Interview with Facundo Pastor: “I was able to go on the trail of Rodolfo Walsh's unpublished stories”

“That man who might not be a man came on the scene. He had a black briefcase in one hand and a bag in the other. He dressed like a pensioner. And it didn't attract the attention of pedestrians. Intelligence calculations had failed. No feminine or religious attire: he was a man dressed as a man simulating an age he was not, wearing wide clothes and a straw hat that shadowed his face... The sniper followed him like a hunter waiting before his prey for the right moment to pull the trigger. The target was inside the telescopic sight. Two black stripes crucified him.”

If the first chapter of “Ambush” (Aguilar), the research that Facundo Pastor investigated and wrote in the last three years about the murder of writer Rodolfo Walsh catches, towards the end of the 254 pages, the book has a novelty that waited 45 years to come to light. Almost exactly those who separate the author's talk with Infobae with March 25, 1977, when the burst of fire from a Navy task force wiped out the man who handled much of Montoneros' intelligence.

Pastor (who we see in the News Team on A24 from 10 to 13 and we hear on La Red in Pastor910 from 16 to 18 and on Saturdays in Foja Cero from 8 to 10) reveals the route of political documents and - above all - of the four unpublished stories that were stolen in the home invasion that Walsh and his companion Lilia Ferreyra occupied after he was killed.

- Why were you interested in the figure of Rodolfo Walsh and why did you choose to write about his ending?

- I've always been Walsh's reader. Not only from his work of political denunciation such as Operation Massacre and the Satanowsky Case, but from his stories. And it always struck me that there was no document about his death. The end of his life is very particular, because it also shows that journalist and writer stuck inside Montoneros and practically fighting and dying for the cause, so to speak. From a journalistic point of view, I found it attractive. And it has little explored corners.

- How did you start the investigation?

-At a dinner, an equis person commented on the details of the attack in the dining room of the Federal Coordination. I was struck by that attack, how little there was about him in journalistic terms, the violence of the incident, the number of victims, how little was even addressed by the Justice. And from there I came to the story of José María “Pepe” Salgado.

The one who planted the bomb in the dining room...

-Salgado is a big unknown. He was one of the people Walsh had to meet that last day. And that's when I jumped from his story to Walsh's.

When they find and kidnap Salgado, they were actually looking for Walsh, who was the head of Montoneros Intelligence...

I don't know if it can be determined that he was the boss. He did manage an important area of intelligence within the organization. It was called “Intelligence and Information”, because it had two separate departments to compartmentalize the information on how the Montoneros organization was handled at the time. One had more to do with information, which were ANCLA and Cadena Clandestina; and the other the so-called Federal Police and Armed Forces, which did intelligence on this aspect. When Pepe Salgado fell in the middle of the sailors' search for Walsh, it was in the framework of a hunt. I'm talking about concatenated deaths. By that time, 1977, the sailors already had the organization chart of how the different structures of Montoneros worked very much. The organization was practically decimated. Then, to investigate Walsh's death was to investigate, inevitably, a series of deaths that occurred of different militants, which is a kind of hunt that ends precisely in Walsh.

- Did the planting of the bomb mean Walsh's death sentence?

-Look, I'm not sure how the bomb was placed. The official version, to put it in historical terms, indicates that it was placed by Pepe Salgado. That was replicated in files and books. It was a version that was installed in 1985 through a book called “Confessions of a Montonero”, written by Eugenio Méndez. The attack on Coordination is a cursed fact that very few people talk about and give information about. Giving certainty about the fact is difficult.

- What did Walsh think of the direction Montoneros had taken at that time?

-It's interesting. Walsh died being very critical of Montoneros' militaristic concept. On the other hand, he developed, and is shown documents that can be read and consulted, the idea of “internal retreat”. He had practiced it himself leaving the Federal Capital, keeping himself in a little house in San Vicente. He believed that it was necessary to retreat to try to gain power at another time. And he maintained that the way Montoneros was doing was not the way to do it. That defeat was going to be inevitable.

We're going to Walsh's last day. How do you trick him into falling into the ambush?

-He arrived very unprepared, believing that he was going to meet several people. This is reconstructed thanks to the testimony given at the time by Lilia Ferreyra, his last wife, his companion. He thought he was going to meet Pepe Salgado, María Cristina Bustos Ledesma de Coronel - a woman who for me is key in this story -; and later he had one more appointment with René Haidar, a member of Montoneros.

- Why do you say that Bustos Ledesma is key?

Walsh arrives at that meeting because he had received a letter from him. Bustos Ledesma was the wife of Tucu Coronel, a painting of the Montoneros political secretariat, who died together with María Victoria Walsh (Note: daughter of Rodolfo Walsh) on Corro Street, in what was an operation where other important cadres died. The wife of Tucu Coronel was left completely alone, disengaged from the organization, with two creatures circling the city and some relatives giving her a hand. Then he goes to Walsh through a letter. Walsh takes this story, he is in solidarity, he is moved. I write a little in the book that, in some way, to go through this woman's family tragedy was to go through her own tragedy, the death of Maria Victoria. Then he asks Salgado to do some research on this woman, to see if he wasn't eating a trap. Salgado investigates and realizes that she was indeed a woman alone, desperate, with two creatures in tow. So Walsh decides to go on the date. But Salgado and María Cristina had already been kidnapped for 10 days. This is a bit of an ambush. The sailors had already been able to find people close to Walsh and thus reach him.

- Is it established how they manage to build the fence, how do they know he was going to go there?

-Well, you understand that it's information they get in the torture of clandestine centers. In fact, they had gone to another operative a few days earlier to try to find Walsh and they hadn't found him. So they were looking for him. The information for that time was a lot. They had already succeeded in deculating the telephone feet system, the various structures of Montoneros.

-Today everyone has a cell phone, but in 1977 it wasn't even easy to have a telephone line. What was a “telephone foot system”...?

-Something half-obvious needs to be clarified. Montoneros was a clandestine organization since 1974. At that time it was widely used for people who worked with a phone nearby, such as a seamstress, a crippled person or someone who took care of a bar counter and wanted to get some more handles, to rent their phone. And many people from professions that were not in hiding, such as a psychologist or a doctor who did not have a telephone at that time, rented it. So, you were a patient and you called that number where the doctor didn't attend, but you could leave him a message. In this way Montoneros communicated in code, leaving data that was later collected. That's why it was called “telephone feet.” The seafarers' task forces had already figured out what that system looked like. And they already knew what the organization charts were like, which made it easier for them to “hunt” the militants, as happened a little with Walsh. There are witnesses who demonstrate the level of obsession that the sailors had with Walsh. It was undoubtedly a very important trophy for the ESMA task force. It was told to me by many detainees I interviewed. In the torture sessions many were asked about Walsh.

- How was the ambush?

Walsh was planning to go to the Federal Capital with Lilia Ferreyra. She was going to use the time to start getting things they had from an apartment they had here in the Federal Capital. They tried Lilia's father's Fiat 600 and it didn't start. They hurry, then, to catch the 12 o'clock train at San Vicente station. In the middle they cross paths with Victoriano Matute, who was the man who had sold them the house. He gave them a documentation, a purchase-sale ticket with all the data. Walsh bought it in the name of Norberto Freire, a surname he had already used in Operation Massacre. A pseudonym he had. They take the 12 o'clock train, arrive at Constitución, say goodbye, Walsh walks or takes a bus, it's not clear, and he reaches the corner of Entre Ríos and San Juan. He had dressed as a pensioner: a beige guayabera, a straw hat, a briefcase... Before leaving he had put his gun in the briefcase, a PPK 22, caliber 22. It's a detective gun, German, that I had bought in 1974 from an armory on 25 de Mayo Street. I think Walsh didn't even know how to shoot. He walked to what was going to be the date he had, and there he detected that more than an appointment was going to be an ambush. It is supposed to see some movements, but the task force had already deployed the entire operation: a first cord and a second cord called the encirclement to cover the entire area.

- A major operative.

-Very important. It included a sniper. I took the figure of the sniper because I was able to talk, get data on how that operation was carried out. When he realizes that more than a date was going to be an ambush, an exchange of fire is generated. The witnesses report - because there are witnesses to the fact, even living witnesses of this operation that I was able to interview - that they think they saw (Captain Enrique) “Cobra” Yon, a member of the task force, standing in the middle of San Juan Avenue, who at that time was double-handed, sheltered shooting at Walsh. Walsh is presumed to have fired, because there is also a cash that was wounded... and well, the body falls with his briefcase. He was carrying a bag, and at one point the sailors thought he was going to throw a grenade.

There is one element that you tell in the book, and that is that every night, Walsh and his wife slept with a grenade on each side of the bed.

Yes, that's what Lilia Ferreyra tells. They had fragmentation grenades. I think, as a good journalist who was Walsh, he had a lot of information about what was going on. In fact, the first map that can be made of ESMA was made thanks to information that Walsh has firsthand, from people who were inside. He managed a circuit of infiltrated sources in different places. Salgado was one of them, Tarnopolsky was another, within ESMA. He knew what was going on inside clandestine detention centers. Then he wasn't willing to turn himself in. That's why they lived with that level of paranoia and fear.

- Could it be established where Walsh died, if right there on San Juan Avenue or at ESMA?

- It's another question mark. Things can be inferred. In this type of historical research I try to deal more with questions than with certainties. It is not clear whether he entered ESMA dead or alive. There are two witnesses who saw him there. These are two very courageous testimonies. A memory exercise that is not easy. Martin Gras sees him knowing it was Walsh. He sees the body entering ESMA. You see the wounds on the chest. Silvia Labayrú did not know Rodolfo Walsh, but she did have information that that day there would be an operation where Walsh would possibly fall, thus inferring that it is his body. Because of the manner of admission and the desperation of the task force, and because the body was going to the infirmary, one might think that it came alive. But it's not clear.

-You also address something very interesting: what happened to Walsh's documents and unpublished stories.

-Yes. I am convinced that somewhere, those documents are. And I also approach it with the journalistic anxiety of trying to learn more about all that tremendously valuable documentation. And not only from the journalistic point of view, but from the literary point of view. Let there appear stories that he wrote in the last stage of his life, which are unpublished. They are stolen at 10 hours after the operation in Entre Ríos and San Juan. The sailors go to the house, they join the Army, they put together a very large operation that practically paralyzes the entire neighborhood. At one point they break into the wrong house. They finally raided the house where Lilia Ferreyra and Walsh spent their last days.

- How do they get to the house?

-In Walsh's briefcase was the purchase and sale ticket that Walsh had received from Victoriano Matute, the man who crossed paths at the San Vicente station before traveling to Federal Capital on the day of the ambush. They go to Matute's house, they pull him out of his hair because he was sleeping - this was told by Matute to justice -, and he points to them, half asleep, the house. They pave the wrong one and then the right one. And they steal all his unpublished work.

- Where are they taking that documentation?

-ESMA. There are several witnesses who see her. There were unpublished stories, documents of the organization, political documents, part of his archive, folders that I describe a lot in the book. That part really interested me. I knew, obviously, that the fate of Walsh's remains is impossible to determine: it is not clear what happened within ESMA, there are only versions. But I was able to go, 45 years later, on the trail of his unpublished stories, that someone has them.

- What happened to those papers?

-At the end of '78, after the World Cup, Massera left the command in the hands of Lambruschini. And he says to his people 'we have to get everything out of our'. And among 'our thing' were Walsh's boxes. Massera, at that point, had this fantasy of becoming the next Perón, that presidential delirium. And set up some operational houses and offices: one on Cerrito Street and another on a corner of Saavedra, Jaramillo and Zapiola. Some missing detainees will end up in that house to perform tasks, slave labor. They're going to clip newspapers, union reports, political reports. It is assumed that from Jaramillo and Zapiola's house they would end up in Cerrito, which was the office where Massera went. In that house, two people see the boxes with Walsh's documentation. When I found out about that, I was closing the book, and for me it was very important to deepen that, with the conviction that Walsh's unpublished stories someone has them. And I'm not the only one who thinks so. Then, two people see the box. One is dead, it's a very particular story, which I leave to readers for the book, and the other person lives in Peru. I managed to find her, at first with some resistance to speaking, then she was very brave and began to tell a lot of things. And she, she's a woman, actually told me what she saw, how she saw Walsh's documents inside the house, in what I call in the book a forbidden room. The house had a room where detainees who went to work there could not enter. Where there were things and property of the disappeared.

- Who is that woman?

-Mercedes Inés “Cuqui” Carazo, in the organization she was known as Lucy. She attests that she saw the box, and that there were manuscripts. And on the cover of that box it said “R.W.” He was with a person who was Antonio Nelson Latorre, known in Montoneros as the “Pelado Diego”, with a very particular story because it was a very important painting. The two of them had a very important rank. And those ranks, even when detained, were respected. She reconstructs all this a bit, which for me is extremely valuable and lets me know, first that the documentation came out of ESMA and second, that it was in the hands of Pelado Diego, who is a man who later worked for the Navy. It was even part of the historic Operation Algeciras, which in 1982 the military tried to carry out - because it is a frustrated attack - in Gibraltar with Máximo Nicoletti (Note: the objective was to fly English ships stationed there before they set sail for the Malvinas during the war). There are stories that are mixed all the time, that are intertwined and that are obviously very enriching.

-Going back to the papers. They were in a tidy box...

-Walsh's documentation, when he entered ESMA, was cataloged, it was archived. It is therefore more than clear that if they cataloged it, they archived it - and this is reported by many missing detainees - there was no intention to part with those documents, but rather to preserve them. And the important thing is that the documents came out of ESMA, that someone has them and they went to a place. I followed the route a little...

- Do we know how they got out of Saavedra's house?

-Yeah, they were taken out by a person.

- Carazo?

-No. They were taken out by the person who is dead. And he supposedly handed them to a sister. And well, there is a little bit of an end to the research route.

- Do you have any hypotheses?

-What Carazo told me: that Pelado Diego took Walsh's documents, had them and, as she tells me, handed them over to a relative. Maybe in a few days I can tell a little more. But, for now, that is the route of Walsh's documents that could not be recovered. Because many detainees managed to remove some, which served to reconstruct part of this story. But the stories are missing, which have to appear.

-There is one of the four unpublished ones that could be rebuilt.

-Of course. It is called “Juan was going by the river”, it is a wonder that is rebuilt thanks to Martín Gras and Lilia Ferreyra. Gras, detained at ESMA, sees these stories - which circulated within ESMA - and reads it, remembers it, repeats it, in the hope of being released at some point and, somehow, being able to account for what Walsh had written. And Lilia Ferreyra did the same, because she had read it with him many times, they had corrected it. They are in exile and Gras tells him “I saw the story Juan was going by river, the story began like this...”. She says to him “yes, it started like this and continued this way...” And between the two of them they rebuild a new version. He's the only one that could be recovered.

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