Rodolfo Walsh

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Rodolfo Jorge Walsh (born January 9, 1927 in Choele Choel , Río Negro Province , Argentina , † March 25, 1977 ) was an Argentine journalist and writer . He is considered to be the founder of investigative journalism in Argentina and the genre "Testimonio" . In 1977, living underground because of the military dictatorship that had ruled since 1976 , he sent his " open letter from a writer to the military junta " to various daily newspapers. In it he massively criticized various aspects of military rule, especially the serious human rights violations and murders of opposition members . On the same day, he died in an exchange of fire with soldiers trying to arrest him. His letter is considered an important contemporary document in Argentine history.

life and work

Rodolfo Walsh was the third son of Miguel Esteban Walsh and Dora Gill, both of Irish descent. He attended an Irish school in Capilla del Señor. In 1941 he moved to Buenos Aires , where he completed his schooling and began studying philosophy, which he broke off after a short time. He then worked as an antique dealer, dishwasher and window cleaner, among other things. In 1944 he became a proofreader, and in 1951 he wrote his first journalistic works for Leoplán and Vea y Lea . In 1945 he joined the Alianza Libertadora Nacionalista . He later described this as Nazi and switched to Peronism .

In 1953 he wrote his first crime stories and the short story volume Variaciones en rojo . After meeting a survivor of the shooting of José León Suárez (Province of Buenos Aires) on the night of June 9, 1956, he began researching this political mass murder by the military government of Pedro Aramburu . This resulted in Operación Masacre , a documentary novel that became a classic in Latin American literature. In it he describes, in a "sober testimonio with hard cinematic cuts and a camera eye between journalism and fiction, the torture and liquidation of trade unionists and workers by junta soldiers". With its mixture of report and fiction, the book is regarded as the forerunner of New Journalism , which emerged in the USA in the 1960s. It was made into a film by Jorge Cedrón in 1972 . In 1959 Walsh traveled to Cuba and founded the Prensa Latina news agency there , together with the Argentine journalists Jorge Ricardo Masetti and Rogelio García Lupo, and the Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez . Back in Argentina, he wrote for Primera Plana and Panorama magazines .

In 1968 the book Quién mató a Rosendo? (Eng. Who shot Rosendo G.? ), which reports in the same way as Operación Masacre of the murder of the union leader Rosendo García on May 13, 1966. In the same year Walsh founded the newspaper of the CGT de los Argentinos union. In 1973 Walsh joined the guerrilla movement of the Montoneros , but distanced himself from them in 1975 and accused them of being too far removed from the people and of doing too little political work. After Jorge Videla's military government came to power in 1976, Walsh founded the ANCLA (Agencia de Noticias Clandestina) information network. On March 25, 1977, he sent an "open letter from a writer to the military junta " to the editorial offices of the Argentine daily newspapers, in which he accused the dictatorial government of its numerous crimes . On the same day he was killed by soldiers on the street. In the letter he wrote of the self-declared dirty war of the military that continued for another five years after Walsh's death:

“15,000 disappeared , 10,000 prisoners, 4,000 dead, tens of thousands who have been driven out of the country - these are the bare numbers of this terror. When the traditional prisons were overcrowded, they turned the country's largest military facilities into regular concentration camps, to which no judge, no lawyer, no journalist, no international observer had access. The use of military secrecy, declared inevitable for the investigation of all the cases, makes the majority of arrests de facto kidnappings , which enables torture without any restrictions and executions without a court judgment. "

Walsh's daughter María Victoria, a member of the Montoneros, died in 1976 during a street fight. His daughter Patricia is a politician. She was a two-time Argentine presidential candidate and is a member of the Buenos Aires city ​​government . His great-nephew Miguel Walsh is a mathematician.

Works

  • Diez cuentos policiales (1953)
  • Variaciones en rojo (1953)
  • Antología del cuento extraño (1956)
  • Operación Masacre (1957), German and with an afterword by Erich Hackl : Das Massaker von San Martín , Rotpunktverlag , Zurich 2009, ISBN 978-3-85869-413-3
  • La granada (1965, play)
  • La batalla (1965, play)
  • Los oficios terrestres (1965), German in the collection of stories A black day for justice , translated by Lutz Kliche, Stockmann-Verlag, Bad Vöslau, 2010 ISBN 978-39502750-4-9
  • Un kilo de oro (1967), German in the collection of stories A black day for justice , translated by Lutz Kliche, Stockmann-Verlag, Bad Vöslau, 2010 ISBN 978-39502750-4-9
  • ¿Quién mató a Rosendo? (1969) German Who Shot Rosendo García? , Rotpunktverlag , Zurich 2012, ISBN 978-3-85869-472-0
  • Un oscuro día de justicia (1973), German in The eyes of the traitor (edited by Wolfram Nitsch, translated by the group "Transports"), Rotpunktverlag , Zurich, 2010 ISBN 978-3-85869-424-9 , as well as in the Collection of stories A black day for justice , translated by Lutz Kliche, Stockmann-Verlag, Bad Vöslau, 2010 ISBN 978-39502750-4-9
  • El caso Satanovsky (1973), 2nd edition, Buenos Aires, Ed. de la Flor 1986
  • Cuento para tahúres y otros relatos policiales (1987), German in The eyes of the traitor (edited by Wolfram Nitsch, translated by the group "Transports"), Rotpunktverlag , Zurich 2010 ISBN 978-3-85869-424-9
  • Ese hombre y otros papeles personales (1995)
  • El violento oficio de escribir. Obra periodística 1955-2007 (2008)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Testimonio, Literature in Cuba. A new literary genre for describing reality , Centaurus 1998, ISBN 3-89085-167-3
  2. ^ A b c Rodolfo Walsh: Open letter from a writer to the military junta . printed by Rotpunktverlag
  3. ↑ Hans-Otto Dill : History of Latin American Literature at a Glance . Reclam, Stuttgart 1999. p. 352.
  4. ↑ Lukas Böckmann: "I no longer believe in God". Catholic tradition and political theology within the Argentine guerrillas of the 1960s . In: Yearbook of the Simon Dubnow Institute / Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook . No. 14 , 2015, p. 479-508 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Walsh, Rodolfo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Walsh, Rodolfo Jorge (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Argentine journalist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH January 9, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Choele Choel , Río Negro (Province)
DATE OF DEATH March 25, 1977