[In our issue of June 1, we published an account of the arrest of a group of guerrillas in Argentina. The following article contains additional details.]
The Argentinian dailies announced April 28 that a group of revolutionists had been arrested in the city of Rosario after carrying out an attack on a police station. From the outset the press talked about a "terrorist cell" named after Che Guevara, which was supposed to have participated previously in acts of urban armed struggle.
Another "cell" operated in different regions of the country, according to a dispatch from the Saporiti wire service published by La Razón, and was suspected of having organized the strike against the Campo de Mayo garrison. The campaign culminated May 7 with a press conference by Colonel Jorge Dotti, one of the heads of the federal police.
According to the newspaper accounts, the team of revolutionists attacked the Twentieth Police Precinct headquarters in Rosario. One of the attackers was in police uniform and armed with a machine gun. He pretended to be bringing a couple of youths in. As soon as the three were inside the police station, they ordered the cops present to line up against the wall and raise their hands. At the same time they yelled: "Don't move, stay quiet; we're not out to get you. We're after bigger fish, not poor slobs. We belong to the Commando Che Guevara [Che Guevara Commando Group]."
Without wasting any time, the members of the team started carrying off police uniforms, weapons, and ammunition. They left the station ten minutes later, after cutting the telephone wires, taking everything they had collected. They left the inscription, "arms to the people" on the wall and distributed a tract, according to the report in La Razón.
The tract, signed by the revolution- 548
ary commander Luis Norberto Blanco, supposedly proclaimed the organization's responsibility for two smallerscale attacks aimed at seizing guns from the police (one of the participants in these actions was arrested and reportedly admitted his involvement under torture).
After denouncing several cases of torture by a criminal investigation section of the police, the text concluded as follows: "The tide is beginning to turn and the time is not far off when it will run in favor of the oppressed, and they have a good memory. Every criminal, torturer, and corrupt official will have to make an accounting to an organized, armed, and firmly united people."
The attackers forgot to cut one wire, according to the police, and the cops were able to send out an alarm right away and mobilize a security squad in short order. Thus the commando team was caught while switching cars with all the material they had taken. A skirmish took place. But finally the group of revolutionists was captured, and others fell into the hands of the police later.
In the police press conference May 7, in which several heads of the federal police took part, Colonel Dotti declared that an investigation had established that the Rosario Commando team was linked to the PRT Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores — Revolutionary Workers party], which he described as "affiliated to the Trotskyist Fourth International, which is centered in Brussels and has a Latin- American headquarters in Bolivia. In our country this party has a Central Committee which meets clandestinely; an executive committee; a military apparatus; and cells in the provinces of Salta, Tucumán, Córdoba, Rosario, and Buenos Aires. The last named cell takes in the capital city as well as the province of Buenos Aires."
The colonel was informed of the origins of the organization and its development. "The PRT," he said, "was the product of a fusion between the organization called the Partido Obrero
(Workers party), which was active in the national capital and Greater Buenos Aires; and the Frente Revolucionario Indoamericano [FRIP— Indian- American Revolutionary Front], which advocated the Trotskyist ideology brought up to date on the basis of the brought up to date on the basis of the guerrilla tactics and theories developed in recent years by the Castroites and Maoists. ...
"The objectives of the PRT are to destroy our traditional system of government by using force in all its forms, such as terrorism, personal attacks, armed robbery, implanting guerrilla groups, etc. Once in power its aim is to establish a dictatorship."
The colonel apparently forgot that the regime, of which he is an agent, originated in a military coup d'etat and maintains itself by overt force without worrying about any democratic camouflage. It leaves its opponents no alternative but revolutionary struggle under conditions of the strictest clandestinity.
The Argentine police did not miss the occasion to charge the arrested revolutionists with all sorts of "crimes, going as far as to accuse them - against all the evidence- of having acted for personal motives.
Dotti claimed that the group captured was responsible for the following crimes: (1) stealing arms in August 1969 from a shop on the Calle Felipe Moré in Rosario; (2) stealing a vehicle and assaulting a Rosario policeman in 1969; (3) attempted robbery of a policeman late last October at the corner of Tres de Febrero and Rodriguez streets in Rosario; (4) attempted robbery of a policeman at the corner of Catamarca and Callo streets also in Rosario; (5) attacking a pay train on March 30, 1970, on the way from Rosario to Venado Tuerto; (6) attacking Precinct No. 20 in Rosario April 27; (7) stealing automobiles in Rosario at the end of 1969; (8) attacking Precinct No. 8 in Rosario in March of this year; (9) attacking the Gendarmería (Special Riot Police, at the corner of Vera Mujica and Virasoro streets in Rosario."
La Razón wrote: "In these actions the criminals managed to seize the total sum of 41 million pesos, plus a large quantity of firearms and uniforms. Colonel Dotti pointed out later that the objectives of these crimes were to acquire the necessary economic resources for: (a) getting arms; (b) buying vehicles to transport the members of the commando teams; (C) paying the rent of houses to serve as refuges for the commandos and providing the means for subsistence for the party members, who, since they were operating underground, had no other occupation or jobs.
"Regarding the attacks on military units or security forces, Colonel Dotti said that they had a twofold purpose. The first aim was to acquire a greater quantity of arms for the future development of guerrilla warfare. The second was to produce a psychological impact on the public, demonstrating the vulnerability [sic!] of the military and security forces and the party's ability to directly challenge the forces of order.
"The documents captured," Colonel Dotti continued, "show that the organization had the aim of replacing the courts, which they call corrupt, with people's courts based on the decisions of their own organs. Among their other objectives were kidnapping managers of plants with union conflicts and solving the problems of strikers, where strikes stretch out over a long period of time, by means of stealing food and later distributing it." (La Razón, May 8.)
According to the official communiqué, sixteen revolutionists have been arrested. Their names are as follows: Elvira Alba Dentesano, alias Veca, twenty-six years old, a clerk by occupation; Manuel Justo Gaggero, thirty years old, a lawyer; Francisco René Santucho, alias El Negro, forty-five years old, a merchant; Pedro Oscar Yáñez, thirty-two years old, a doctor; Mario Emilio Delfino, alias Cacho Fuentes, twenty eight years old, a technician; Manuel Indalecio Suarez, alias Pablo Herrera, thirty-nine years old, a bank clerk; Eden Gerardo Britos, alias Federico, twenty-seven years old; Rubén Oscar Suárez, alias Mario, twenty-three years old, metal worker; María del Huerto Figura de Caravantes, twenty-three years old, a philosophy student; Araceli Margarita Díaz, alias Silvia, twenty-six years old, lawyer; Emilia Susan Gaggero de Pujals, twenty-seven years old, a psychologist; José Mauricio Navarro, alias Chinchino, twenty-six years old, a bank clerk; Omar O. Electo Valderrama, twenty-five years old, a school teacher; Beatriz Pedernera, of Salta, a school teacher; Manuel Al- June 8, 1970
berto Navarro, alias Felipe, twentynine years old, a bank clerk.
During questioning, as is now the tradition of the Argentinian dictatorship, the prisoners were brutally tortured. A new procedure, recently adopted, facilitates such methods from the "legal" standpoint.
"Doctor Gustavo T. Soler appealed to the investigating judge to bring Mario Emilio Delfino and Manuel Alberto Navarro before him at once, personally verify their physical condition, and order them examined immediately by a court doctor," according to a dispatch printed in La Razón.
A press conference was held in Buenos Aires May 8 by the CGT de los Argentinos [Confederación General del Trabajo de los Argentinos — the Argentinian General Confederation of Labor] * and several personalities.
* The sector of the Argentine labor movement headed by Raimundo Ongaro and
Bolivia
The torture of the prisoners was publicly denounced. The initiators of this defense effort hope that a campaign of solidarity with the torture victims, of denouncing these barbaric methods, and in support of basic legal guarantees will develop throughout the world.
Letters and telegrams can be sent to the Argentinian embassies in the various countries and in Argentina to the Ministry of the Interior, the Suprema Corte de Justicia, and to the following organizations, all of which are located in Buenos Aires: the CGT de los Argentinos, Paseo Colón 731; Comisión Reorganizadora de la CGT, Azopardo 802; and the Mesa Nacional de las 62 Organizaciones at the same address; the Colegio de Abogados; and the Sociedad Argentina de Escritores.
May 15.
generally considered more militant than the other segments of the divided CGT.
Political Prisoners Still Being Held
La Paz
The members of the ELN [Ejército de Liberación Nacional - National Liberation Army, the guerrilla force formerly commanded by Che Guevara] and the POR [Partido Obrero Revolucionario - Revolutionary Workers party, the Bolivian section of the Fourth International] who were arrested in several Bolivian cities last year are still in prison, along with other activists arrested since 1967.
So far no trial has taken place and no date has been announced, which indicates that the authorities are having difficulty finding solid enough evidence from the legal standpoint. Only for a small number of activists did the judges decide a few months ago to grant bail. The charges, however, were not dropped.
General Ovando has suggested on several occasions that he has moved to extend clemency to Régis Debray - this was mentioned quite recently in the Rome weekly Espresso by the Italian writer Alberto Moravia who traveled to Bolivia last year and talked to the general. But so far there has been no practical result. In any case, freeing Debray without taking a similar step for the Bolivian prisoners would only be a diversionary maneuvre.
The Bolivian government must be made to realize that news of the fate of the prisoners rotting in its prisons is being published throughout the world. The immediate release of these prisoners must be demanded; demands must be made for their trial, trial in a civil court with all the basic legal guarantees, including the presence of an international panel of lawyers.
The activists still imprisoned are the following: Enrique Ortega Hinojosa, Julio Félix Melgar, Julio Dagnino Pacheco, Carlos Demiguel, Benigno Coronado, Oscar Edgar Busch, Antonio Moreno, Victor Córdova, Tomás Chambi, Gerardo Bermudez, Jorge Pool Alvarez Plata, Felipe Vásquez, Luis Pérez Saucedo, Gonzalo Orosa Bellido, Juan Sánchez Rocadado, Roberto Moreira Montecinos, Juan Rodrí- guez Guagama, Jurgens Schutt Mogro, Walter Pareja Fernández, Loyola Guzmán Lara, Terttu Tulikki de Oroza.