Foreword by Michael Greenberg
Afterword by Ricardo Piglia
Translated by Daniella Gitlin
Available for the first time in English: a game-changing classic of true crime from Argentina, 1957, by a Latin American literary hero whose courage to find the truth eventually condemned him to death.
Buenos Aires, 1956. Argentina has just lost its charismatic president Juan Perón in a military coup, and terror reigns across the land. June 1956: 18 people are reported dead in a "secret" execution, a failed uprising. December 1956: high school dropout, sometime journalist, detective story writer, unpoliticized chess aficionado Rodolfo Walsh learns by chance that one of the executed civilians is alive. He hears that there may be more than one survivor. Walsh hears an unbelievable story and believes it on the spot. And right there, the monumental classic Operation Massacre is born.
Walsh made it his mission to find not only the survivors but widows, orphans, conspirators, political refugees, fugitives, alleged informers, and anonymous heroes, in order to find out what happened that night, sending him on a journey that took over the rest of his life.
Originally published in 1957, Operation Massacre thoroughly and breathlessly recounts the night of the execution and its fallout.
Appendices include Walsh's famous “Open Letter from a Writer to the Military Junta,” which he sent to the country's major newspapers one day before he was kidnapped and killed in 1977.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
c o n t e n t s
Introduction xiii
Translator’s Note xxiii
Prologue 1
part one: the people 9
1. Carranza 11
2. Garibotti 14
3. Mr. Horacio 17
4. Giunta 20
5. Díaz: Two Snapshots 21
6. Lizaso 22
7. Warnings and Premonitions 24
8. Gavino 25
9. Explanations in an Embassy 26
10. Mario 28
11. “The Executed Man Who Lives” 30
12.“I’m Going to Work . . .” 32
13. The Unknowns 34
part two: the events 37
14. Where is Tanco? 39
15. Valle’s Rebellion 43
16. “Watch Out, They Could Execute You . . .” 47
17. “Cheer Up” 50
18. Calm and Confident 53
19. Make No Mistake . . . 55
20. Execute Them! 59
21. He Felt He was Committing a Sin . . . 60
22. The End of the Journey 65
23. The Slaughter 67
24. Time Stands Still 70
25. The End of a Long Night 73
26. The Ministry of Fear 77
27. An Image in the Night 79
28. “They’re Taking You Away” 82
29. A Dead Man Seeks Asylum 86
30. The Telegram Guerrilla 92
31. The Rest is Silence . . . 96
part three: the evidence 101
32. The Ghosts 103
33. Fernández Suárez Confesses 106
34. The Livraga File 110
35. Blind Justice 141
36. Epilogue 146
37. Aramburu and the Historical Trial 148
appendices 153
Prologue to the Book Edition (from the first edition, July 1957)
Introduction (to the first edition, March 1957) 157
Obligatory Appendix (to the first edition, March 1957) 165
Provisional Epilogue (from the first edition, July 1957) 183
Epilogue (from the second edition, 1964) 187
Portrait of the Dominant Oligarchy (end of the epilogue to the third edition, 1969) 191
Operation in the Movies 193
Open Letter from a Writer to the Military Junta 197
Notes 211
Glossary 217
Afterword 221
About the Author 231
About the Translator 233
About Seven Stories Press 235
