Operation Massacre
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- $25.99
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- $25.99
Publisher Description
1956. Argentina has just lost its charismatic president Juán Perón in a military coup, and terror reigns across the land. June 1956: eighteen people are reported dead in a failed Peronist uprising. December 1956: sometime journalist, crime fiction writer, studiedly unpoliticized chess aficionado Rodolfo Walsh learns by chance that one of the executed civilians from a separate, secret execution in June, is alive. He hears that there may be more than one survivor and believes this unbelievable story on the spot. And right there, the monumental classic Operation Massacre is born.
Walsh made it his mission to find not only the survivors but widows, orphans, political refugees, fugitives, alleged informers, and anonymous heroes, in order to determine what happened that night, sending him on a journey that took over the rest of his life.
Originally published in 1957, Operation Massacre thoroughly and breathlessly recounts the night of the execution and its fallout.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This captivating and clear-eyed book, a true crime narrative first published in Spanish in 1957 and fluently translated here by Gitlin, is Argentinian political journalist Walsh's account of "the execution, on June 9, 1956, of five men suspected of participating in a failed coup against the military government designed to return P ron to power." Walsh opens with his experience that night, when he came home to find government forces using his house as a point of defense against P ron supporters. In December 1956, a rumor that one of the men believed to be executed might be alive inspires Walsh's year-long investigation, which turns up survivors of the secret executions, the circumstances that led to the illegal executions, and the failures of the justice system. Walsh provides a moment-by-moment account and reveals as much as he can about the survivors and those who were executed. The reason for such precision becomes clear as events unfold. In addition to the introduction by Michael Greenberg and afterword by Ricardo Piglia, the book's helpful appendices include prologues and epilogues from previous editions, as well as the "Open Letter from a Writer to the Military Junta," which Walsh delivered to local and foreign press correspondents on March 24, 1977, a day before he was kidnapped, never to be seen again.
