Operación Masacre

This is the long-anticipated English translation of Rodolfo Walsh’s most important work. A journalist and writer of crime fiction, Walsh revealed the story of a secret execution by Argentine military officers in 1956 in a series of magazine articles that became an oft-reprinted classic of investigative reporting and a touchstone in the anti-authoritarian literature of Latin America. His activism against successive military governments in the 1960s and 70s eventually got him killed.

In Operación Masacre, a group of men gathered in a house to listen to a prize fight are arrested then driven to a remote garbage dump and shot. Half of the men—some gravely wounded, others cool and quick-thinking—survive. Some of the survivors vanish, show more others are rearrested. Neighbors and commuters discover dead bodies along the roadside. Walsh pursues the incredible truth and assembles an account that is riveting and chilling and wholly original in its construction, the prose precise and uncomplicated, the story heavy and oppressive. The sensation of reading it put me in mind of Vassilis Vassilikos’ Z, another literary treatment of political murder and the dogged search for answers in an atmosphere of danger that envelops characters and reader alike.

This volume also includes the “Open Letter From a Writer to the Military Junta,” which Walsh dropped in the post in March 1977, a day before he was gunned down on the street by government agents. One of the great paradoxes of Argentina is the coexistence of a rich artistic and literary culture along with a violent, authoritarian political culture. The work of Rodolfo Walsh remains a powerful symbol of that paradox. show less

I compare it to "In Cold Blood" in that it's a brilliant telling of a true life crime. It's better than Capote's in the magnitude of the crime (government-sponsored silencing of the opposition), and the fact that it was maybe the first case of investigative reporting in Latin America. Walsh was later "disappeared" by the Argentinian government that he was writing about in the 70s.

May be one of the earlier examples of the "new journalism", thinking here of Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote.

What Walsh has done here is write a suspenseful tale, based on extensive research and documentation of a gross injustice initiated by Government troopps in putting down a revolt in Buenos Aires in the late 1950's.

He paid the ultimate price when he was gunned down in what appeared to be an assination. To this day there remain "dark forces" in Argentina.

This book should be a source book in any journalism graduate program.

La descripción de uno de los asesinados es genial y desgarradora. Pág 52

Esto es compromiso en la investigación periodística, y todo lo demás es chamuyo.

published-2013, radio-4, nonfiction, argentina
Recommended for: BBC radio listeners
Read from August 17 to 24, 2013

BOTW

Operation Massacre:

R4 BOTW
Summer 2013> Pub 1957
Translation
True Grime

BBC BLURB: A Latin American true crime classic set in Argentina.On the evening of the 9th June 1956 in an apartment in Buenos Aires, between twelve and fourteen men were arrested on suspicion of involvement in a rebellion against the Argentine government. A few hours later, the local police chief received orders to execute them. Almost all were innocent. In compelling prose, Rodolfo Walsh recreates the events of that night and its aftermath.

Pre-dating Capote's IN COLD BLOOD by over a decade, OPERATION MASSACRE is regarded throughout Latin America as the show more original work of modern 'true crime.' This classic of reportage has been admired by writers a diverse as Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It has just been translated into English for the first time.

Read by Nigel Anthony Abridged and produced by Jane Marshall A Jane Marshall production for BBC Radio 4.

#1 The first English translation of a Latin American true crime classic. On the evening of June 9 1956, a group of men gather in an apartment in Buenos Aires to play cards.
#2 Neighbours gather in a Buenos Aires house oblivious to the macabre events about to unfold. Meanwhile across the city an insurgency is planned.
#3 A police raid on a house in Buenos Aires has astounded the unsuspecting residents. But as they are bundled onto a truck, most of them think they have nothing to fear.
#4 The arrested men are forced out of a police truck at gunpoint on a deserted Buenos Aires road. All they can see is wasteland, and they still have no idea what is happening or why.
#5 Seven condemned men have escaped a botched execution. Seriously injured, Livraga has been found wandering down a road and rushed to a clinic by an unsuspecting policeman.

3*
3 likes show less

«Hay un fusilado que vive», esta frase oída a finales de 1956 en un café de La Plata puso a Rodolfo Walsh tras la pista de un oscuro asunto de Estado que le cambiaría la vida. En junio de ese año, un fallido intento revolucionario contra el régimen militar que había destituido a Perón un año antes desencadenó una operación clandestina para eliminar a los opositores al régimen. En un basurero de las afueras de la capital, un grupo de civiles fueron fusilados antes incluso de decretarse la ley marcial. Durante semanas corrió el rumor de que alguno de ellos había sobrevivido. Walsh pudo localizar a uno de esos supuestos supervivientes y tras escuchar su testimonio comenzó una arriesgada y obsesiva investigación que show more desmentiría la versión oficial sobre los hechos y documentó un caso de terrorismo de Estado. El fruto de estos trabajos se publicaría por entregas en el diario Mayoría y muy poco después, en 1957, como libro.

Operación Masacre es un largo reportaje que se lee como una novela y supone el hito fundacional del periodismo narrativo en Latinoamérica. show less