One of my concerns upon finding out about this massacre and telling its story while the executioners were still in power was to keep it separate, to the extent possible, from the other executions, whose victims were primarily military personnel. Here was an incident that the Liberating Revolution could not even respond to with sophistries.
This approach forced me to make a specific allegation instead of a historical argument. It meant presenting the Liberating Revolution and its heirs to date with the borderline case of an unjustified atrocity, and asking them a question: Did they acknowledge the atrocity as their own, or did they explicitly disapprove of it? The only way to show that they had not authorized it was to punish those responsible and offer moral and material compensation for the victims. Three editions of this book, about forty published articles, a bill presented to Congress, and countless smaller initiatives have all served to pose the question to five successive governments over the course of twelve years. The response has always been silence. The ruling class that these governments represent supports this act of murder, accepts it as a part of itself, and does not punish anyone for it simply because it does not want to punish itself.
The executions of military personnel in the barracks were, of course, just as barbaric, illegal, and arbitrary as the civilian executions in the garbage dump.
The six men who, following Colonel Yrigoyen’s orders, attempted to establish Valle’s command in Avellaneda, put up no resistance when they were caught. They are executed in the Lanús District Police Department at dawn on June 10.
Colonel Cogorno, the leader of the uprising in La Plata, is executed during the first minutes of June 11 in the Seventh Regiment barracks. The civilian Alberto Abadíe, wounded in the skirmish, is first treated. Then, at nightfall on the twelfth, he is ready for the firing squad, which he has to face in the Bosque de La Plata park.
On June 10 at noon, Colonels Cortínez and Ibazeta, along with five junior officers, are tried at Campo de Mayo. The court, presided over by General Lorio, decides that the case does not warrant the death penalty. The Executive Power completely disregards res judicata and passes Decree 10.364, which condemns six of the seven accused men to death. The order is carried out at 3:40 a.m. on June 11 near an embankment.
At the same time, the four NCOs who had momentarily taken control of the Army Mechanics School are executed there, and the three NCOs of the Palermo Second Regiment who were also allegedly “involved” are executed in the National Penitentiary. Sometime afterward, I spoke to the widow of one of these men—the military band sergeant Luciano Isaías Rojas. She told me that on the night of the uprising, her husband had been sleeping beside her at their home.
On June 12, General Valle turns himself in to put a stop to the killings. They execute him that same night.
That makes for twenty-seven executions in less than seventy-two hours at six locations.
They all fall under Article 18 of the National Constitution, active in that moment, which says: “The death penalty for political reasons is hereafter abolished.”
In certain cases, martial law is applied retroactively. In others, res judicata is invoked over and over again in an abusive cycle. In yet others, the fact that the accused abandoned their weapons at the first opportunity is not taken into account. In short, it is a massive, arbitrary, illegal murder whose greatest culprits are the men who signed the decrees designed to validate it: Generals Aramburu and Ossorio Arana, Admirals Rojas and Hartung, and Brigadier General Krause.