The court ordered the reparation measures that the victims’ families had long sought
Originally published on Global Voices
A house in Greater Buenos Aires where victims were kidnapped during the so-called ‘Operation Massacre.’ Photo by Rodolfo Walsh. Public domain.
On the night of June 9, 1956, a group of men gathered at a house in the Buenos Aires suburb of Florida. While some were merely neighbors and acquaintances listening to a boxing match on the radio, broadcast from the capital’s Luna Park Arena, others were Peronist sympathizers who knew of the possibility of a radio announcement signaling an uprising against the dictatorship that had overthrown President Juan Domingo Perón the previous year.
The plot was foiled before it even began. At around 11:00 pm, armed men raided the premises in search of military official Raúl Tanco, believed to be one of the coup’s orchestrators. All men in the house were subsequently arrested, regardless of who they were. By dawn, five of them had been executed at a landfill in the city of José León Suárez, in the Greater Buenos Aires, and seven others would survive.
Argentine journalist and author Rodolfo Walsh, who had anti-Peronist views at the time, ultimately came to believe this unbelievable story, exposing it in what’s considered the first Spanish-language non-fiction novel, Operation Massacre (1957).
Seventy years on, an Argentine court has declared the José León Suárez executions crimes against humanity. On June 22, this year, Judge Alicia Vence delivered the ruling. The magistrate declared it proven that the highest authorities of the dictatorship led by General Pedro Eugenio Aramburu and Admiral Isaac Francisco Rojas had ordered this operation, assigning accountability to the state security officials Juan Constantino Quaranta, Desiderio Fernández Suárez, and Rodolfo Rodríguez Moreno.
Judge Vence stipulated that, had the perpetrators still been alive today to stand trial, they would have been sentenced to life imprisonment. The court also ordered the reparation measures that the victims’ families had long sought. These include restoring the men’s names and honor, publishing the judgment in national and provincial gazettes, integrating proven historical facts into educational programs, installing commemorative plaques where the raids and executions took place, and creating a memorial site at the José León Suárez landfill.
The victims’ families testified in court for the first time. During the hearings, Berta Carranza, the daughter of the executed Nicolás Carranza, stated, “I want justice served. Even though their killers are no longer here, I want the truth known.”
The 1955 dictatorship
In 1955, a coup d’état known as “Revolución Libertadora” (Liberating Revolution) overthrew Perón. General Aramburu led this dictatorship, which ruled by force, outlawing Peronism by decree, seizing control of trade unions, and imprisoning tens of thousands of activists.
On the night that ended in executions, two generals, Juan José Valle and Raúl Tanco, had hatched a plan to topple the regime. A radio announcement was set to interrupt the boxing match broadcast, triggering an uprising. However, within just a few hours, the rebellion had collapsed, leaving those waiting inside the house oblivious to what was happening elsewhere in the country. Valle was captured and executed three days later.
Upon arriving, the police stormed the premises, shouting: “Where is Tanco?” but nobody knew. Raúl Tanco was nowhere to be found at this Florida house, nor had he ever been. He had sought asylum at the Haitian embassy, where he was later abducted. Nevertheless, police forces took the 12 men into custody.
No one explained what they were accused of, nor did they press any charges. Instead, they were merely bundled into a truck and driven first to the San Martín Regional Police Unit, and ultimately to the José León Suárez landfill.
Nicolás Carranza, Francisco Garibotti, Carlos Alberto Lizaso, Mario Brión, and Vicente Rodríguez were all executed. The other seven men managed to escape, sneaking through the grasslands, injured but alive. One survivor was Juan Carlos Livraga, 24, who, despite being shot, still had his whole life ahead of him. He, therefore, made it his mission to make the full story known.
Rodolfo Walsh, the man who did not forget
Journalist Rodolfo Walsh. Photo: Public domain
Six months after the incident, in a bar in La Plata, the capital of Buenos Aires province, Rodolfo Walsh was playing a game of chess when an acquaintance, Enrique Dillon, said something that stopped him in his tracks: “There’s an executed man who lives.”
Dillon relayed what his cousin, Naval Frigate Lieutenant Jorge Rodolfo Dillon, had told him. The man had been at the San Martín Regional headquarters that night and also overheard Lieutenant Colonel Suárez give the execution order. As there was no news of this and no one was talking about it, Walsh was initially skeptical. However, in the coming days, the words “there’s an executed man who lives” echoed in his mind, prompting him to investigate.
Walsh subsequently spent months tracking down the survivors living in hiding, completely recreating the night of June 9, 1956, through their testimonies and piecing the puzzle together, hour by hour. Using the night’s radio transcripts, he confirmed the operation’s unlawfulness. The martial law that allegedly authorized these executions wasn’t decreed and broadcast until after midnight. Yet, the arrests had occurred before 11:30 pm. Walsh’s investigation was first published as a series of articles before becoming his book Operation Massacre, a foundational piece of Latin American investigative journalism and literary non-fiction. However, the perpetrators retained their official positions, and the state failed to offer the victims and their families any answers.
Walsh also didn’t live to see justice served. Twenty years later, on March 25, 1977, he was abducted and assassinated by another military dictatorship, just a day after releasing his “Open Letter to the Military Junta.”
Wall honoring people killed by firing squad in José Léon Suárez. Photo: Agustín Cassano/Auhtorized use.
The debt of democracy
Juan Carlos Livraga has spent 70 years being “the executed man who lives,” the man Walsh wrote about in his book, and the witness the state never wanted to hear from officially. In June, at 94, he testified in a videoconference from somewhere in the United States and finally heard the ruling he had long sought.
For the first time, Argentina has recognized before the law that, in a Greater Buenos Aires landfill in the early hours of June 10, 1956, the State executed five men without trial, charges, or legal basis, and covered it up for 70 years.
Unlike the families of the disappeared in the 1970s, who formed groups, such as Madres de Plaza de Mayo (Mothers of Plaza de Mayo), Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo), and other human rights organizations, these families stood alone for decades. The time that had elapsed since these crimes were committed posed a real legal obstacle. Declaring the incidents crimes against humanity and rendering them imprescriptible without time limitations ultimately made this trial possible.
Alicia Rodríguez, daughter of Vicente Rodríguez, one of those executed, was 10 when the incidents occurred. After hearing the ruling, Alicia, now 80, told the media: “For us and all other families, the fact these executions have been declared crimes against humanity 70 years on is a major accomplishment. It helps young people learn the truth. I believe this is how we build Truth, Memory, and Justice, so other families don’t have to suffer the same cruelty we did.”