2:45 a.m. Rodríguez Moreno’s got a bad feeling. Why did these poor bastards have to come to him, of all people? And yet, there is some mysterious justification, some nod to destiny in the fact that this particular mission is going to fall to him.
Rodríguez Moreno is an imposing, difficult man with a rocky and troublesome history. Tragedy follows him like a doting dog. Even before 1943, he was apparently involved in a horrifying event as chief of the Mar del Plata precinct, according to a number of sources. A hobo is brutally beaten in a cell one night and then thrown on a beach, completely naked in the dead of winter. He dies from the cold. They end up prosecuting Rodríguez Moreno and even send him to jail in Dolores. But then he is released. Because he was innocent, say his defenders. Because of political reasons, say his critics. The episode remains murky and forgotten.
And now this. Later, toward the end of 1956, there will be talk of a similar episode again in Mar del Plata, where he has been transferred to serve as Chief of the District Police Department. A Chilean pickpocket dies from being bashed around in a cell. Does it have anything to do with Rodríguez Moreno? They say it doesn’t . . . But disaster follows him. At the start of 1957 he led an operation in which an officer was killed, riddled with bullets from a machine gun fired by his fellow officers. An unfortunate incident, is how the papers put it.
Next to him on that night of June 9 is his second-in-command, Captain Cuello. There are a number of contradictory accounts of this short, nervous man as well.
—We’re going to take your statements —Rodríguez Moreno orders.
The prisoners start to line up single-file in two groups. One group goes to the Chief’s office. The other, to the clerk’s office.
Juan Carlos Livraga is unsettled. He doesn’t want to believe that his friend Vicente Rodríguez has screwed him over, but an awful suspicion keeps rolling around in his head. That’s why, when Rodríguez returns from giving his statement, Livraga gets up in a hurry and goes in before he is even called. He wants to be interrogated by the same person, to find out what his friend has said, to protect himself with his friend’s testimony.
The interrogation is long and thorough. They ask him if he knew anything about the rebellion. He says he didn’t. He tells a long detailed story of how he arrived at the house in question. He stresses that he only went there to hear the fight. A clerk condenses everything into a pair of typed lines.
He is shown a pile of white and light blue armbands with two letters printed on them: P.V.17 They ask him if he has seen them before. He says he hasn’t. The typist adds another line.
They show him a revolver. They ask if it’s his.
The question shocks Livraga. The gun is not his, but what’s strange is that they don’t know whose it is.
They add two or three more lines to his statement. The long piece of paper curves over the roller and falls behind the machine. Livraga notices that several statements precede his on the sheet. The way he is oriented, facing the typist, he can still manage to make out a few upside-down lines. He calms down when he sees: “Rodríguez . . . accident . . . friend . . . fight . . . doesn’t know . . .” Rodríguez has given the same information. Other testimonies are similar. Giunta, who never forgets a face, is questioned by a “chubby, curly-haired officer with a handlebar mustache.”
Gavino knows perfectly well that they are not going to believe him if he says he was also at Torres’s apartment by accident. He tries to find someone who will back him up. Carranza agrees. They both state that they are Peronist sympathizers who expected there would be an uprising and went to hear the news on the radio.
—What were you doing in that house? —they ask Di Chiano.
—What would I be doing . . . It’s my house.
—What were you doing?
—I was with my family, listening to the radio.
—Nothing else?
—Nothing else.
Ever since Troxler and Benavídez arrived, they have been kept in a different office so as not to be mixed with the others. Their testimonies are shorter. After all, they did nothing more than ring a doorbell.
—What are you going to do with us? —one of them asks.
—I think they’re sending you to La Plata —is the vague reply.
At 2:53 a.m., the Office of the Vice President of the Nation, Rear-Admiral Rojas, reads Communiqué No. 2 out loud, reporting that the rebellion in the Army Mechanics School has been quashed and the battle at the NCO academy at Campo de Mayo is being quelled. The message is broadcast across all the radio stations in the country.
“Make no mistake —he concludes.— The Liberating Revolution will no doubt achieve its goals.”
3:45 a.m. The interrogations have ended. Two officers stand up to talk near the door.
—If this thing turns around, we can just let these guys go . . . —one of them says, turning his head towards the men.
But the thing doesn’t turn around. On the contrary. The shooting dies down in La Plata. The rebels understand how impossible it would be to take over Police Headquarters or the military command: they have lost the race against time. People scram and desist when a naval airplane sends out a flare. This is only a small glimpse of what will happen when daybreak sets the flight of government machines in motion. At the Río Santiago Shipyard, the Marines are enlisted. The Chief of Police has finally joined the effort himself and brought backup.
The prisoners at the District Police Department, nervous and drowsy, are shaking on the benches. The cold is brutal. Since three o’clock, the thermometer has been at 0°C. At this point, it looks like they are not going to transfer them from here tonight. Some try to curl up and sleep for a bit.
That’s when they start calling them up again, one by one. The first one to come back says they took everything he had on him: his money, his watch, even his keys. He shows everyone the receipt he was given.
Some manage to take precautions. Livraga, for instance, who has forty pesos, hides thirty in one of his socks. They give him a receipt for “A White Star watch, a key ring, ten pesos, and a handkerchief.” (Officer Albarello signs it.)
Benavídez is given a receipt for “Two-hundred-and-nineteen pesos and forty-five cents, identity papers, and various items.” Giunta’s reads fifteen pesos, a handkerchief, and cigarettes.
The one who has the most money is Carlitos Lizaso. Several witnesses saw him leave Vicente López that afternoon with more than two thousand pesos in his wallet. There was even someone who told him not to carry such a large sum on him. At the District Police Department, they log the amount at only seventy-eight pesos.
Could he have done what Livraga did? Maybe. What we know for sure is that those two thousand pesos will disappear completely, in one pocket or another. Only a small part of the booty collected that night—money, watches, rings—will return to its owners.
The atmosphere among the prisoners is getting heavier and heavier. One thing’s for sure: no one is thinking of letting them go.
Footnotes:
17 DG: Abbreviation for “Perón Vuelve”—“Perón Returns.”