January 1989. Argentina’s fragile democracy is barely five years old. The country is still living in the shadow of a seven-year military dictatorship, characterised by severe state oppression and human rights abuses on one side, and left-wing guerrilla activity on the other.
In one of the most bizarre events in recent history, the rival factions would be pitted against one another one last time, in a brutal replay of the previous decade’s events.
On 23rd January 1989, a group of around 40 militants entered La Tablada army barracks on the outskirts of Buenos Aires in an attempt to ‘take’ the military base.
The attack ended in a bloodbath, with 28 of the insurgents killed, five disappeared and 13 imprisoned. Eleven police and military also died.
Twenty years on, questions are still unanswered and many of the events have been left unexplained.
The group, a faction of the MTP – a newly formed political party of leftist leaning – entered La Tablada under the leadership of Enrique Gorriarán Merlo, who was a guerrilla leader in the 1970s. Survivors claim they entered the barracks to put down an attempted coup d’etat that was being planned there.
Claudia Acosta, who participated in the attack and spent 14 years in jail as a result of it, said: “A lot of us had survived the 1970s and seen what happens when a military junta is in power. We would have been going backwards had we allowed the coup to happen.”
Roberto Felicetti, who was imprisoned until 2003 for his role in the attacks, added: “In hindsight I don’t know if what we did was right. But at the time people were really scared of a return to military rule, and we did what we thought was necessary.”
Historical Context
The democratic period came after one of the most turbulent periods in Argentina’s history, culminating in a seven-year military dictatorship, known as the Dirty War, a brutal period of oppression which led to some 30,000 disappearances and deaths.
When Raul Alfonsín took power in the 1983 elections he was forced to walk a tightrope. He had to balance the demands of those who wanted justice for the human rights violations of the previous decade to be recognised, whilst appeasing the military, who were still powerful.
The weakness of his position was highlighted in the first of three military uprisings, in 1987. Known as the Easter Rebellion, Lt. Col. Aldo Rico led the revolt from the Campo de Mayo infantry school. This came off the back of a smaller rebellion a week before when a major wanted for human rights violations and torture took refuge in a regiment in Córdoba. Alfonsín reacted by calling people to the streets to defend the democratic institutions. Two hundred thousand people rallied on Plaza de Mayo and Alfonsín made a public statement that no concessions would be made, causing the revolt to fizzle out. However, within days, Rico’s uprising occurred. The rebels were known as carapintadas, special forces who painted their faces.
Alfonsín went to Campo de Mayo to meet the troops and put down the rebellion, leaving supporters in the square. He returned after three hours and said the revolt had been quelled, to the delight of the crowds.
In order to do this though, the president had negotiated a deal, extending immunity to include generals under the law of Due Obedience (a law that granted lower-ranking officers amnesty from atrocities committed during the Dirty War, as they were deemed to be following orders). Many cases were dropped, and human rights organisations felt let down.
Less than a year later, in January 1988, Rico escaped custody and staged a second revolt in Monte Caseros, in the north of Argentina. It was accompanied by uprisings around the country. This time senior officers loyal to the government quashed the rebellion quickly.
Then, on 3rd December 1988, a third uprising took place. It was led by Mohammed Alí Seineldín, and again took place at Campo de Mayo. Alfonsín’s put down of the revolt was met with conditional compliance from the military, who allowed the rebels to move to different barracks. The uprising led to mass demonstrations and was denounced by most parties.
It is against this backdrop that the events at La Tablada occurred.
From December 1988 the MTP sustained there was going to be a coup. On 12th January two members of the party, Javier Baños and Francisco ‘Pancho’ Provenazo, made a public statement to such effect. Pancho also met with the interior minister, but to no avail. The government didn’t take the threat seriously.
The MTP also tried to convince the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (a human rights organisation comprised of mothers of the disappeared) of the imminent coup. But the Mothers didn’t heed their warnings, and believed the MTP were being set up – a theory that has since been dismissed.
According to Gorriarán Merlo in his memoirs, they felt no one was listening, and as a result decided to take matters into their own hands.
Thus, at 6am on Monday 23rd January, the group of militants entered La Tablada, believing it to be the headquarters of the coup plots, and attempted to take the barrack.
Eduardo Longoni, a photojournalist who documented the day’s events, witnessed what happened next. Around 8.30am he recalls hearing on the radio that something had happened at the barracks, although at that time it was believed to be another army revolt led by a group of carapintadas.
Arriving at 11am, Longoni says that even at that time the violence was such that he realised it was not another internal army rebellion, as there were never shots fired. The situations were always negotiated peacefully until resolved.
“But this was infernal,” he says.
Longoni positioned himself on a roof terrace opposite the barracks with his camera and started documenting what happened.
“Around noon the tanks arrived. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, what was happening. I had never seen a tank be fired. It was incredible. I genuinely believed we might all be killed. The level of violence was horrific.”
But, as he discovered the next day, what he was able to see was just a fraction of the devastation that had occurred. Allowed to enter with other journalists, he was taken round the barracks.
“I have had nightmares over what I saw there. It was absolutely terrible. I didn’t understand anything…it was mind blowing.”
The dead were still where they had fallen. Some bodies had been rolled over by tanks and others blown up. It looked like a war zone.
Disproportionate Response
In the aftermath of the events, the army’s handling of the situation was openly questioned.
Many have spoken out of how the military’s response to the taking of the barracks was slow until word trickled out that it was not another carapintada uprising, but a guerrilla attack.
And as a result two enemy groups from a decade before were thrown together, armed. It was like a nightmare repetition of the events of the 1970s, but with guerrillas voluntarily entering the barracks, directly into the enemy’s lair.
Longoni describes his disbelief even today that the group had managed to convince themselves they could generate enough popular support to put down a coup by entering a barrack. “They were not young, and they were professional and knew what they were doing. But what did they really think was going to happen?”
And as soon as the military realised it was not their own soldiers they were dealing with, around midday on 23rd January, the use of force grew, with phosphorous bombs used to bring the situation back under the armed forces’ control.
During the afternoon of 23rd January, DyN news agency received a call from a woman inside the barracks, who said, “they’re massacring us.”
No civilian judge was outside of the barracks asking for the surrender of the rebel group, as had been the case in the three previous uprisings. There are even indications that the group were not allowed to surrender, and, according to survivors, would have done.
Others commented how with tear gas, they could have got everyone out in two hours. Reiterating this idea of excessive force, the former head of the army, Martín Balza, was the first from within the military to talk of the heavy-handed response in his memoirs: “There was a lot of confusion which meant an excessive time was taken in recuperating the barracks, leading to a high number of casualties and the unnecessary destruction of the barrack.”
Later, the true extent of the human rights violations would come to light.
Gorriarán Merlo puts the situation concisely in his autobiography, saying four emblems of state terrorism that had existed in the previous decade again reared their head in the aftermath of the attack on La Tablada. Only this time in broad daylight, under the guise of democracy. He cites them as being torture, killing of prisoners, disappearances and the detonation of bodies.
There is evidence that some MTP members listed as dead were summarily executed after having surrendered. Others were tortured and held incommunicado. Others were disappeared.
Longoni himself has photographic evidence of this – his picture of two prisoners, Iván Ruiz and José Diaz, appeared on the cover of many newspapers and magazines at the time. The photo depicts the two militants outside having clearly surrendered. They were never seen again.
Some MTP survivors say only eight of them had been killed by midday, and the remaining deaths happened later, during the bombing of the barracks and executions that took place after.
Twenty years later, there remain five disappeared. Two corpses have never been identified as they were detonated and the bodies virtually destroyed. Three others are unaccounted for.
The government at the time failed to investigate the extrajudicial executions and torture, and failed to ensure a fair trial to the defendants. Amnesty International sent observers to the trials, and noted how facts and due process had been lost, and complaints of torture ignored.
Roberto Felicetti, for example, was brought to court with two broken arms, something the judge ignored despite his pleas.
Finally, 20 years later these things are being investigated. In October 2008, president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner signed a decree authorising a federal judge unrestricted access to state intelligence, police and army files related to the disappearances.
Analysis
Despite the human rights violations and disproportionate military response to the attack, one other area needs to be investigated: What did the group who attacked La Tablada believe could possibly be the outcome of their actions?
Claudia Hilb, a sociologist and professor who published an investigation into the attack on La Tablada, believes she has an explanation as to what went on that day.
“They weren’t planning to put down a coup. They were creating the false image of a coup, to set the scene, but were planning to take the barracks and from there start a revolution.”
She points out that many of those involved in MTP were also in Nicaragua at the end of the 1970s and participated in the Sandinista revolution. Hilb believes that they were trying to bring such a revolution to Argentina, and through the revolution cast out the military once and for all.
But why would they do this, and how had they managed to delude themselves that this was actually possible?
“They had lost all notion of reality,” she explains. “They were looking for a revolution. They had no notion of democracy, so for them it didn’t matter that it was happening in a time of democracy. The war mentality was totally ingrained.”
In light of the historical context, Hilb’s argument seems more plausible. The country had been polarised for decades, with two conflicting ideologies running through many sectors of society. Perhaps it wasn’t just the armed forces that had problems reconciling themselves with the reality of democracy, and all its imperfections.
It could be argued that the two sides needed one another to exist, and in the absence of a real military threat, one was created by the MTP to justify their attack.
The survivors strongly deny this was the case, but rumours persist of a pact that was made to use the story of the coup should things go wrong.
However, it is unlikely anyone beyond those directly involved will ever fully understand what happened at La Tablada 20 years ago. It will remain a mystery, remembered more than anything as being the last confrontation between the military and the guerrillas, one that occurred out of context, in a time of democracy.
As Longoni says: “A lot of the time my photos explain something, or help put a story in context. But not in this case.”
