Open Letter of Rodolfo Walsh to the Military in response to the dictatorship

The image presented the original version of “Cartas Abiertas de Rodolfo Walsh a la Militar”. This letter for the Argentine military was written by Rodolfo Walsh in 1977 during the last dictatorship by the military government. He was a journalist before he was assassinated by the Argentine military. He had been an activist for justice and human rights through journalism. Before writing this letter to the military, he wrote a famous investigative non-fiction novel called Operation Massacre that revealed the Peronist uprising in 1956 and testimonies, which revealed illegality of the second last military dictatorship against President Perón.

Walsh wrote this open letter because he wanted to uncover the truth and protest against the military regime (1976-1983). He used this letter to reflect on how much the whole country had changed over one year when the dictatorship started. Even though he targeted specifically towards the military, his open letter became a concrete evidence to present to all Argentines and the world. In the letter, he showed anger and dissatisfaction with the military government. We could see the oppression, cruelty, loss of democracy and human rights abuse during the last dictatorship. Walsh started the letter by talking about censorship, prosecution of the intellectuals and search of his house in Tigre from his personal experience as a journalist but writing clandestinely. Then, he reported the data: 15,000 disappeared people, 10, 000 prisoners and 4000 dead people. There were many concentration camps across countries, where judges, lawyers, journalists and international observers could not enter and see. To reveal the tortures and massacres during the dictatorship, Walsh reported that from the March to October of 1976, 25 dead bodies were floating on the coast of Uruguay, which those dead bodies came from Argentina. Moreover, Walsh presented how the workers had reduced salaries by 40% while the price skyrocketed 7 times from an economic perspective. The military government proposed for economic reform as the main goal of dictatorship, but things went worse during the process. This primary source showed that many Argentines lived under strong oppression, human rights abuse, economic and social crisis under the military dictatorship from many evidences provided by Walsh.

This letter was considered as one of the significant letters in the Argentine history and Peronist resistance against the military dictatorship. Nowadays, historians and researchers who have interest in studying the military dictatorship reference Walsh’s letter as a primary source. This open letter is one of the strong resources to show the brutality and abuse from the last military dictatorship by presenting large number of disappeared people, prosecutions, illegal detentions and massacres. There are other direct evidences, such as missing children that were adopted by different families and human rights organizations such as “Las Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo” that are still looking for their grandchildren until now. People might disagree with Walsh’s arguments and defend by saying that those arrested people were terrorists and communists in Argentina. For instance, the militant President Vielda in the December of 1979 tried to avoid and defend the military dictatorship by stating the necessity to fight the domestic conflict and terrorism, all his arguments could not support his position in a press conference. Despite the opposing responses to the brutality of military dictatorship, the truth and fact are presented with many real evidences. Rodolfo Walsh’s open letter to the Argentine military raised a question of what human rights abuse is, as he revealed the brutality, oppression, tortures and illegal detentions that had done by the Argentine military and foreign intervention. This elicits everyone to think about what a real democracy is and how valuable democracy is.

Bibliography

“La última carta de Rodolfo Walsh”, Revista Haroldo. Revista del Centro Cultural de la Memoria Haroldo Civil, revision Jan 28 2020, https://revistaharoldo.com.ar/nota.php?id=194

Aunguita, Eduardo & Cecchini, Daniel, “El periodista que le preguntó a Videla por los desaparecidos y la indignante repuesta del dictador”, Infoabe, published July 4 2019, https://www.infobae.com/sociedad/2019/07/04/el-periodista-que-le-pregunto-a-videla-por-los-desparecidos-y-la-indignante-respuesta-del-dictador/