[Following the raid on the Córdoba headquarters of the PST, attorney Enrique Broquen went to Córdoba to represent the party in this case. When he returned to Buenos Aires, Avanzada Socialista asked him a number of questions. The interview that follows appeared in the October 15 issue of the paper. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
Question. When did your work begin in Córdoba?
Answer. As soon as I arrived, the first thing I and the compañero who accompanied me did was to go to central police headquarters. But they refused to see me.
Q. And then?
A. We went to try to talk with the Radical [petty-bourgeois liberal] bloc in the legislature. They did meet with us. The Radical legislators promised to introduce, in the state legislature, a formal question to the government minister about the reasons for the search of our headquarters. A meeting of the Radical parliamentary delegations, the chairman of the Frejuli [Frente Justicialista de Liberación Nacional- National Liberation Front for Social Justice] parliamentary delegation, and the minister took place, but it didn't have the character of a November 4, 1974
formal demand for an explanation. Nonetheless, [the minister] Dr. Garcia Laval met with us at his office.
Q. What was the up shot of that meeting?
A. We had a very long discussion. The minister explained to me that the search had been carried out on a verbal order issued by Judge Zamboni Ledesma, which was based on a charge of possessing arms in the headquarters and the suspicion that there were guerrillas taking refuge there. I told him that the compañeros had been subjected to mistreatment, and he stated his disapproval of such abuses. With respect to the arms found, I made it clear to him that we had verbal authorization from the minister of the interior to have whatever was necessary to defend our headquarters from possible attacks.
Q. What was the main topic of discussion with Garcia Laval?
A. Well, speaking as a minister, he assured me that the federal government was ready to make a distinction between the guerrilla organizations and the legal parties. But in view of what had happened, I asked him if it meant that we had to close our Córdoba headquarters. The minister assured me emphatically that it did not, that the government was willing to give us guarantees to the contrary.
A. Yes. At the same time more or less, we called a press conference to which we invited journalists to photograph the interior of the headquarters and some comrades who had cuts and bruises on their bodies.
*October 11, after the PST members had been held for about forty-eight hours.
Theater Bombed in Puerto Rico
A powerful bomb exploded at the Modelo Theater in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, in the early morning hours of October 8. The theater had been showing a week-long series of films in commemoration of the death of Ernesto Che Guevara, who was killed in Bolivia October 8, 1967, by U.S.-trained armed forces.
The film showing was sponsored by Tirabuzon Rojo, a film group associated with the Puerto Rican Socialist party (PSP).
The explosion, which occurred near the front entrance to the theater, partially destroyed the interior of the building and broke windows in many nearby stores. Police estimate the damage at several thousand dollars.
The theater is located only a few blocks away from the Rio Piedras campus of the University of Puerto Rico, which, as the country's largest college, is a center of proindependence activity.
Proindependence student leaders believe that the bombing was the work of gusanos, anti-Castro Cuban exiles, whohave carried out several such terror attacks in the past.
Earlier this year the offices and printing plant of Claridad, the PSP's twiceweekly newspaper, were attacked. The police in this U.S. colony have taken no effective action to stop those responsible for these and other attacks on supporters of the independence movement and the Cuban revolution.