Argentine Rodolfo Walsh Gil would go down in Cuban history as the Prensa Latina journalist who deciphered the United States' secret messages for the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and who, disguised as a religious missionary, confirmed the existence of their training camps in Guatemala.
But, for Latin American history, in addition to being one of the founders of the Prensa Latina news agency, Walsh was also the journalist and uncompromising activist against the military dictatorship in Argentina. After returning to his country, he confronted it in Buenos Aires and died in combat with the soldiers who were trying to kidnap him. His body was never found.
Rodolfo Walsh would have turned 99 this January 9th, as he was born on that day in 1927 in Pueblo Nuevo, in the Argentine province of Río Negro, the son of Miguel Esteban Walsh and Dora Gill, both of Irish descent. At 17, he began working at Hachette Publishers as a translator and proofreader, and at 20, he started publishing his first journalistic pieces. In 1950, he met Elina Tejerina at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, who became the mother of his two daughters. They chose La Plata to live and raise María Victoria and Patricia. In 1953, he published his first book: “Variations in Red.”
His life is a clear example of political and human evolution. This change began to take place within him while he was writing “Operation Massacre.” In 1958, continuing along this line of work, he published the 32 articles that made up “The Satanowsky Case,” where he revealed the workings of the military intelligence services and their connection to the mainstream Argentine press.
In mid-1959, accompanied by Pompeé Blanchard, his partner at the time, he emigrated to Cuba, where he remained for two years. There, he participated in the founding of the Prensa Latina news agency alongside his fellow countryman Jorge Ricardo Masetti, in what was “the first Latin American agency to unsettle the Yankee monopolies.”
At PL, as Prensa Latina is known by its initials, he was its first head of Special Services at the Havana headquarters. There, little by little, he revealed Latin American reality to the world, increasingly exposing the imperialism at work there and its internal and external agents.
It was during this time that the journalist Walsh, with his characteristic gait, speech, and calm demeanor, disguised as a priest selling Bibles, managed to infiltrate the camps set up by the United States in Guatemala to train mercenaries, thus confirming the preparations for the invasion of Cuba.
After the mercenary invasion was defeated in Cuba, Walsh returned to Argentina that same year, where he remained a staunch defender of the Cuban revolutionary experience and with which he continued to collaborate through PL.
Around this time, his intellectual profile became more defined, and of all the professions he considered, he decided that writing was the one that satisfied him most. His plays "La Batalla" (The Battle) and "La Granada" (The Grenade) date from this period. He published "Los oficios terrestres" (Earthly Trades) in 1966, which includes the short story "Esa mujer" (That Woman), one of the most important in Argentine literature, and "Un kilo de oro" (A Kilo of Gold). He was already an established short story writer, and some critics in the region considered him superior to Jorge Luis Borges.
In 1967, a turning point occurred in his writing career, which he himself summarized with the following words: "It is impossible in Argentina to create literature detached from politics," and his political evolution drew him ever deeper into the national political arena.
In 1970, he was active in the Peronist grassroots movement, until 1973, during a dark period of dictatorship in his country, when he decided to join the Peronist guerrilla organizations FAP (Peronist Armed Forces) and the Montoneros, a Peronist political-military organization. Before that, he taught journalism in the shantytowns on the outskirts of Buenos Aires and edited the weekly newspaper, Semanario Villero. He was a pioneer of testimonial novels such as "Operación Masacre" (Operation Massacre), considered the first non-fiction novel, and "¿Quién mató a Rosendo?" (Who Killed Rosendo?).
After the coup d'état of March 24, 1976, he organized ANCLA (Agencia de Noticias Clandestina - Clandestine News Agency) in Argentina, and shortly thereafter Cadena Informativa (Information Network), through which he maintained alternative information channels to support a more effective popular resistance against the dictatorship.
He joined the Montoneros with the rank of second lieutenant and the alias Esteban. He joined the team that founded the newspaper Diario de Noticias, a publication that presented the views of his organization, and became its editor. He then wrote "History of the Dirty War in Argentina," a harrowing account of what was happening in the country.
On September 29, 1976, his eldest daughter, Vicky, also a 26-year-old Peronist Montonero militant and mother of a young daughter, died in a confrontation.
Rodolfo's life was drawing to a close, precipitated by the very errors he denounced in his organization, which had been infiltrated by double agents.