\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t \u201cYou don\u2019t kill us. We choose to die.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mar\u00eda Victoria Walsh, daughter of famed author and journalist Rodolfo Walsh, famously uttered these words before taking her own life during a military operation in 1976 known as the Corro Street Massacre. In total, five members of armed guerrilla group Montoneros died during the assault.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The phrase, which has come to symbolize courage in the face of dictatorship horror, has also remained shrouded in mystery, as the military were the ones to relay the words, given that the victims did not survive.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Next Wednesday, almost 50 years after the killings, a trial will try to uncover the truth of what happened.<\/p>\n
Six former members of the Argentine army\u2019s 101 Aerial Defense Artillery group stand accused of the attack: Carlos Alberto Orihuela, Ricardo Grisol\u00eda, Gustavo Antonio Montell, Guillermo C\u00e9sar Viola, H\u00e9ctor Eduardo Godoy, and Danilo Antonio Gonz\u00e1lez Ramos.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The prosecutor and the plaintiffs are also demanding that three other soldiers who were left out of the case over what is known as \u201clack of merit,\u201d as well as an officer who was acquitted despite being involved in the operation, also be tried.<\/p>\n
The massacre On the morning of September 29, 1976, between 150 and 200 military officers, equipped with tanks and a helicopter, surrounded a house in the Villa Luro neighborhood of Buenos Aires City.<\/p>\n
Mar\u00eda Victoria Walsh, better known as Vicki, was a member of Montoneros and carried out press tasks. She had arrived at the residence the day before with her one-year-old daughter, Victoria, to meet with four top Montoneros leaders: Alberto Jos\u00e9 Molina Benuzzi, Ignacio Jos\u00e9 Bertr\u00e1n, Ismael Salame, and Jos\u00e9 Carlos Coronel.<\/p>\n
All of them spent the night.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The first shots rang out at around 7 a.m. Bertr\u00e1n, Salame, and Coronel climbed to the first floor to fire back. Walsh and Molina went to the rooftop with their machine guns.<\/p>\n
The pair exchanged gunfire for close to two hours before running out of ammunition. Trapped and realizing that the men on the lower floor were already dead, Vicki stood on the rooftop, opened her arms, and calmly uttered her final words before killing herself.<\/p>\n
Mar\u00eda Victoria Walsh Vicki\u2019s daughter Victoria was locked in a room and survived the attack. The military returned her to the family of her father, Emiliano Costa. The man had been detained due to his political activity months before the girl was born in 1975 and would be released years later.<\/p>\n
The bodies of the victims were taken to the judicial morgue and later returned to their families amid several irregularities. There was no autopsy.<\/p>\n
Vicki\u2019s father and fellow Montoneros member Rodolfo Walsh, who was also murdered by the dictatorship in 1977, spoke of his daughter\u2019s life and death extensively in two open letters: \u201cLetter to Vicki\u201d and \u201cLetter to my friends.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was in the latter where, in true journalistic fashion, he revealed his daughter\u2019s last moments after learning of the details of her death through one of the military officers present in the operation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of a sudden \u2014 the soldier said \u2014\u00a0 there was a silence. The girl left the machine gun, stood above the parapet, and opened her arms. [\u2026] I don\u2019t remember everything she said, but I remember the last sentence; it actually keeps me up at night. \u2018You don\u2019t kill us,\u2019 she said. \u2018We choose to die.\u2019 Then, she and the man took a gun to their temple and killed themselves in front of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLetter to my friends,\u201d written three months after Vicki\u2019s death, shows Rodolfo Walsh dealing with his grief. He lovingly writes about Vicki\u2019s political activism to try and help her friends and loved ones understand why she killed herself.<\/p>\n
\u201cVicki could have chosen other paths that were different without being dishonorable, but she chose the most fair, generous, and reasonable one,\u201d he wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHer lucid death is a synthesis of her short, beautiful life. She didn\u2019t live for herself; she lived for others, and those others are millions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rodolfo Walsh The path to trial<\/p>\n
Vicki\u2019s remains were exhumed in 1984 at the request of the Walsh family. The prestigious Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF, by its Spanish initials) conducted an analysis and concluded that her head injuries suggested a close shot to the head compatible with suicide.<\/p>\n
The case began in 2015 following the reopening of the dictatorship trials in 2006. The defendants have been in pre-trial house arrest since December 2021 but have not been required to wear ankle bracelets.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the case of Vicki Walsh, the six officers are being charged with aggravated attempted murder. According to a memo from the prosecutors office the Herald has seen, the accusation is based on the fact that \u201cthe homicidal intention was present at all times\u201d and that \u201cthe victim\u2019s decision was due to the threat of imminent danger: kidnapping, torture, disappearance, and\/or death.\u201d<\/p>\n
The circumstances of Molina\u2019s death, however, are less clear and something the trial intends to investigate. His death has been labeled as aggravated homicide, as well as those of Bertr\u00e1n, Salame, and Coronel.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Image of a mural on the Corro streeet house that reads \u201cFive heroes died here.\u201d The defendants are considered secondary participants in the murders and could face life imprisonment if found guilty of the homicide charges. A federal chamber lowered the charges from primary perpetrators to accomplices because it considered their roles during the operation to be \u201cexpendable\u201d given they were not high-ranking officials.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Prosecutors, however, say evidence suggests that they actually led the operation.<\/p>\n
The six are also accused of being secondary participants in the false imprisonment of four people who were staying at the house and survived the attack: Lucy Matilde G\u00f3mez de Mainer, her children Juan Crist\u00f3bal Mainer and Maricel Marta Mainer, and the latter\u2019s husband, Ram\u00f3n Alcides Baravalle.<\/p>\n
The Mainer family was also struck by tragedy. Previous trials have confirmed that the military knew of the Montoneros meeting at Corro Street because one of Lucy\u2019s daughters, Mar\u00eda Magdalena Mainer, was tortured into giving the location of the house while at the La Perla clandestine detention center in C\u00f3rdoba.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mar\u00eda Magdalena\u2019s remains were identified by the EAAF in a cemetery in 2013.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cYou don\u2019t kill us. We choose to die.\u201d\u00a0 Mar\u00eda Victoria Walsh, daughter of famed author and journalist Rodolfo Walsh, famously uttered these words before taking her own life during a military operation in 1976 known as the Corro Street Massacre. In total, five members of armed guerrilla group Montoneros died during the assault.\u00a0 The phrase, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":33341,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2245,1442,9397,9398],"tags":[2243,2188,9395,9396],"class_list":["post-33340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dictatorship","category-human-rights","category-maria-victoria-walsh","category-rodolfo-walsh","tag-dictatorship","tag-human-rights","tag-maria-victoria-walsh","tag-rodolfo-walsh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}