| | |  Entertainment | Books | October 2008 
Argentina: Rewakening the Ghosts of the 1970s Violence
 Marcela Valente - Inter Press Service
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| | José Ignacio Rucci | | |
Buenos Aires - Thirty-five years after the murder of prominent Argentine trade unionist José Ignacio Rucci, a book by an investigative journalist concludes that he was killed by the Montoneros guerrillas, as many already believed, rather than a right-wing death squad, as others argued.
Written by journalist and political scientist Ceferino Reato, the book "Operación Traviata. ¿Quién mató a Rucci? La verdadera historia" (Operation Traviata; Who Killed Rucci? The True Story) prompted the Rucci family to seek a reopening of the case, which was shelved 20 years ago.
It has also revived a fierce debate on the political violence of the early 1970s, prior to the bloody 1976-1983 military dictatorship.
The book, which has quickly become a best-seller in Argentina since it was published in September, recounts the events leading up to the murder of Rucci, who was secretary general of the Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT), the central trade union affiliated with the Justicialista (Peronist) Party founded by Juan Domingo Perón (1895-1974).
Federal Judge Ariel Lijo accepted the family’s request to reopen the case and, after reading the book and re-reading the entire case file, summoned the author to testify early this month. The journalist expanded on certain points, but refused to reveal sources who had spoken to him on condition of anonymity. However, the book abounds with clearly identified sources who corroborate what the anonymous sources had to say.
Named as head of the CGT in 1970, Rucci was shot down outside his home on Sept. 25, 1973, two days after Perón was elected to his third term as president. (He had earlier governed from 1946 until he was toppled by a 1955 military coup.)
Rucci, an unconditional supporter of Perón, had a key position in the president’s power structure. "Those bullets were for me; they cut my legs off," a grieving Perón told the press as he left the trade unionist’s funeral.
The author says Rucci was under surveillance by the Montoneros, a left-wing Peronist guerrilla organisation, which had occupied an apartment in a building near his home shortly before the murder, to keep an eye on his movements. The group later broke into a home next door to Rucci’s, where the sniper set up his position. The 49-year-old trade unionist, who was shot several times, died on the spot.
"A number of groups (of Montoneros) were involved in the operation, which was the usual modus operandi, and the one that planned and carried out the murder was made up of seven to eight members," Reato told IPS.
The three leaders of that group "are dead, but a source says two others who were at the heart of the operation are still alive," he said.
The author identifies Julio Iván Roque, alias "Lino", as the person who actually fired the shots, as well as two others who were involved: Marcelo Kurlat and Horacio Antonio Arrué, alias "Pablo Cristiano". All three were killed by agents of the dictatorship.
Reato believes that the book, for which he conducted 110 interviews, has had a major impact for two reasons. In first place, because there are former members of the Montoneros who "are not satisfied with the way they have been depicted as young idealists. They really wanted to speak out, and say that, above and beyond the mistakes that may have been made, they were members of a military-political group that was seeking to take power."
In second place, the author said that many of the books that have been written on the rise and actions of guerrilla organisations in the first half of the 1970s in Argentina were written by former members of those groups, who carefully weigh their words when it comes to the past, for fear of being called "traitors" or "snitches," he said.
Former Montoneros interviewed for the book say that although their group never officially claimed responsibility for Rucci’s murder, several leaders have acknowledged on an individual basis that the killing was planned and carried out by a Montoneros commando.
One of them is journalist and writer Ricardo Grassi, editor of the El Descamisado newspaper -- which expressed the positions of the so-called "revolutionary tendency" within Peronism -- at the time of the murder, who told Reato that the day Rucci was killed, the top Montoneros leader, Mario Firmenich, appeared in the newspaper’s offices with a bodyguard and said: "It was us."
"He came to explain to us why the group’s national leadership had reached that decision," said Grassi.
He added that prior to Firmenich’s visit, the newspaper staff had been speculating that the murder had been committed by the People’s Revolutionary Army (ERP), a Marxist guerrilla group that was active at the same time as the Montoneros.
"In our view, it was a provocation aimed at Perón, and it made sense for the ERP to have done it," he said.
This and similar revelations in the book show that very few members of the organisation actually took part in high-level decision-making, and also that, with respect to Rucci’s murder, many unsuccessfully tried to oppose it, arguing that it was a mistake that would bring serious consequences.
Reato makes it clear that the Montoneros never officially or publicly admitted to the murder. But he cites an interview with historian Felipe Pigna in which Firmenich, while neither denying nor assuming responsibility for the killing, lists reasons why the trade unionist was the enemy of the guerrilla organisation, even though both were Peronist.
The main argument was that Rucci was among those blamed for the so-called "Ezeiza massacre", when far-right Peronists and members of the CGT attacked Montoneros and members of the leftwing Peronist Youth movement on Jun. 20, 1973, opening fire indiscriminately on the crowd that had gone to meet Perón at the Ezeiza international airport on his return to Buenos Aires after long years of exile in Spain.
The author also cites several other books that have reached similar conclusions about Rucci’s murder. One is by journalist, former guerrilla and current lawmaker Miguel Bonasso, who says Firmenich told him the trade unionist had been executed by the Montoneros.
Another Montoneros leader, Roberto Perdía, denies that. But in an interview with Reato, he admitted that he "did not rule out" the possibility that "people forming part of the structure of our military organisation may have participated," although he added that "I do not affirm it. What I say is that it was an incident that did serious damage to us."
Rucci’s widow and grown children received reparations from the state in 1999 based on a legal ruling that suggested but did not clearly establish that the murder might have been committed by the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance, known as the "Triple A", a far-right death squad founded by José López Rega, then private secretary and later a member of Perón’s cabinet.
That was the assumption up to now.
But Reato says the Triple A did not even exist at the time of the murder. It made its first appearance, he said, two months later, in an attempt on the life of opposition Senator Hipólito Solari.
The author believes Rucci’s murder stiffened the Perón administration’s position against the Montoneros and the leftist branch of his ideologically pluralistic movement, and could thus have facilitated the emergence of the Triple A.
Reato also says the leftist group, which was increasingly at loggerheads with the Peronist right, was disputing power with Perón to lead the party and the government according to their own ideals. In fact, after Rucci’s murder, the organisation broke off ties with the elderly Perón.
Another former member of the Montoneros, Julio Bárbaro, who served as secretary of culture in the 1990s, told the author he had no doubts: "The Montoneros did it."
Bárbaro said a member of the leadership of the Montoneros, Horacio Mendizábal, told him at the time that the murder would teach "the General (Perón) that our positions have to be respected." |
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