TRAGIC EVENT IN ARGENTINA
In the afternoon of July 21 an explosion occurred in an apart-— ment building at 1168 Posadas St., which runs through a district in the north part of Buenos Aires. At first it was thought that escaping gas had ignited in an apartment, But the explosion was extraordinarily violent, Apartments on seven floors: and one below in the basement were completely destroyed, crashing in a heap of rubble, There were a number of dead and injured,
After the victims were cared for, city authorities brought in a bulldozer. Its blade hit some object and another explosion occurred, Experts then sifted through the rubble. They found 70 bombs, pistols, rifles, a radio transmitter, a number of topographical maps of areas in north-west Argentina and other equipment that guerrilla fighters ordinarily use. From further study, they concluded that the explosion had occurred in an apartment, one flight up. They estimated that probably between 150 and 250 kilos of explosives had been set off accidentally.
The police announced that four of the victims had been killed in the suspected apartment and that they were members of a guerrilla organization headed by Angel A. Bengochea, a former editor of Palabra Obrera, a well-known revolutionary~socialist periodical of Argentina,
The tragedy produced an immense sensation through the country. All the newspapers gave it front-page coverage, along with screaming headlines and pages of details. The Sunday magazine sections featured it in the most lurid way.
The police did not stop here, however. They raided homes of everyone suspected of belonging to the group, The newspapers were fed juicy details about the ramifications of the "Marxist conspiracy," .
Within a few days a nation-wide witch-hunt had begun, The. primary target, aside from Bengochea, who was rumored to have been killed, was the Palabra Obrera grouping and two of its leaders, Hugo M. Bressano and Ernesto Gonzalez,
On August 4, Nicolds Rodriguez, head of the federal police, issued a press release, listing a number of figures either formerly connected with Palabra Obrera (like Bengochea and the four victims of the explosion) or still active partisans of the socialist periodical, The newspapers gave this sensational coverage, running photographs of the many "fugitives from justice," who were said to have gone into hiding.
Palabra Obrera fought back vigorously. The day after the police chief's press release, Palabra Obrera made a public statement denying any connection whatsoever with either the explosion or those accused of being linked with it. What is involved, said Palabra Obrera, “is a typical maneuver of the repressive bodies to drag all the militants of the anti-imperialist left into incidents of this kind," The periodical. pointed: out that Bengochea had publicly resigned as its editor,
[Bengochea and his group, in fact, split from Palabra Obrera more than a year ago over the issue of guerrilla activities, The former editor of Palabra Obrera advocated “immediate direct action"; the majority of the grouping opposed guerrilla warfare or any other kind of violence if it involved isolated formations separated from the masses and the labor movement, |
The homes of Ernesto Gonzales and Hugo M, Bressano were raided by the police, -The two filed a protest with the Ministry of the Interior, In the protest they again stated that they had no connection with either the explosion or those who died in it. They questioned the “evidence" found by the police, but said that if it proved to be substantiated, it would only show that those implicated had followed a "mistaken ideology and a completely erroneous political conception,"
They added that they believed in taking full responsibility for one's political views and they therefore stated their own, ‘Two points were as follows: .
"At the end of the Peronist government, immediately after its fall, we were the only political sector that struggled against the coup d'état, and that declared it was necessary to create a workers militia against the forces of repression, both the 'gorillas! Ltop officer caste] and the Peronists due to their permanent antilabor and reactionary character. .
"Unoonditional defense for Socialist Cuba and Castroism as a movement of the new revolutionary Latin-American generation, We have
carried out this unconditional defense of Cuba and Castroism without slackening in the least although we consider the strategy of the Argentine Guevarists to be criminally wrong since they mechanically copy the guerrilla pattern of revolution and terrorism without at all taking into account the opinion and experience of the workers and the situation in each one of our countries,"
While highly oritical of -the political views that led Bengo~ chea and his group to split from Palabra Obrera, the periodical paid the four viotims of the explosion the highest tribute.
Lazaro S, Feldman, 26, was married, had two children, He was "the most priliiant Spokesman of the university vanguard" that broke from the ocapitalist-minded student movement and took up revolutionary socialism,
He was credited with bringing the student movement into connec~ tion with the trade-union movement of Argentina.
Until the time of the split, Palabra Obrera considered him "one of the most brilliant expounders of its Line and programmatic positions,"
"He could have enjoyed the advantages and income of an easy social position, He had no other ambition than that of struggling for the freedom of his country and the emancipation of its most oppressed sectors,
"In him could be seen the reflection of two almost parallel phenomena ~- on the one hand the triumph of the Cuban Revolution through an original and highly successful method; and, on the other hand, a decline in the working-class and student struggles of his own country.
"Feldmants course and sacrifice thus symbolized the lack of understanding of a sector of the revolutionary vanguard which, separated from the real, concrete struggle of the working class, did not succeed in becoming entgerated into the perspective of a new mobilization of the masses,
Hugo P, Santilli, 29, married, ‘two children, He came to the forefront in the student upsurge of 1958, He gained his degree as a doctor of medicine while turning toward the working class and its struggles, For a time he was a truck driver. .
An exceptional career was forecast for him as a doctor, but all his sympathies were with the poor to whom he offered all his talents, his medical abilities as well as his social vision,
Like Feldman, however, he could not wait in patience for the "rebirth of the labor and people's movement,"
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Raul Reig, 26, single, an engineering student, He decided to join the working class and took a job in a packing plant in Berisso, There he became an outstanding militant, active in the organization of union battles.
He was at his best in moments of intense activity. With a relative dip in the class struggle, he easily turned to methods which appeared more attractive than the difficult work of organizing a party deeply rooted in the masses,
Carlos Schiavello, 28, single, an engineering student, He was well known in the student movement as the head of the University Federation of La Plata.
During one of the great struggles in the country against the “gorillas,! he succeeded in linking up his campus with the tradeunion vanguard,
He was attracted to the socialist view and became a strong partisan of Palabra Obrera.
Like the other three, he became impatient over defeats suffered by the workers that slowed down the working-class movement and he decided to participate in trying to set up an “insurrectional center" that might help speed up things,
Despite its political differences with its four former partisans, Palabra Obrera declared that the working class, when it finally wins its victory, will scratch their names off the police blotter and place them in the history of the Argentine Revolution,