In 1957, renowned journalist and militant Rodolfo Walsh published Operación Masacre (“Operation Massacre”), revealing the horrors of an execution carried out by police the previous year in José León Suárez, Buenos Aires province.

For 70 years, the massacre remained unpunished.

Operación Masacre would go on to become a landmark of Argentine literature and is widely regarded as the world’s first work of investigative nonfiction. 

One of its most famous lines still sends chills down readers’ spines: “Hay un fusilado que vive” — “There is a man who was executed who is still alive.”

Next week, that survivor, Juan Carlos Livraga, will witness the start of a “truth trial” seeking justice for him and the other victims for the first time. Now 94, he is the only one of the seven survivors of the massacre who is still alive.

Following an investigation launched in 2022, Federal Judge Alicia Vence of the San Martín federal court has ordered oral proceedings to establish the truth about what became known as the José León Suárez Massacre. The hearings will take place on June 17, 18 and 19.

As none of those accused of carrying out the executions are still alive, the proceedings will take the form of a “truth trial,” meaning no criminal convictions can be handed down. 

Instead, the court will examine whether the Argentine state committed crimes against humanity during the operation.

The trial also seeks to provide long-overdue reparation to the victims’ families and Livraga, the sole surviving victim, by establishing an official judicial record of the events after decades of impunity.

On the night of June 9, 1956, a group of neighbors gathered at an apartment in a working-class neighborhood of Vicente López, north of Buenos Aires City, to listen to a boxing match being broadcast from the iconic Luna Park stadium.

They sat around the radio until late into the evening, when a voice suddenly shouted from outside: “Police!”

At the same time as the........

© Buenos Aires Herald