappear, whose disappearance we all need to fight for.
When this book is published with my name on it, the Chief of Police will have no more doubts. I am not revealing my identity like this out of some foolish sense of bravado or defiance. I know perfectly well that in this country a chief of police is powerful, while a journalist—an obscure one to boot—is hardly anything. But I happen to believe, with complete earnestness and conviction, in the right of every citizen to share any truth that he comes to know, however dangerous that truth may be. And I believe in this book, in the impact it can have.
I hope I am not criticized for believing in a book—even if it does happen to be written by me—when there are so many more people believing in machine guns.
Footnotes:
43 Baltasar Gracián was a seventeenth-century Spanish and Jesuit writer and philosopher.
44 Walsh is referring here to the work of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, a nineteenth-century writer and political activist whose most well-known work was Facundo: Civilización y barbarie (1845) (Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism). Written while he was in exile in Chile, Facundo was Sarmiento’s attempt to capture the complexity of Argentina as he saw it through the literary biography of an early nineteenth-century military leader and landowner, Juan Facundo Quiroga. Sarmiento himself was opposed to everything that Quiroga represented. Within the book, Sarmiento provides a survey of the geography, history, and culture of Argentina as well as his own version of what the country ought to look like.
Obligatory Appendix
(to the first edition, March 1957)
Lying as a Profession
The article that I published in Mayoría on July 15, 1957, served as a provisional epilogue to my book. The “provisional” part was not an accident. There were many things I still wanted to say. I preferred to leave them for another time because, first of all, I didn’t want to abuse the space that the magazine had given me; secondly, I didn’t want people to think I gained any pleasure from reporting on the moral wretchedness that prevails over some parts of this country; and thirdly, I hoped that the people whose duty it is to react against this kind of misery would be the ones to do so. This kind of hope, which I held onto for so long, is proof that I am one of the most naïve men ever to set foot on this soil.
Because the reaction came from somewhere else. The Chief of Police of the Province of Buenos Aires, Lieutenant Colonel Fernández Suárez, decided at last to acknowledge receipt of the charges that I made against him. He did so in the most skillful yet clumsy way possible. I will explain the clumsiness later.
First note the skill. The Chief of Police of the Province learns of the decidedly real existence of a band of terrorists. In fulfillment of his duties, he arrests them. He selects a certain “Marcelo” from among them (one of the secondary witnesses I mention in Operation Massacre). Then he chooses a judge, Judge Viglione, who is known as a man of integrity, and grants him the immediate authority to establish whether the prisoners are being treated correctly. And I am completely certain that this, this particular act, was one of the most measured, exemplary, even kind procedures that have ever been carried out in the struggle against terrorism. Judge Viglione agrees to hold a press conference—which is not objectionable in any way—where he offers some details regarding the terrorist plot. But that’s when the ace in the hole is revealed, the key to everything, the bait to hook the gullible. Under the auspices of the esteemed judge, anointed by the presence of the esteemed judge, Lieutenant Colonel Fernández Suárez intervenes and addresses my colleagues, journalists from the big newspapers who believe they have come to hear a story about terrorism. But in fact they have come, without knowing it, so that Fernández Suárez can publicly “lift” the charges that I have brought against him and that are really weighing down on him. And my colleagues, journalists from the big newspapers, they write it all down. They diligently write down what Fernández Suárez has dictated without any one of them thinking to ask any questions or raise any doubts. Let’s take a look at what they write.