Operation Massacre (5 page)

 

3.
Mr. Horacio

Florida is twenty-four minutes from Retiro on the F. C. Belgrano line. It's not the best part of the Vicente López district, but it's also not the worst. The municipality skimps on waterworks and sanitation, there are potholes in the pavement and no signs on the street corners, but people live there despite all that.

Six blocks west of the train station lies the neighborhood where so many unexpected things are going to happen. It exhibits the violent contrasts common to areas in development, where the residential and the filthy meet, a recently constructed villa next to a wasteland of weeds and tin cans.

The average resident is a man between the ages of thirty and forty who has his own home with a garden that he tends to in his idle moments, and who has not finished paying the bank for the loan that allowed him to buy the house in the first place. He lives with a relatively small family and works either as a business employee or a skilled laborer in Buenos Aires. He gets along with his neighbors and proposes or agrees to initiatives in support of the common good. He plays sports—typically soccer—covers the usual political issues in conversation and, no matter what government is in charge, protests the rising costs of living and the impossible transportation system without ever getting too excited about it.

This model does not allow for a very wide range of variation. Life is calm, no ups and downs. Nothing ever really happens here.

During the winter, the streets are half-deserted by the early evening. The corners are poorly lit and you need to cross them carefully to avoid getting stuck in the mud puddles that have formed due to the lack of drainage. Wherever you find a small bridge or a line of stones laid down for crossing, it's the neighbors who have put it there. Sometimes the dark water spans from one curb all the way to another. You can't really see it, but you can guess it's there using the reflection of some star or the light of the waning lanterns that languish on the porches into the wee hours. San Martín Avenue is the only place where things are moving a bit: a passing bus, a neon sign, the cold blue glare of a bar's front window.

The house that Carranza and Garibotti have walked into—where the first act of the drama will unfold, and to which a ghost witness will return in the end—has two apartments: one in front and one in back. To get to the back one, you need to go down a long corridor that is closed in on the right by a dividing wall and on the left by a tall privet hedge. The corridor, which leads to a green metal door, is so narrow that you can only walk through it in single file. It's worth remembering this detail; it carries a certain importance.

The apartment in back is rented out to a man who we'll come back to at the last moment. The apartment in front is where the owner of the whole building, Mr. Horacio di Chiano, lives with his family.

Mr. Horacio is a dark-skinned man of small stature with a mustache and glasses. He is about fifty years old and for the last seventeen years he has worked as an electrician in the Ítalo. His ambitions are simple: to retire and then work awhile on his own before truly calling it quits.

His home exudes a sense of peaceful and satisfied middle class. From the set furniture to the vague phrases that run across decorative plates on the walls—“To err is human, to forgive divine” or some innocent, bold claim, “Love makes the time pass, time makes love pass”—to the devotional image placed in a nook by his wife or by their only child, Nélida, a quiet twenty-four-year-old girl. The only thing of note is a certain abundance of curtains, pillows, and rugs. The lady of the house, Pilar—white-haired and mild-mannered—is an upholsterer.

This Saturday is identical to hundreds of other Saturdays for Mr. Horacio. He has stayed on duty at work. His job consists of resolving clients' electrical problems. At five o'clock in the afternoon he gets his last call, this one from Palermo. He heads that way, fixes the problem, and comes back to the main office. By then it is already nighttime. At
8
:
45
p.m. he lets the Balcarce office know by phone that he's leaving and begins to make his way home.

There is nothing new about this routine. It has been the same for years and years. And the world is not any different when he gets on the Belgrano line train at Retiro station. The evening papers don't boast any major headlines. In the United States, they've operated on Eisenhower. In London and Washington, they're talking about Bulganin's take on disarmament. San Lorenzo beat Huracán in a game leading up to the soccer championship. General Aramburu takes one of his regular trips, this time to Rosario. The city official appointed by the de facto government gushes with lyricism when receiving him: “. . . the time has come to work in peace, to be productive in peace, to dream in peace and to love in peace . . .” The President responds with a phrase that he will repeat the following day, but under different circumstances: “Do not fear the fearful. Freedom has won the game.” Later on he gives the journalists who are with him some fatherly advice on how to tell the truth. Nothing new, really, is happening in the world. The only things of interest are the calculations and commentary leading up to the big boxing match for the South American title that's taking place tonight in the Luna Park.

Mr. Horacio happens to come home at the same time as his neighbor, who lives fifty meters down the very same Yrigoyen Street. It's Miguel Ángel Giunta. They stand there talking for a moment. There is no real friendship between the two—they have known each other for less than a year—but they do share a cordial neighborly relationship. They tend to take the same train in the mornings. Mr. Horacio has invited him into his home more than once. Until now Giunta hasn't had the opportunity to accept, but tonight the offer is made again:

—Why don't you come watch the fight after dinner?

Giunta hesitates.

—I can't promise anything. But maybe.

—Bring your wife —insists Mr. Horacio.

Actually, that's why Giunta is wavering. When stepping out that afternoon, he had left his wife feeling a bit ill. If he finds that she's feeling better, he might come. This is how the two men leave it. Then each of them hurries into his own house. The temperature has begun to drop. The thermometer reads -4
°C
and will keep dropping.

It is
9
:
30
p.m. At that moment, thirty kilometers from here, in Campo de Mayo, a group of officers and NCOs led by colonels Cortínez and Ibazeta, set the tragic June uprising in motion.

Mr. Horacio and Giunta don't know this. Most of the country doesn't know it either and won't know it until after midnight.

State Radio, the official voice of the Nation, is playing Haydn.

 

4.
Giunta

Giunta, or Mr. Lito as they call him in the neighborhood, comes back from Villa Martelli, where he has spent the afternoon with his parents.

Giunta is not even thirty years old. He's a tall man, elegant, blond, and clear-eyed. Effusive and expressive in his gestures and his language, he has a healthy dose of wit to him, skeptical irony, even. But what you come away with is a sense of solid honor, of sincerity. Of all the witnesses who survive this tragedy, no one else will be as convincing or have as easy and natural a time proving his innocence, showing it to be concrete and almost tangible. Talking to him for an hour, hearing him remember, seeing the indignation and the memories of horror gradually emerging from inside him, making themselves visible in his eyes and even making his hair stand on end, is enough to set aside any skepticism.

For fifteen years Giunta has been working as a shoe salesman in Buenos Aires. He picked up two minor skills at his job that are worth mentioning. First, he practices a certain “psychology” method that sometimes lets him guess his clients'—and by extension others'—wishes and intentions, which are not always obvious. Second, he has an enviable memory for faces, sharpened over the years.

He does not suspect—as he is dining in the peaceful house that he bought with his own sweat, as he is surrounded by the affection of his loved ones—that hours later these skills will help him escape the grimmest experience of his life.

 

5.
Díaz: Two Snapshots

Meanwhile, people are filing into the apartment in back. There will be up to fifteen men there at one point, playing cards around two tables while talking or listening to the radio. Some will leave and others will join. In some instances it will be difficult to determine the precise chronology of these comings and goings. And not just the chronology. Even the identity of one or two of them will ultimately remain blurry or unknown.

We know, for example, that at around
9
:
00
p.m. a man named Rogelio Díaz shows up, but we don't know exactly who brings him or why he comes at all. We know he is an NCO (a sergeant who served as a tailor, according to some) who retired from the Navy, but we don't know why he retired—or why he was retired. We know he lives very nearby, in Munro, but we don't know if it is just proximity that explains his presence here. We know he is married with two or three children, but later on no one will be able to tell us his family's exact whereabouts. Is he involved with the revolutionary movement? Maybe. But maybe not.

The one exact detail, the only one that everyone who remembers seeing him can agree upon, is his physical appearance: a burly man from the provinces, very dark-skinned, of unidentifiable age (“You know, with darker people, it's hard to tell a person's age . . .”). He is a cheerful, chatty guy who gets all worked up playing Rummy one minute, and then, once everyone's already afraid of him, will be completely different the next, snoring happily and loudly on a bench in the San Martín Regional Office, as though he didn't have the smallest care in the world. A man's entire life can be summed up in these two snapshots.
9

Footnotes:

 

6.
Lizaso

The image we have of Carlitos Lizaso is sharper, more urgent, and more tragic. This tall, thin, pale young man, reserved and almost timid, is twenty-one years old. He comes from a big family in the district of Vicente López.

Politics has always been a major topic of discussion in his house. Mr. Pedro Lizaso, the father, was a member of the Radical Civil Union at one time.
10
He then became a Peronist sympathizer. In
1947
he is named City Commissioner for a short time. Later on, something inside him takes a turn in the other direction: by
1950
, he has distanced himself from Peronism and will keep distancing himself more and more as time goes on; he is practically in the opposition when the September revolution comes about.

—We had the secret hope that everything would change, that any good that was left would be saved and the bad would be destroyed —a friend of his would later say.— But then . . .

Then we already know what happens. A wave of revenge overtakes the country. Mr. Pedro Lizaso, old, sick, and disillusioned, goes back to the opposition.

These changes are reflected in his two sons. In September
1955
, when the revolution shakes everyone to their core and those who aren't fighting are glued to their radios, listening to the official news as well as the news filtering in less frequently from the opposition—what an extraordinary thing to think about! No one would end up shooting them for doing that—someone asks Carlos:

—Who would you fight for?

—I don't know —he replies, unsettled.— For no one.

—But if they made you, if you had to choose.

He thinks for a moment before responding.

—For them, I think —he finally replies.

“Them” are the revolutionaries.

Since then, there's been a lot of water under the bridge. Carlos Lizaso seems to have forgotten about such dilemmas. From the outside, this is what his life looks like: He has dropped out of high school to help out at his father's auction house. He works hard, has a knack for earning money, hopes to move up in the business, and is well on his way despite his young age. In his moments of rest, he distracts himself by playing chess. He is a strong player who has had some success in several youth tournaments.

It isn't hard to reconstruct every one of his moves on the afternoon of June
9
. First he goes to see his sister. Later on he heads to his girlfriend's house and stays with her for about an hour. It's past nine o'clock when he says goodbye and leaves. He takes the bus and gets off in Florida. He walks a few blocks, stops in front of the house with the light blue gates, ventures into the long corridor . . . 

What does he know about the rebellion that's taking place at that exact moment? Here again, contradiction and doubt arise: On the one hand, he is a calm, thoughtful young man. He doesn't carry any weapons and wouldn't even know how to use them. He was exempted from military service and has never had a simple revolver in his hands.

On the other hand, we can guess what his thoughts are when it comes to politics. A detail confirms this.

After he leaves, his girlfriend finds a piece of paper with Carlos's handwriting on it in her house:

“If all goes well tonight . . .”

But all will not go well.

Footnotes: