Rodolfo Walsh and the Struggle for Argentina

[HuckleB]

Last edited Thu Nov 7, 2013, 04:00 PM - Edit history (2)

http://www.bostonreview.net/world-books-ideas/rodolfo-walsh-and-argentina-operation-massacre

"Rodolfo Walsh was a rare man of words and action, though by all accounts he struggled to reconcile the two. In a relatively short and restless life, he was a masterful chess player, a self-taught sleuth and code breaker, an award-winning fiction author turned investigative reporter, an artist and intellectual who took up a gun against his own government.

As a journalist and activist in post-revolutionary Cuba, Walsh personally intercepted and decrypted the secret CIA telex that gave Fidel Castro advance warning of the Bay of Pigs invasion. Later, in his native Argentina, he was a chief intelligence officer for the Montoneros, leftist urban guerrillas who opposed the country’s ascendant right wing.

Many Montoneros, including Walsh’s daughter Maria Victoria, became casualties of the undeclared and unofficial “Dirty War” that started some time before the military coup of 1976 and ended with the general election of 1983. On March 24, 1977, the one-year anniversary of the coup, Walsh addressed an open letter to the generals and admirals who had seized control of the state, itemizing their crimes and listing their victims: “15,000 missing, 10,000 prisoners, 4,000 dead, tens of thousands in exile.”

...


Those pieces were soon compiled into a book, Operation Massacre, by the tiny press Ediciones Sigla, at considerable risk to the publishers and to the author himself. In his introduction to that first edition Walsh wrote, “I happen to believe . . . in the right of every citizen to share any truth that he comes to know, however dangerous that truth might be.” Almost 60 years later, the book was like an unexploded ordinance, dug up from a forgotten battlefield.

..."


I bought a copy of the book yesterday. Whether it's something you want to put yourself through or not, this piece from Boston Review is worth a few minutes of your time.

[HuckleB]

1. Link Fixed.

[puchi]

2. Great.

Great article, thanks for sharing.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Too important to miss. It IS suprising it wasn't translated to English until now.

So glad to have seen your post today. Thank you.

Can't wait to read this book from someone about whom we never knew nearly enough.

It's tremendous to learn another great person fought against the right-wing dictatorship. Too bad he had to lose his life, and his and his wife's daughter lost hers in the effort. What a deep, deep loss.

[HuckleB]

4. Indeed.

I'd read enough about him to know I wanted to read him, but was astonished on my first visit to BA, that there were no English translations. Finally!

[bemildred]

5. Ok, now i'm even behinder on my reading.

KnR.

[HuckleB]

6. You make that sound like it's a bad thing.

[bemildred]

7. It is a bad thing. It's a crisis!