TERROR AND GREED IN ARGENTINA

...The widest river in the world, the Rio de la Plata, has been polluted along all its banks because associates of Minister Martinez de Hoz pour their industrial wastes into it...

...The corpses of some have been recovered...

...in all instances, what you call successes are in fact blunders, what you acknowledge as blunders are crimes, and what you pass over in silence are disasters and calamities...

...You have reached the extreme of absolute, intemporal, almost metaphysical torture, inasmuch as the initial objective—to obtain information— gradually fades in the sick minds of the torturers and gives way to a desire to pulverize the very stuff of humanity, to annihilate it, rob it of the dignity 2 The Peronist leader Jorge Lizaso was flayed alive, the former Radical party deputy Mario Amaya was bludgeoned to death, and former Deputy Muniz Barreto's neck was broken with a single blow...

...In thousands of other cases of disappearances, the habeas-corpus request has not even been presented, either because the families of the victims know in advance that to do so is futile or because they have not found a lawyer who could act for them— the 50 or 60 qualified members of the bar having been arrested in their turn...

...The letter circulated clandestinely...

...an annual inflation rate of 400 percent...

...Since the author's arrest became known, numerous appeals have been addressed to the junta, urging that Walsh be set free or, at least, that he not be executed...

...Such illnesses as summer diarrhea, parasitic diseases, and rabies are on a par with or even exceed the worst world records...

...To the elimination of any temporal boundaries on torture must be added the abolition of any limits In 1977, the military junta began to publish incomplete lists of persons newly detained and of those "set free," the latter being actually accused who are no longer "at the disposition of the executive power" but who, for all that, remain in prison...

...forty at the time of the New Year's massacre that followed on Colonel Castellanos's death...

...8 The results of this policy have been lightninglike...

...From the newspaper Clarin...

...Such a policy could be imposed—temporarily, at best—only by suppressing political parties, putting the trade unions under military control, muzzling the press, and instituting the most profound system of terror that Argentine society has ever known...

...117 number of cases have come to light, either because they have concerned neighboring countries, or because the genocide involved prominent people, or because the killings aroused horror even among your own troops.5 Twenty-five mutilated bodies were washed up on the coast of Uruguay between March and October 1976—a small part of the "cargoes" of torture victims taken to the Navy's School of Mechanics and then thrown into the Rio de la Plata by your warships...

...4 An exact account appears in the letter sent to the Bishop of Cordoba, Monseignor Primatesta, by inmates of the prison where accused persons are confined: "On May 17th, six comrades, on the pretext that they were to be taken to the infirmary, were removed from the prison and shot...

...Therefore, you did not only annul the transitional mandate of Isabel Martinez de Peron, but also the possibility of a democratic process through which the people would have remedied the evils that you have perpetuated and aggravated since...

...thirty after the attack on the Ministry of Defense...

...When workers have tried to protest, you called them "subversives...

...A yearlong projection yields the figure of 1,500 victims...

...entire sections are without water because monopolistic industries pollute the underground water levels...

...If a massive propaganda campaign—the deformed reflection of these countless crimes—did not claim that the junta is seeking peace, that General Videla is defending human rights, and that Admiral Massera respects human life, it would be possible to ask the Commanders-in-Chief of the three branches of the armed services to reflect for a moment on the abyss toward which they are leading the country on the pretext of eliminating the guerrillas...

...Twelve hundred executions in all, carried out in the course of 300 so-called combats in which not one wounded man was counted in the antigovernment groups, and not one fatality among the forces under your command...

...As for medicines, they have practically vanished from the budget of the poor...

...This is how General Benjamin Menendez, commander-in-chief of the Land Army Third Corps (Cordoba) won his laurels well before March 24, 1976 with the assassination of Marcos Osatinsky...

...you have closed the free hospitals at a time when hundreds of doctors and technicians are taking to the road of exile, driven by fear or low salaries or so-called rational dismissals...

...On March 24, 1976, you overthrew a government of which you were part, and to whose unpopularity you had contributed as executors of its repressive policies...

...That program continues to be the objective expression of the popular will and the only possible import of the "national being" you so often invoke...

...they serve only to forestall possible international reaction to what are in effect massacres...

...The hostages you take are "guilty" of a collective offense (the very notion of which is rejected by every system of civilized justice), and are helpless to change the course of a policy that has led to the actions for which they are arrested...

...according to the autopsy report, his body showed "injuries in the anal area and visible fractures...

...It's enough to spend a few hours walking about in Buenos Aires to verify with what speed this policy is transforming the city into a vast shantytown of 10 million inhabitants...

...A plausible overall estimate of the junta's victims is 600 killed in combat...

...kilometers of streets have been transformed into sloughs because you keep up only the military sectors of town, just as you decorate only the Plaza de Mayo...

...Sgadurra had been tortured to the point where he could no longer stand, for he was suffering from multiple fractures of the lower legs...

...As for military salaries, starting in February 1977, they were secretly increased by 120 percent...

...they devolve, in fact, from the policy that you map out among your general staffs, that you discuss during your Cabinet meetings, that you impose in your capacity as commanders of the three branches of the armed forces, and that you sanction in your capacity as members of the governing junta...

...In certain zones of greater Buenos Aires, infant mortality exceeds 30 percent, a figure that brings us down to the level of Rhodesia, Dahomey, or the Guaianas...

...In the course of the first year under the present government, food consumption decreased by 40 percent...

...It is in the economic policy of your government that one must seek not only the origin of your crimes but an even greater atrocity inflicted on millions of human beings: planned poverty...

...The rack, the wheel, the saw, and the flaying of medieval inquisitors have made their reappearance in victims' testimony, together with the electrified goad (picana), the acetylene torch, and bain Jorce 2 The extermination of guerrilla groups is, according to you, the end that justifies all the means to which you have recourse...

...4, February 1977...

...Every 20 minutes, they opened the door to tell me that they were going to make mincemeat of me with the electric saw one could hear buzzing continually...

...Such stereotyped phrases lifted from a shopworn scenario are obviously not intended to convince anyone...

...118 of the government are atrophying and threatening to collapse from anemia pure and simple, only one continues to grow and to acquire an ever increasing degree of automony: 1.8 billion dollars—the equivalent of half the value of the country's exports—was allocated in 1977 to the budget of the Department of Defense and Security...

...you have kidnapped entire 5 According to the newspapers, 63 corpses were discovered in the early days of the military regime...

...To top this— as if you were knowingly pursuing such goals—you have cut the public-health budget to less than onethird of military expenditures...

...The junta's policy, which is dictated by the International Monetary Fund according to a formula applied indiscriminately to Zaire, Chile, Uruguay, or Indochina, has as its sole beneficiaries the old land-owning oligarchy, the new oligarchy of speculators, and a group of international monopolies that includes, at the head of the list, ITT, Esso, the big automobile companies, U.S...

...You chose the opposite path, relying on the ideas and interests of minorities that paralyze the development of productive forces, exploit the people, dislocate the nation...

...That government was to have ended its term in office followed by elections that were to be held nine months later...

...In the Federal Police, 4,000 new jobs were created and 1,200 more in the Police of the Province of Buenos Aires, at salaries double that of a worker and three times that of a school principal...

...The military secrecy you claim to be necessary for the conduct of investigations has (continued on page 116) TERROR AND GREED IN ARGENTINA transformed the majority of arrests into kidnappings and authorized unlimited torture and summary executions.' In the course of this last year, more than 7,000 habeas-corpus appeals have been rejected...

...Reprinted, with permission, from Esprit, September 1977...

...Rodolfo Walsh still is in prison...

...Seventy people were shot after a bomb exploded in Federal Security headquarters...

...This impression is confirmed by reading a press report in clandestine circulation revealing that between December 18, 1976 and February 3, 1977 government forces recorded 23 dead and 40 wounded in 40 real armed encounters, whereas guerrilla units counted 63 dead and not one wounded...

...It was announced later that they had been shot down during an 'attempted escape...

...continued from page 2) on the methods employed...

...One has reverted to the days when victims' limbs and organs were directly attacked—but this time by surgical and pharmacological means that earlier executioners did not have at their disposal...

...As for the abstract goals of the economy, with which you like to regale the "nation," you have scarcely been more fortunate...

...Press censorship, the persecution of intellectuals, the search of my home, the assassination of my dearest friends, and the loss of a daughter who died fighting you—these are a few of the facts that oblige me to resort to this form of clandestine expression, after having...

...6 These crimes, which revolt the conscience of the civilized world, constitute only a minimal part of the sufferings and the attacks on human rights that you inflict on the Argentine people...

...116 that the torturers themselves have lost...

...A decline of nearly 3 percent in the GNP...

...a foreign-trade deficit soaring to 600 dollars per inhabitant...

...a decrease of 13 percent in domestic capital investments—here again are some world records, the strange fruits of cold calculation and total incompetence...

...Then, after the coup d'etat, with the death of Hugo Vaca Narvaja and 50 others held in prison, Menendez simply resorted to various "applications" of the "escape law," which he carried out without pity and later talked about without shame.' The murder of Dardo Cabo, arrested in April, 1975, and shot on January 6, 1977, together with seven other prisoners in the zone of the First Army Corps (commanded by General Suarez Mason), shows evidentially that these executions are not "blots" on the record attributable to the "outbursts" of a few hallucinating centurions...

...total: 4,000...

...the only measure you have taken with regard to this has been to forbid people to bathe in the river...

...Among them, a 15-year-old boy, Floreal Avellaneda, was recovered with his hands and feet bound...

...A woman who survived torture states: "Picana on my arms, hands, thighs, and near my mouth every time I wept or prayed...

...In the main, they are shop stewards, intellectuals, relatives of guerrillas, unarmed opponents of your government, and even mere suspects who are killed in order to strike a balance in losses, in line with that bizarre doctrine of the body count that was used by the Nazis in Europe and by the invaders of Vietnam...

...Translated, Jrom the French, by ADRIENNE FOULKE...

...Although illegitimate in its origins, your government could have won legitimation by reviving the program that 80 percent of the Argentine people approved in the 1973 elections...

...the others have never been seen again...

...Since you forbade the release of information about the discovery of corpses, nearly 3,000 people have been secretly massacred...

...over a period of almost 30 years as writer and journalist, stated my opinions publicly...

...Steel, and Siemens, to which Martinez de Hoz and the members of his Cabinet have close ties...

...Now 15,000 persons have disappeared, 10,000 are imprisoned, 4,000 are dead, and tens of thousands have been condemned to exile: these are figures that bluntly bespeak this terror...

...committees of union representatives...

...At a time when all creative and protective organs H Among the labor leaders who have been illegally confined are Mario Aguirre, of the Public Administration Union...

...Once the prisons were filled, you set up concentration camps in major garrisons throughout the country, to which no judge, no lawyer, no journalist, no international observer is allowed access...

...The military secrecy surrounding the names of thousands of prisoners creates the conditions necessary for their torture and eventual execution...

...In the light of heinous crimes such as these, the definition of war given by one of your military leaders assumes its full meaning: "The fight we are leading recognizes no moral or natural limit...

...These are the reflections that, on this first anniversary of their baneful government, I have wanted to put before the members of the junta, with no hope of being heeded—rather with the certainty of being harried, but faithful nonetheless to the pledge I made long long ago: to bear witness in difficult times...

...It is an illusory elimination, for even if the last of the guerrillas were struck down, the war would only begin anew in new forms: the causes that have sparked the resistance of the Argentine people for more than 20 years would not disappear, indeed would be aggravated by the memory of the massacres and atrocities that have been committed...

...In this way, you have abolished all temporal limits on torture...

...Since the detained person does not "exist," it is impossible to bring him before a judge within ten days following his arrest, as is required by a law heretofore respected in the darkest repressive periods of earlier dictatorships...

...Those in high places know quite well that it is a matter of reprisals carried out on the very terrain where guerrillas have been active...

...However, a certain 3 Cadena Informativa, Message No...

...Extremists" have been caught in the act of handing out leaflets in open country or painting slogans on pavements or piling themselves ten at a time into a car that then catches fire...

...nineteen after the explosion that destroyed the central police offices in Ciudadela...

...it is beyond good and evil...

...fifty-five shot after the attack on the Police Department in La Plata...

...All this goes to prove that there is no such thing as a freeze on wages, nor is there any unemployment in the kingdom of torture and death—the one sector of the national work scene where the GNP is still rising, and where the quotation on a liquidated guerrilla goes up-more rapidly than that on the dollar...

...For reasons of space we have cut Walsh's letter, omitting detailed illustrative material...

...3 More than 100 prisoners have likewise been struck down during "escape attempts...

...One year after the military junta seized power in Argentina the writer Rodolfo Walsh addressed an Open Letter to the members of its ruling junta: General Jorge Rafael Videla, Admiral Emilio Massera, and Brigadier General Orlando Agosti...

...Oscar Smith, Light and Power Union...

...the Third Corps of the Land Army states that they were killed during an 'attempted escape.' On May 29th, Jose Pucheta and Carlos Sgadurra were removed from prison...

...The military junta's refusal to publish the names of arrested persons serves only to conceal the execution of hostages in uninhabited areas or at dawn or on the pretext of fictitious "armed fights" or imaginary "attempts to escape...

...The first anniversary of the military junta has provided the occasion for official speeches and statements in which a balance sheet of governmental action has been essayed...

...fi According to the June 12, 1976 issue of the newspaper La Razon, Lieutenant-Colonel Hugo Pascarelli, Commander of the First Artillery Group in Ciudadela, was responsible for 33 executions between January 5 and February 3, 1977...

...Within one year, you have reduced workers' salaries by 40 percent...

...purchases of clothing dropped by more than 50 percent...

...Kidnapping and murder of union leaders have affected particularly the metallurgical and naval shipyard unions...

...The very next day—March 25, 1977—Rodolfo Walsh was taken into custody, and three armored Army trucks destroyed his home in San Vincente, in the Province of Buenos Aires...

...From just reading military communiques, it seems evident that guerrillas who are wounded or captured in combat are systematically finished off: to report 600 dead from among guerrilla forces in one year, and only 10 to 15 wounded, constitutes a ratio that has never been noted before in even the most bloody conflicts...

...By freezing wages when prices continue to rise, by abolishing every kind of collective bargaining, by forbidding union meetings, by increasing work schedules, by depriving 9 percent of the able-bodied population of jobs,' and by contemplating an increase in the number of unemployed by dismissing some 300,000 more workers, you have pushed labor relations back to what they were at the beginning of the industrial era...

...This figure could be doubled, for since January 1976 information available in newpapers has been incomplete...

...Jorge di Pasquale, Pharmaceutical Union...

...The dignity that you yourselves have lost...

...Some neighborhoods are plunged into half-darkness...

...E DS...

...The version of events supplied by the junta has only one aim: to warn guerrillas and political parties that even "official" political prisoners constitute a kind of "strategic reserve" of hostages of whom military commanders can dispose depending on the course of hostilities, tactical advantage, or a whim of the moment...

...2,000 executed secretly and others, 100...

...1,300 shot...

...The persons involved were Miguel Angel Mosse, Jose Svagusa, Diana Fidelman, Luis Varon, Ricardo Yung, and Eduardo Hernandez...