\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t In 1957, renowned journalist and militant Rodolfo Walsh published Operaci\u00f3n Masacre (\u201cOperation Massacre\u201d), revealing the horrors of an execution carried out by police the previous year in Jos\u00e9 Le\u00f3n Su\u00e1rez, Buenos Aires province.<\/p>\n
For 70 years, the massacre remained unpunished.<\/p>\n
Operaci\u00f3n Masacre would go on to become a landmark of Argentine literature and is widely regarded as the world\u2019s first work of investigative nonfiction.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One of its most famous lines still sends chills down readers\u2019 spines: \u201cHay un fusilado que vive\u201d \u2014 \u201cThere is a man who was executed who is still alive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Next week, that survivor, Juan Carlos Livraga, will witness the start of a \u201ctruth trial\u201d seeking justice for him and the other victims for the first time. Now 94, he is the only one of the seven survivors of the massacre who is still alive.<\/p>\n
Following an investigation launched in 2022, Federal Judge Alicia Vence of the San Mart\u00edn federal court has ordered oral proceedings to establish the truth about what became known as the Jos\u00e9 Le\u00f3n Su\u00e1rez Massacre. The hearings will take place on June 17, 18 and 19.<\/p>\n
As none of those accused of carrying out the executions are still alive, the proceedings will take the form of a \u201ctruth trial,\u201d meaning no criminal convictions can be handed down.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Instead, the court will examine whether the Argentine state committed crimes against humanity during the operation.<\/p>\n
The trial also seeks to provide long-overdue reparation to the victims\u2019 families and Livraga, the sole surviving victim, by establishing an official judicial record of the events after decades of impunity.<\/p>\n
What happened On the night of June 9, 1956, a group of neighbors gathered at an apartment in a working-class neighborhood of Vicente L\u00f3pez, north of Buenos Aires City, to listen to a boxing match being broadcast from the iconic Luna Park stadium.<\/p>\n
They sat around the radio until late into the evening, when a voice suddenly shouted from outside: \u201cPolice!\u201d<\/p>\n
At the same time as the boxing match, a political uprising was brewing. The self-styled Revoluci\u00f3n Libertadora (Liberating Revolution) \u2014 the military dictatorship that had overthrown President Juan Domingo Per\u00f3n the previous year and forced him into exile \u2014 was in power.<\/p>\n
A group of Peronist military officers led by General Juan Jos\u00e9 Valle had launched an uprising against the regime. But the authorities had learned of the plot in advance and crushed it before it could gain momentum, executing Valle and 17 rebel soldiers.<\/p>\n
Across the country, supporters were waiting for a revolutionary proclamation to be broadcast over the radio during the boxing match, which would signal the start of the uprising. The message never came: those tasked with transmitting it had already been arrested and would later be executed.<\/p>\n
Most of the men gathered around the radio were Peronist sympathizers or opponents of the dictatorship awaiting the signal to act. Others had simply come to listen to the fight.<\/p>\n
Shortly before midnight, police arrived at the Vicente L\u00f3pez apartment looking for General Ra\u00fal Tanco, another leader of the rebellion. He was not there, but officers arrested the men inside.<\/p>\n
Among them were Miguel \u00c1ngel Giunta, a next-door neighbor; Horacio di Chiano, who owned the apartment; and Juan Carlos Livraga, who had no knowledge of the uprising.<\/p>\n
The 12 detainees were taken to a landfill in nearby Jos\u00e9 Le\u00f3n Su\u00e1rez, where they were shot before dawn by a squad led by San Mart\u00edn police chief Rodolfo Rodr\u00edguez Moreno, acting on orders from Buenos Aires Province Police chief Desiderio Fern\u00e1ndez Su\u00e1rez.<\/p>\n
Seven of the 12 men survived and managed to escape. Their arrests had taken place an hour before martial law was declared in the early hours of June 10. In Operaci\u00f3n Masacre, Walsh argued that this timing rendered the executions illegal.<\/p>\n
\u201cSix months later, on a stifling summer night, over a glass of beer, a man told me: \u2018There is a man who was executed who is still alive,\u2019\u201d Walsh wrote in the book\u2019s opening pages.<\/p>\n
The revelation prompted the then little-known journalist to launch an exhaustive investigation into the executions, relying heavily on testimony from the survivors \u2014 particularly Livraga.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The resulting book not only exposed the massacre but also cemented Walsh\u2019s legacy as one of Argentina\u2019s most influential journalists.<\/p>\n
Aside from Livraga, the other survivors were Di Chiano, Giunta, Reinaldo Benav\u00eddez, Rogelio D\u00edaz, Norberto Gavino, and Julio Troxler.<\/p>\n
Livraga and Giunta were arrested and spent two months in prison after the shootings. Gavino, Troxler and Benav\u00eddez sought political asylum at the Bolivian Embassy before going into exile. Di Chiano spent months in hiding, fearing he would be targeted again.<\/p>\n
Troxler returned to Argentina from Bolivia after eight months. In 1974, he was killed by members of the far-right paramilitary group Triple A.<\/p>\n
Carlos Lizaso, Nicol\u00e1s Carranza, Francisco Garibotti, Vicente Rodr\u00edguez and Mario Bri\u00f3n died on the Jos\u00e9 Le\u00f3n Su\u00e1rez landfill.<\/p>\n
The trial Livraga filed a criminal complaint in the months following the shooting, which left him with severe injuries to his face and arm. The case reached the Supreme Court in 1957 but was ultimately referred to a military tribunal on the grounds that the police had acted within a military operation.<\/p>\n
It would not be revisited for nearly seven decades.<\/p>\n
Shortly afterward, Livraga went into exile in the United States, where he has lived ever since. Now 94, he is not in good enough health to testify and will not take part in the proceedings.<\/p>\n
He has, however, submitted a written account of what he experienced between June 9 and 10, 1956. The court will also screen a video interview recorded during his last visit to Argentina three years ago, in which he recounts the events.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The hearings, meanwhile, will be livestreamed on YouTube.<\/p>\n
Although the trial will begin just days after the 70th anniversary of the massacre, the timing is coincidental. According to a court staff member who spoke to the Herald, the proceedings were scheduled after investigators finished gathering evidence, including witness testimony from relatives of the victims and historical documentation.<\/p>\n
Following an investigation launched in 2022, Judge Vence concluded earlier this year that the case warranted a truth trial.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe trial seeks to determine, at a judicial level, whether these events occurred, whether crimes were committed and whether the state bears responsibility for them,\u201d the source said.<\/p>\n
The hearings will focus on the police operation carried out on the night of June 9, 1956, the arrests that followed, and the shootings in the early hours of June 10. A central question will be whether the massacre was covered by the martial law declared that day.<\/p>\n
Relatives of the victims, historians and other experts are expected to testify before Judge Vence.<\/p>\n
The national government will not participate in the proceedings. Nor will there be a prosecutor.<\/p>\n
Paul Starc, the prosecutor originally assigned to the case, opposed holding a truth trial, arguing that it was unnecessary because \u201chistorical truth needed no further certainty beyond what had already been established in books and newspapers,\u201d according to the court source.<\/p>\n
Starc left the case in April 2025, when President Javier Milei appointed him head of the Financial Information Unit. He was removed from that position in January.<\/p>\n
Truth trials Truth trials became common in Argentina in the 1990s as a way of investigating crimes committed during the 1976\u20131983 dictatorship while amnesty laws still shielded perpetrators from prosecution.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Those laws were later struck down, allowing criminal trials against surviving perpetrators to move forward.<\/p>\n
More recently, a truth trial was held in 2022 to examine the 1924 Napalp\u00ed Massacre. The court concluded that the Argentine state was responsible for the killing of hundreds of Indigenous workers in Chaco at the hands of police forces.<\/p>\n
A similar finding could emerge from the Jos\u00e9 Le\u00f3n Su\u00e1rez proceedings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In 1957, renowned journalist and militant Rodolfo Walsh published Operaci\u00f3n Masacre (\u201cOperation Massacre\u201d), revealing the horrors of an execution carried out by police the previous year in Jos\u00e9 Le\u00f3n Su\u00e1rez, Buenos Aires province. For 70 years, the massacre remained unpunished. Operaci\u00f3n Masacre would go on to become a landmark of Argentine literature and is widely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":76286,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4528,1442,9398],"tags":[7206,2188,9396],"class_list":["post-76285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-crimes-against-humanity","category-human-rights","category-rodolfo-walsh","tag-crimes-against-humanity","tag-human-rights","tag-rodolfo-walsh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76285","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=76285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76285\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}