‘We have arrested one of the fundamental pieces of subversion in the country’: The construction of the figure of the enemy in police memos of 1975 following the arrest of Marcos Osatinsky

‘Hemos detenido a una de las piezas fundamentales de la subversión en el país’: La construcción de la figura del “enemigo” en los memos policiales de 1975 tras la detención de Marcos Osatinsky

‘Prendemos uma das peças fundamentais da subversão do país’: A construção da figura do inimigo nos memorandos policiais de 1975 após a prisão de Marcos Osatinsky

Abstract

In the following article, I investigate the modes of construction of a specific subjectivity in the 1970s in Argentina: the figure of the enemy at the onset of the last civic-military dictatorship in the country. To achieve this, I focus on the arrest of Marcos Osatinsky, head of the Montoneros organisation, in Córdoba in August 1975. I analyse the how his arrest was handled by the security forces, based on police memoranda that refer to this event, available for consultation in the Archivo Provincial de la Memoria [Provincial Memory Archive]. I inquire how the Córdoba police functioned in the 1970s, and how what happened to Osatinsky was reflected in the writing practices of the police through police memos, in order to understand how the figure of the subversive was constructed in this handling of the facts.

Keywords:
Subjectivity; Subversive; Dictatorship; Police

Resumen

En el presente artículo indagamos en los modos de construcción de un sujeto específico en la década del 70 en Argentina: la figura del enemigo en los albores de la última dictadura cívico militar en el país. Para ello nos centramos en la detención de Marcos Osatinsky, jefe de la organización Montoneros, en agosto de 1975 en Córdoba. Analizamos el tratamiento realizado en torno a su detención por las fuerzas de seguridad a partir de los memos policiales elaborados que refieren a dicho acontecimiento disponibles para su consulta en el Archivo Provincial de la Memoria. Describimos el funcionamiento de la policía de Córdoba en los 70, el modo en que se plasmó lo ocurrido con Osatinsky en las prácticas de escritura de la policía mediante los memos policiales, para comprender así cómo se construía en ese modo de tratamiento de los hechos la figura del subversivo.

Palabras claves:
Sujeto; Subversivo; Dictadura; Policía

Resumo

No presente artigo investigamos os modos de construção de uma subjetividade específica na década de 70 na Argentina: a figura do inimigo no alvorecer da última ditadura cívico-militar no país. Para isso, nos concentramos na prisão de Marcos Osatinsky, chefe da organização Montoneros, em agosto de 1975 em Córdoba. Analisamos o tratamento dado à sua prisão pelas forças de segurança com base nos memorandos policiais elaborados que se referem ao referido evento disponíveis para consulta no Arquivo Provincial da Memória. Perguntamos sobre o funcionamento da polícia de Córdoba nos anos 70, a maneira como o que aconteceu com Osatinsky se refletiu nas práticas de redação da polícia por meio de memorandos policiais, a fim de entender como essa forma de tratar os fatos a figura do subversivo.

Palavras-chave:
Subjetividade; Subversiva; Ditadura; Polícia

The guerrilla leader: An introduction and a brief profile of Marcos Osatinsky

The profile of Marcos Osatinsky, as it appears in the Memorial Virtual Presentes [Presentes Virtual Memorial] of the Archivo Provincial de la Memoria (APM) [Provincial Memory Archive]¹ marks his date of birth on 6 October, 1933, in San Miguel de Tucumán. Married to Sara Solarz, he was a public accountant and had two sons: José and Mario. He joined the Communist Party of Tucumán and then joined the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias [Revolutionary Armed Forces] and the Montoneros², the latter was the last organisation of which he was a member. The profile narrates Osatinsky’s first arrest on 29 December, 1970, when he was detained after attempting a golpe comando [commando attack]³, at the branch of the Bank of Córdoba located on Avenida Fuerza Aérea in the city of Córdoba.

In 1972, Osatinsky participated in the so-called Fuga de Trelew [Trelew Escape]⁴ and went into exile in Chile and then in Cuba. Upon returning to Argentina, he actively participated in the lucha revolucionaria [revolutionary struggle]. Osatinsky was kidnapped on 9 August, 1975, in the Alberdi neighbourhood of the city of Córdoba. He was held captive in the Centro Clandestino de Detención, Tortura y Extermino (CCDTyE) [Clandestine Centre for Detention, Torture and Extermination], Departamento 2 de Informacións de la Policía de Córdoba (D2) [Information Department 2 of the Córdoba Police]. Finally, he was killed on 21 August during a transfer to prison. Subsequently, his corpse was stolen and appeared dynamited, in mid-September 1975.

In the following article, I investigate the modes of construction of a specific subject in the 1970s in Argentina: the enemigo [enemy] at the onset of the last civic-military dictatorship in the country. To achieve this, I focus on the arrest of Marcos Osatinsky, head of Montoneros, in Córdoba in 1975. I analyse how his detention by the security forces was handled based on public memoranda that refer to this fact, available at the APM. The article focuses on how the Córdoba police functioned in the 1970s and the way in which what happened to Osatinsky was reflected in police writing practices through memoranda, in order to understand how the figure of the enemigo was constructed in this handling of the facts. To address these issues, I argue that

archives, collections and traditions are not given, neutral or static entities, but rather, even in cases of the representation of great power (such as, for example, the national archives in France, or the Archivo de Indias [Archive of the Indies] in Spain), they compose sets of specific social relations. (Da Silva Catela 2002: 197)

Thus, unravelling the specific social relations materialised in the documents allows us to investigate not only the state agency at the time of their constitution, but also the agency that these documents possess, from which it is not only possible to reconstruct the modes of signification of subjections and subjects - in this case of a specific criminal subject, the enemigo or subversivo [subversive] -, but also provide an account of the constitution of the state agents who composed them, entangled in the specific relationships and coordinates of the time.

As documents of the state, and considering that a state exists in part because of what it generates through the very act of writing (Muzzoppappa & Villalta 2011) working on the documentation produced by administrative bureaucracies (in this case, police bureaucracy) transforms it into an ethnographic tool that enables access to one of the ways in which state power is exercised ‘in its capacity to transform and generate’ (2011: 18). Correspondingly, analysis of this documentation enables us to perceive one of the forms of the state’s sovereign exercise through one of its means of the execution of power, generating certain types of subjects that respond to specific socio-political contexts.

Similarly, it is worth noting that this documentation has actuated in the present as evidence - including probative evidence in instances of crimes against humanity carried out in Argentina - even when different intrigues of state operations in the 1970s were known, highlighting the relevance of studies on the state in the prolegomena of the dictatorship in intimate relationship with its bureaucracies and administrations (Sarrabayrouse Oliveira 2011; Mora 2008; Villalta 2010).

The Córdoba Police in 1975 and how the Information Department functioned

This article investigates the documentation produced by the police surrounding the arrest of Osatinsky, considering the agency of the documents and their effects on the construction of a specific subject, the enemigo or subversivo, and on the constitution of state agents producing such documentation, in a given social and political era.

Therefore, it is important to begin with a definition of a state that facilitates support for these inquiries. The state is understood as

A heterogeneous set of institutions, both ancient and recent, managed and inhabited by agents moulded in strongly corporate and hierarchical modes and habits of work and belonging. They are institutions registered in the long-term, regarding their structures, the constitution and arrangement of the members, and the rules and regulations that organise them. (Tiscornia et al. 2014: 49)

Likewise, it is understood that in Latin America and particularly in Argentina, even in periods of dictatorship, the state was constantly linked to forms of the exercise of power where the institutions of repression and control (which form part of the state itself) were concerned with moulding and shaping subjects and domesticating bodies, among other issues. These management and production procedures for restrictions were also encouraged in the preparation and circulation of specific documents, produced to be read within the institution (memos or police memoranda) or to be made known publicly (decrees and regulations).

This is a summons to return to the events that occurred in Córdoba in the late 1960s and early 1970s to account for how the police had a nodal presence in the construction of a particular type of subject, the enemigo, as I intend to show in the Osatinsky case.

If there is something that has historically characterised Córdoba in the national imaginary, it is its pre-eminence in the political and social map of Argentina, particularly in the 1960s and 70s. The emergence of the people of Córdoba in the public space, a territory of demonstration, confrontation and conflict resolution (Castells 1986; Žizek 1994; Lynch 1981; Cohen 2002), meant that since the 1960s - particularly after the Cordobazo⁵ at the end of the 1960s and the Viborazo⁶ in the early 1970s -, repressive forces began to maintain an ever-greater presence in the province.

With an epochal climate marked by riots and confrontations over the exercise of power - and violence - between the different militant organisations and state organs, on 27 February, 1974, the provincial police revolted. Both police and armed civilians took control of the city and began persecuting political and union leaders.

In this context, the then Chief of Police of the Province of Córdoba Navarro⁷ arrested Governor Obregón Cano⁸ and Vice Governor Atilio López⁹ using the argument of ‘controlling the forces enrolled in the far left who were going to cause a complete torrent’ (Servetto 1999: 107). The condemnation of political disorder fell on the provincial authorities from the national government, who had tolerated the presence of disturbing elementos [elements] and had fomented conflict situations (Servetto 1999), causing Córdoba to be viewed as a foco infeccioso [infectious focus], a node of the social upheavals of the period (Servetto 2004: 146).

In an interview with a local channel in 1974, Colonel Navarro stated that

I think it was the only thing that could be done at the time. You should know in your capacity as a journalist, that here in Córdoba a plan had been launched to turn Argentina into a socialist homeland, and Córdoba into the capital of the socialist homeland, through the articulations expressed by one of the main organisers of the project, union leader Agustín Tosco¹⁰.

According to data provided by the APM in the Registro de Extremistas [Registry of Extremists]¹¹, I found that 1,139 arrests were recorded from 3 February, 1974, to 30 December, 1974. This implies a notable increase in relation to 1973, in which 530 arrests were registered from 1 January, 1973, to 3 February, 1974¹².

In view of this increase in arrests carried out by the Córdoba Police in 1974, I assume that they established themselves as key actors in the functions of the control and detention of militants, generating in turn management practices over their bodies - through legal and clandestine detentions, interrogations followed by torture (or vice versa) - that signified warning and disciplinary modes for those associated with actions considered subversive.

These processes of population management through control and punishment had their correlates in decrees and regulations. Thus, in September 1974, following the federal intervention of the province and the appointment of Lacabanne¹³, a project was launched that began acquiring characteristics of a systematic plan. In this context, Decreto Secreto [Secret Decree] no. 261¹⁴ was signed, which authorised the army to neutralise and annihilate elementos subversivos [subversive elements] in the province of Tucumán and which was extended to Córdoba. A few months later, and seeing that the problem of subversion was becoming more generalised, another decree by the Poder Ejecutivo Nacional [Executive Branch], no. 2770/1975 of 6 October, 1975, constituted the Consejo de Seguridad Interior y el Consejo de Defensa [Internal Security Council and the Defence Council] (Ortiz 2019)¹⁵.

The panorama changes, repressive practices harden: The arrival of Telleldin at the D2

Since mid-1975, kidnappings, detentions and torture began to multiply. Mentions of acts of violence became recurrent in the newspapers of Córdoba, with headlines such as: ‘Serious acts of terrorist violence became clear in Córdoba’¹⁶, ‘Two dead in confrontation in Chacras de la Merced’¹⁷, ‘Panic in the city. Two policemen killed in extremist attack’¹⁸, ‘In dramatic shootout three guerrillas died, two policemen wounded’¹⁹, ‘Deep grief at funeral of 5 policemen killed by extremists’²⁰, ‘New shootings in the city: One policeman & one extremist killed’²¹, ‘Body found with bomb and bullet mutilations identified’²², ‘Body of man who was kidnapped identified’²³.

In the brief articles referred to, no details were spared when recounting how the bodies were found and several of them contained images of the faces of the murdered or their names and ages. As October 1975 approached, images of faces that referred to people’s identities (Le Breton 2008) began to disappear. Deaths were counted, but not explained. The press considered them understandable and justified. It was unnecessary to identify the culprits since those killed were responsible for their own deaths and deserved to die for the good of society (Gamarnik 2017: 25-26).²⁴

The mention of police, guerrilleros [guerrillas] and extremistas [extremists] as the protagonists of acts of violence enabled an account of the diversity of actors who made use of violence at the local level in 1975, while disputing the legitimacy of its exercise by both sides, in a rupture of civilisational contracts (Elías 2000) The presence of armed organisations, para-statal and para-police commandos and the different modes of violence by the state, helped devise this rationalisation. What was now in dispute was who exercised violence and its meanings. But what about the state police forces?

According to the data provided by the APM in the Registro de Extremistas, the arrests administratively referenced in the D2 began to increase in 1975 in relation to 1974, and even in relation to 1976. The data indicate that for the year 1975, 1254 arrests were recorded from 1 January 1975 to 29 December 1975, exceeding the figures for 1974, while from 1 January 1976 to 29 December 1976, 747 arrests were recorded²⁵.

In August 1975, Commissioner Telleldin took charge of D2. Telleldin was charged with incorporating both police personnel and civilians belonging to the Alianza Anticomunista Argentina (AAA)²⁶ into the repressive structure that was being set up. From that point on, the police brigades operated in coordination with operational groups of Detachment 141, under the command of Héctor Pedro Vergez. The members of both agencies gave rise to the Comando Libertadores de América [Liberators of America Command], which acquired a notorious presence given an exponential growth in murders and the number of victims, highlighting the treachery of the acts carried out, as well as the exhibition and the signature (Segato 2013) regarding the events that gained notoriety in the public space.

The Córdoba Province Department of Information D2 - historically linked to political persecution in the 1950s and 60s, and more systematically from 1972 onwards - was located on Pasaje Santa Catalina in the city of Córdoba, where the APM and the Comisión Provincial de la Memoria [Provincial Commission of Memory] are currently located.

Córdoba Province Decreto del Poder Ejecutivo [Executive Branch Decree] no. 1047/72, issued by Rear Admiral Guozden, sought to regulate the organisation and functioning of the Police Information Department. The purpose of D2 was to collect, process and disseminate all activity that enables them to understand the real situation of criminal organisations operating in the province.²⁷ This decree organised the police personnel of D2 into divisions and sections whose purpose was to obtain and manage information in different areas.

The paradox of this space is that it was established in 1975 as a CCDTyE, while retaining its character as a state dependency and, in some manner, public; a place where citizens sought protection, shelter, characteristics that the police conventionally present (Sirimarco 2017; Tiscornia 1999). This mention not only accounts for the dual nature of the space, but also of those who composed it. The dual nature, legal and clandestine, of state agents who fulfilled functions related to control, as its armed wing, while exercising repressive illegal practices as members of the brigades commanded by Vergez.

Regarding the functioning of D2 during those years, one of the voices that allows us to understand it is that offered by Charlie Moore in an interview conducted by Miguel Robles, published in the book La Búsqueda [lit. The Search] (2010). A former member of the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo [People’s Revolutionary Army], who spent 6 years sequestered by D2 - from 1974 to 1980 - Moore knew how it worked in detail²⁸.

Moore reported that during his work at D2 there were different categories of political prisoners. At the time of admission, if a person was subjected to a summary, they automatically became a detenido [detainee]. Although being a detainee did not guarantee survival, it meant a halo of hope since the summary implied a search, a bureaucratic trail that could imply entry into the legal system, then they remained available to the justice system. If the person was not prosecuted and therefore there was no record of their detention, then they were a prisionero [prisoner]. As the dictatorship loomed, irregularities within the institution deepened, such that ever-greater number of prisioneros were detained and the number registered in state documents decreased. At this point it is relevant to consider that

bureaucratic practices and tasks reflect the capacity of the organisation of groups and sectors, and are the form of expression and communication of politics, the materialisation of legal norms and the embodiment of the structures of limitation of absolute power, of an authority capable of knowing and resolving everything. (Di Liscia & Soprano 2017: 9)

In this sense, bureaucracies organise the administrative practices, groups, sectors and, with them, specific ways of being in the world where each subject structured in a certain way corresponds to a specific place and, sometimes, a previously determined destiny.

It is understood that these modes of management and generation of subjects were characterised by a process where the passage from detenido to prisionero meant a transition from ‘visibilisation’ to ‘invisibilisation’ (Foucault 1971) between 1975 and 1976, implying its correlate in the documentation produced in the system that certain subjects had or did not have. In 1975, procedures still existed that enabled what happened to certain people to be made visible: they were arrested - which established a way of blanqueo²⁹ [lit. laundering] where someone who had passed through a clandestine space was moved to a place where there was a record of detention (Montero 2019) - and then released or killed in an intento de fuga [escape attempt] or in a planned enfrentamiento [confrontation]. This process continued to give way to the ‘invisibilisation’ of these people through the figure of the disappeared (Gatti 2011; Da Silva Catela 2001; Calveiro 2004).

Thus, I argue that the bureaucratic practices analysed contributed not only to the processes of the state’s management of people’s lives through specific forms of control, but also enabled a ‘visibility’ that corresponds to what is sayable - in this case materialised in the writing, in the registry of detained persons - and that is determined in the narrative possibilities of that which is observed. Indeed, it constructs that which is observed in the way it is named: they were detained for being subversive.

The arrest of one of the fundamental pieces of subversion in the country: Osatinsky’s arrest in August 1975

Ortiz (2019) performed an exhaustive analysis of the Memorándums y Radiogramas de la Policía Federal Argentina [Memoranda and Radiograms of the Argentine Federal Police] based in Córdoba that are digitised in the APM. This documentary corpus was produced between 1974 and 1982. Included among these documents is information that circulated internally regarding army and police procedures on everything considered to be subversion: from the background records of political detainees to the activities of parties, student organisations and unions (Ortiz 2019).

Ortiz argues that certain practices in documentary production have been maintained since the 1950s. For example, the structure of the memoranda of the documentary collection analysed, in its monthly panorama organised by factors (political, union, economic, etc.) repeated this systematic practice in the bureaucratic generation of intelligence (Ortiz 2019: 145). On the one hand, this bureaucratic action speaks to us concerning the interests of state agents, that is, knowing in detail certain factors in order to have a complete picture of where and how to act. On the other hand, the narrative modes present in the memoranda enable an account of the way in which these bureaucratic practices acquired their own agency when defining and shaping certain subjects and practices of subjection in Córdoba in the 1970s, as becomes evident in the Osatinsky case.

Regarding the structure of the memoranda, the header has a stamp that says RESERVADO [EYES ONLY] and below this the title of the document reads: MEMORANDO del jefe de la delegación Córdoba al jefe de la Dirección General del Interior [MEMORANDUM from the head of the Córdoba delegation to the head of the General Directorate of the Interior], that is, who sends it to whom - it could also be a Deputy Commissioner or someone else, and their personal names are almost never indicated. The data of the place, the date and document number follow. Immediately below is a brief reference concerning what it is about, and then the body of the text with the shared information.

The documentation worked is available in the research area of the APM³⁰, according to the route that a series of documents must take when entering the institution. In regard to this, María, the APM director, in an interview conducted on 15 December, 2021, that took place in her office, stated that when the staff found the documentary material, in some cases it required someone from the judiciary to accompany them in the search and withdrawal of the documentation, while in others, this dynamic was not necessary. The former occurred numerous times when touring police stations in Córdoba, where police personnel were reluctant to deliver the requested documentation. ‘Institutions are people too’, María stated. Thus, more than to the letter of the law, the modes of access to documents and permits were also subject to the names and surnames of the actors in charge of these spaces, considering that the network of personal relationships certainly becomes a structural factor of what may or may not be possible in certain places (Sarrabayrouse Oliveira 1999).

It is also important to emphasise that these documents are constituted as sources of power, not only due to their agency in the formation of types of subjects, but also because they configure a space in the dispute of meanings, acquiring relevance as evidentiary documentation (Da Silva Catela 2007; Muzzopappa & Villalta 2011). The documents then enter into a double juxtaposed configuration, in which they are constructed through power relations, while also being a constitutive vector of those same relations. It is based on this that, in part, it becomes possible to think about the powers of transformation and agency that these documents possess (Muzzopappa & Villalta 2011).

On one occasion when I arrived at the research area to consult with Ana, one of the staff, concerning the Osatinsky documents, she replied, ‘Ah, you mean the victim’s folder’³¹, which was striking to me since I had never heard of these folders. When I asked María about it, in her interview, she told me:

The victims’ folders.... uh... For example, we gave a person his photo and his [extremist] registry book (...) and then for whatever reason that person needed the documentation again and all the work had to be done over, so we began to put together what are now these victim folders and that’s when the criteria began to shift. I’m going to tell you things that are obvious, but that, in the dark, were not so obvious. Disappeared, one thing. Murdered, something else. Former political prisoner, something else again. Survivor of a clandestine concentration centre, another. Politically persecuted, yet another. That’s how the victims’ folders were pieced together. (Interview recorded 15 December 2021. APM)

In Osatinsky’s case, the documents that compose his victim folder, named ‘Osatinsky Schlosberg Marcos’ are digitised in their entirety. Inside this folder, I found the following subfolders:

Folder docket 03967

• Contains 41 scanned images

Folder docket R576 by Emilio Casas

• Contains 3 images

Journal folder

• Contains 3 newspaper clippings

Photo folder

• Contains 2 photos

Folder with infantry archives

• Contains 2 files

Folder with Osatinsky’s identity docket 1021

• Contains 10 files

Memo folder

• Contains 21 images

Memos folder - Osatinsky

• Juventud Universitaria Peronista [Peronist University Youth] actions subfolder

• Fall subfolder

• Panorama August 1975 subfolder (contains 21 files)

• Corpse theft subfolder

• Requested murder subfolder (contains 5 files)

Morgue folder

• Morgue subfolder 15 Oct 1975

• Morgue subfolder Osatinsky Marcos

Osatinsky folder - Jewish community book

• Contains 1 image

Police Record folder

• Contains 4 images

Internet pages folder

• Human rights: Osatinsky’s remains identified

• Revolutionary Armed Forces

• Index 2006 Aug 22

• Osatinsky - Cepeda

• Interview with Santucho

• Tribune newspaper

Extremist Registry folder

• Subfolder 26055

• Subfolder 50893 - Marcos Osatinsky

For this article I concentrated particularly on the police memos folder³².

The memos folder consists of 21 scanned images that show general procedures - I would say, daily procedures - in the actions of the D2 police³³. It is interesting to reflect that accessing today documents that provide an account of the state bureaucracies of the 1970s becomes a gateway to become acquainted with specific modes of government management in a context of pre-dictatorship, based on the trails constituted by these writings. Modes that might otherwise be impossible for us to understand. At this point, it seems less important to consider that the act of administrative management itself generates the trail that enables an accounting of that act, objectively situating this procedure in the same configuration and existence of the document.

The memo prepared by Deputy Commissioner Oscar Horacio Gómez consists of eight pages, which is extremely atypical for the time, given that the memos did not usually exceed one side of a page. It is dated 11 August, 1975. In it Osatinsky is mentioned as una de las piezas fundamentales de la subversión en el país [one of the fundamental pieces of subversion in the country] and it narrates his arrest in the first week of August 1975.

The page on which the event is described bears a blue seal in the centre of the top of the sheet on which it reads estrictamente confidencial y secreto [strictly confidential and secret]. A line below reads: subversive daily panorama at the local level, place: Córdoba, origin: own media. The event is narrated as follows:

As stated in the previous report, personnel of Police Information Dept. II of Córdoba Province, recently dismantled an important célula extremista [extremist cell] that operated in the capital city, following successful procedures that were fulfilled in the last days of the first week of August and that culminated in the discovery of a people’s jail and the arrest of one of the fundamental piezas de la subversión in the country, within the Montoneros organisation. This is Marcos Osatinsky (...) he is arrested by a police commission that had prepared a ‘ratonera’ [lit. rat trap] waiting for the suspected extremistas.

As Ortiz (2019) states, these types of records based on the figure of their medios propios [own media] are evidence of the infiltration that the intelligence services had in these areas, mentioning that the data were obtained from informantes [informants] who carried out auscultaciones [eavesdropping]. There is also information collected from journalistic and police media, which in many cases were combined with the previous medias.

In the same mode, I dwell on the ‘discursive formula’ (Foucault 1971; Tiscornia & Sarrabayrouse Oliveira 2004) estrictamente confidencial y secreto that repeats throughout the memos analysed. This narrative structure marks the boundary between those who can access information and those who cannot; it is especially used to avoid interference from other state bureaucracies (Muzzopappa 2018). Thus, this management of information, the power to of knowing it, can also be thought of as a framework in the disputes between various administrative and political actors concerning the production, use and access of information. Not all state agents would have access to the same information, nor would they be able to access it to the same extent, thus demarcating internal divisions and hierarchies in the same bureaucratic frameworks.

The body of the memo mentions waiting for suspected extremistas, where the extremistas were suspected and the waiting was due to the suspicion that a certain event occurred there, referring to the modes of preventive action typical of intelligence actions. The description of the space is also noteworthy: on a street in a peripheral city neighbourhood, with no street lighting and in precarious conditions that could well have been identified as a hide-out. There are constant references in the memos of dark places, dirty alleys, prisons and hide-outs, filthy spaces, in direct association with the territories where people defined as subversivos were found, together with elements that were linked to them: red flags, communist books, lanterns and sleeping bags, ropes. This descriptive mode in the story presumably constructed a specific territory that the subjects considered subversivos inhabited, while the modes of relationship established between these places, these people and the normative frameworks that made them differentiated subjects, were linked to exercises of violence (Segato 2013; Colombo 2017; Meloni Gonzalez 2019), in which these places ended up being the scene of an arrest, a confrontation, or a murder. Thus, it is possible to conjecture that the relative agency of the documentation referred both to the construction of subjects and to specific territories that acted as a whole when defining, nominating and cataloguing types of subjects - a type of criminal subject, the enemigo or subversivo -, in order to then proceed on the basis of how they were constructed, made visible, narrated.

The notion of territory can also be contemplated by considering the presence of the Comando Radioeléctrico (CRE) in 1975. In this regard, Paiaro (2016) mentions that the CRE was formed under direct dependence of the Police Headquarters to carry out surveillance in the city and its surroundings, with the novelty that radio (medium and long range) was incorporated into the car in order to turn the CRE into an agile patrol service in the urban space that was in continuous communication (p. 50).

The memo contained an addition to the previous report with details and number of weapons seized on August 10, 1975, in which the origin of the information was: own media and local police and it is signed by Deputy Commissioner Oscar Horacio Gómez. It reads,

This body advances the procedures carried out by the staff of the Dept. Police Information of the Córdoba Police, which culminated in the arrest of one of the top extremista leaders, Marcos Osatinsky, and the discovery of a ‘people’s jail’.

While in the memo of August 11, 1975, located in the Fall subfolder, I found the following reference:

This is how the arrest of one of the piezas fundamentales de la subversión in the country occurred, within the Montoneros organisation. To wit, Marcos Osatinsky, Argentine, son of Jacobo and Sara Schlesberg, born on 15 October, 1933, married.

In this writing, the mention of the names of Osatinsky’s parents is striking. This point is not minor considering that the anti-Semitic practices that led to the shaping of specific criminal actions in Nazism in Europe, provided ideological elements, meanings and practices, including anti-Semitism, in the execution of the last Argentine civil-military dictatorship (Rafecas 2021). An anti-Semitism that was becoming evident in the years prior to the dictatorship, according to the testimonies of the victims provided in the Megacausa La Perla³⁴, and that was not alien to the consideration of the Jewish origins of Osatinsky and his wife Sara Solarz (Canosa & Kahan 2021)³⁵.

In the memo of 12 August, 1975, which references a daily subversive panorama at the local level, it states that:

Marcos Osatinsky, with the same affiliation data, was arrested by Córdoba police officers. The deceased, together with other members of the ERP [People’s Revolutionary Army], assaulted the branch of the Bank of Córdoba on Av. Fuerza Aérea Argentina, 1200. In August 1972, he escaped from Rawson prison, fled to the Republic of Chile and from there to Cuba. He was granted amnesty on 25 May, 1973, by the former government of Dr. Cámpora. It should be noted that elementos like Mario Roberto Santucho and other extremistas, considered piezas fundamentales within the guerrilla actions in the Argentine territory, participated in his escape from prison.

The reference to people as piezas or elementos is reminiscent of the proposal made by Calveiro (2004) that the operation of semantic and syntactic replacement to avoid using certain words by resorting to others, ‘to a certain extent reconciles a dehumanisation of the victims and with a reassuring objective that endows the actions carried out by the repressive forces with innocence’ (p. 24-25) ³⁶. This raises the questions: does the agency of documentation only produce effects of subjection/subjectivation? Or can it also do the opposite, de-subjectify, objectify?

Together with the argument made by Calveiro that these terms were intended to dehumanise, I also find it relevant to highlight that these forms of naming, which on first reading seem to be of a quasi-ontological order - the subject that happens to be constituted as an object -, refer rather to the operation that enables the justification of the atrocities committed, and that makes the construction of a ‘framework’ possible (Butler 2009) in which things and people that are contemplated by the norm are demarcated, as well as those who are not. As piezas of the guerrillero network, they become the object of persecution, in the practices of police documentation they are determined as enemigos a aniquilar [enemies to annihilate].

The way in which the figure of the enemigo, the subversivo, the extremista was constructed, named and circulated in the terms set forth above, constituted both part of the process of repression and the political framework before and during the last civic-military dictatorship, and its condition of possibility, proposing the existence of a particular other, an enemigo to be eliminated, because this other is subversivo, extremista, terrorista, guerrillero, or because this other is a pieza and/or an elemento in all of the above. This infers that, in specific contexts, the exercise of state power intimately linked to its management and government capacity, was based on bureaucratic and administrative practices that participated in the configuration of the conditions of possibility of that which could be said, named, seen and executed during that period.

The police memo of 21 August, 1975, reports that as a result of the attack on the police station on Wednesday, 20 August, tranquillity returns to the city because the Security Forces, for this reason, adopted strict measures to prevent incidents in order to maintain public order. Here, the demarcation of we/others not only implies a relationship of interdependence in a militarised territory, in which an antagonistic process of forces prevails through violence, but also in that this interrelation certain moral territories are constructed where places like police stations should be protected, because they are inhabited by those in charge of caring for the moral order of the public space from the attacks by extremistas. The call for public order contained in the memo again enables us to infer that there is a construction of moral hierarchies where the other takes on a specific meaning, either as an ally - the city as a reference to civil society - or as the enemigo - those who cause the attack.

The characteristics articulated in the memos to define subjects like Osatinsky, implied a type of relationship with different moral forms, which enabled or denied the use of force (Garriga Zucal 2010: 76). The actions of the guerrilleros and terroristas justified the use of violence. As Police Chief Navarro said, ‘I think it was the only thing that could be done at that time…’³⁷.

In the memo of August 13, 1975, whose reference states: subversive daily panorama at the local level, we find the following story:

All those named were taken to Information Department II to investigate subversive activities, where they are currently housed, stating that in said procedure, no elementos that violate urgent legal norms were seized.

The D2 was not only the place of Marcos Osatinsky’s arrest, but also constituted a nodal space in the repressive scheme of Córdoba Province.

The last resting place. Osatinsky’s passage through D2

In Robles’ interview with Moore, he asked him about Osatinsky’s arrest, given that by then he was in D2:

I don’t remember how it happened, but they did raid a home and grabbed the full address. But here it’s not about Osatinsky, Mendizábal, or the other five they had in the other piece. The most complicated thing for Montoneros was the amount of documentation they seized. It was a lot and extremely valuable. (Robles 2010: 120)³⁸

It is interesting to note that the objectives of the repressive forces, who at this point are recognised as state agents producing documentation, were both the people and the documentation, that is, the search for information, since that would enable them to understand the enemigo in order to annihilate them, consistent with intelligence practices that were operating at the time (Ortiz 2019; Ranalletti 2007).

Moore continues his account of the arrest and the days Osatinsky spent in D2:

Finally, as I told you, Mendizábal was able to get out. And Osatinsky was transferred to prison, but his days were numbered. Everyone in D2 knew what his fate was going to be. At that point, the idea of preparing a summary was already half outdated, because they went out to kill everyone. But they made a summary and placed him at the disposition of the justice system, of Federal Court no. 1 because Zamboni Ledesma was there. And with Zamboni Ledesma, they knew they were going to get the transfer order. And in the process, the feigned escape and murder of Osatinsky, as eventually occurred. (Robles 2010: 121)

It is interesting to see how, in the Osatinsky case, the bureaucratic record is present in the generation of a summary, but the result is the same: to forge a procedure to assassinate him within the framework of an alleged confrontation. In fact, in the aforementioned Registro de Extremistas, I found two images of Osatinsky, front and profile, with the entry log into D2. Likewise, Osatinsky has a police file which provides an account of the robbery at the branch of the Bank of Córdoba, as well as specifying his transfer to Rawson prison dated 8 September, 1971.

Thus, it could be argued that certain people who held particular political views of relevance, like Marcos Osatinsky, deserved treatment that blanqueó [lit. laundered] their condition, despite an inevitable fate. In this sense, it is interesting to see how the same tools that could be used within legal frameworks - the arrest of someone who might present a record which leads to an arrest - were also available for illegal procedures by repressive forces, thus generating a sample of the sovereign power of the state (Foucault 2003, 2008; Mbembe 2019).

Conclusions

For the execution of the so-called ‘ideological cleansing’ (Servetto 2004) in the country, and particularly in Córdoba, it was essential to provide the Provincial Police with a series of powers that became necessary for this armed wing of the state to be established as the de facto executing arm, appointing Héctor García Rey³⁹, who was a member of the Federal Police and who by then had already been linked - as a member - to the Alianza Anticomunista Argentina⁴⁰.

This fact becomes relevant when considering the way in which people belonging to the legal frameworks of the state, such as the police force, also acquired a double identity. Thus, they were part of a para-police and para-statal organisation also composed of members of the security forces at that time, under the direction of López Rega⁴¹ of the Ministerio de Bienestar Social [Ministry for Social Welfare]. As I have mentioned, this shows the dual nature, legal and clandestine, both of the state and of the administrators who formed part of it.

In the article, I discussed specific questions concerning the Córdoba Police during the period studied, concentrating on the elaboration of police memos, thus providing some insight into the treatment of Osatinsky’s arrest based on police narratives present in the memos available in his victim folder. In this analysis, I was able to address certain questions regarding how they were configured based on the documentation produced by police bureaucracy, documentation understood as a locus of meanings that materialised relationships, meanings and specific practices, the territories and subjects determined to be subversivo and extremista, together with the interwoven constructed moralities - instructive and disciplinary - that the police force carried out in their mode of recounting the facts surrounding Osatinsky’s arrest.

As a corollary, it is worth pointing out that, based on this work on the police memos, it can be assumed that the management of the exercises of control, torture and repression before the last civic-military dictatorship in Argentina, more specifically in Córdoba and in 1975, generated particular modes of relationships between the subjects and territories. The official communiqués and dispositions generated norms and practices of subjection in which everything that threatened the system deserved to remain in a space constructed as marginal and the people who inhabited it became a differential category - their bodies and lives despised - at the mercy of the exercise of violence arranged against these populations. These events necessarily implied the formation of a police version that had the desired ‘effects of truth’ (Foucault 1971), through which the action and its possible consequences was justified.

These subjects who were established in relation to certain territories considered marginal, due to both their spatial, material and geographical descriptions, and because they were presented as ‘outside’ the normative and moral frameworks constructed during the decade - people’s prison, dark, alleys, poor sectors. Thus, in the years prior to the last civic-military dictatorship, a process was configured using the same administrative and bureaucratic practices of the state seen in the elaboration of police memos, a process to establish a social order in parallel to a mode of constructing, defining and transiting through the urban space - the patrols of the Comando Radioeléctrico - consistent with the descriptions of these enemigos.

During 1975, the process of criminalisation also involved the production of documents by repressive forces of the state and was exercised on those subjects constructed as such within the same management and administration process, who were defined by the categories of extremistas or subversivos, which sometimes involved any dissidence that opposed the established order, as was the case of sexual dissidents, gypsy groups, prostitutes, and others.

The configuration of classifications surrounding arrests in 1975, like the differences between detenidos and prisioneros, is consistent with regarding the classification activity as part of both the basis of police work, and considering how they are configured by the same state administrators responsible for the preparation of the documentation analysed. Where certain ideas of order are present, normativities are conceived (the legal, judicial and constitutional framework), specific modes of subjection, and required norms of action (so-called procedures) and classification systems necessarily arise (Durao et al. 2005: 8).

Based on the work, I assume that, prior to the last civic-military dictatorship, the configuration of a certain type of criminal subject - subversivo and/or extremista - through state agents producing documentation, generated a particular morality linked to a certain public order that sought to sustain the establishment of the exercise of power of a de facto government.

Here, it is relevant to begin to ponder certain political uses of the living considering that they were the carriers of everything that had to be eliminated, since it was required - much like their constructions of the enemigo - for the configuration of a certain ‘framework’ that would enable the actions committed.

Here, it is relevant to begin thinking about certain political uses of the living considering that they were carriers of everything that had to be eliminated, that they were necessary - and their constructions as the enemigo - for the configuration of a certain ‘framework’ that would permit the actions committed.

In the same way, it is interesting to observe that the classificatory categories have, on the one hand, a level of specificity that enables them to refer to people, objects and situations, and simultaneously, they show such laxity that they enable meaning to be attributed to a large spectrum of actions, people and elements (Franco 2012; Gamarnik 2017).

The detention of Osatinsky blanqueada [lit. laundered] in the D2 records, while exposing the illegal practices that accompanied his entire stay in that space, implies considering that when the state establishes itself as a monopoly holder of legitimate violence, it does not annul such violence, rather it appropriates it for the purposes of preserving the status quo (Weber 1958; 1968). As Elias (2000) discusses, the civilising process implies understating that within modern states the legitimate exercise of violence is restricted to specialised agents, who are also state administrators, who require a high technification and intellectualisation in their formation, in which we could situate not only the security forces, but also the intelligence practices exercised by actors also linked to these forces that promote the violence generated and managed within the sphere of the state.

Having worked on documentation produced by different administrative bureaucracies - while also noticing the absences in the very same documentation production -, an analytical instrument to understand the modes of managing subjects and subjections based on the capacity for agency of the documents and their organisers not only became necessary, but it also turn into a powerful ethnographic tool that allowed me to access one of the ways in which state power is exercised, both in its capacity to transform and generate (Muzzopappa & Villalta 2011) situations, territories, moralities, forms of action, and subjection and subjects, particularly a type of criminal subject classified as the enemigo or the subversivo, managing the conditions of living and dying through the treatment and administration of the population (Mbembe 2011)

References

• BUTLER, Judith. 2009. Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? New York: Verso.
• CALVEIRO, Pilar. 2004. Poder y desaparición. Los campos de concentración en Argentina Buenos Aires: Ediciones Colihue.
• CANOSA, Mora; KAHAN, Emmanuel. 2021. “Identidad, política y etnicidad. La trayectoria militante de Marcos Osatinsky, fundador de las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias (Argentina)”. Rubrica Contemporanea, X(19): 145-166.
• CASTELLS, Manuel. 1986.La ciudad y las masas. Sociología de los movimientos sociales urbanos .Madrid: Alianza.
• COHEN, Stanley. 2002.Folk devils and moral panics London: Routledge.
• COLOMBO, Pamela. 2017. Espacios de desaparición. Vivir e imaginar los lugares de la violencia estatal (Tucumán, 1975-1983). Buenos Aires: Miño y Dávila.
• DA SILVA CATELA, Ludmila. 2001. No habrá flores en la tumba del pasado. La experiencia de reconstrucción del mundo de familiares de los familiares de desaparecidos La Plata: Ed. Al Margen.
• DA SILVA CATELA, Ludmila. 2002. Los archivos de la represión: Documentos, memoria y verdad Elizabeth Jelin (comp.). Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno.
• DA SILVA CATELA, Ludmila. 2007. “Etnografía de los archivos de la represión argentina”. In: Franco y Levin (comps.), Historia reciente. Perspectivas y desafíos para un campo en construcción Buenos Aires: Ed. Paidos. pp. 183-220.
• DA SILVA CATELA, Ludmila. 2014. “‘Lo que merece ser recordado…’. Conflictos y tensiones en torno a los proyectos públicos sobre los usos del pasado en los sitios de memoria”. Clepsidra. Revista Interdisciplinaria de Estudios sobre Memoria, 2: 28-47.
• DI LISCIA, María Silvia. 2017. “Entre espacios grises y aristas brillantes: la categoría burocracia estatal y el estudio de los sistemas de administración pública en la Argentina”. In: María Silvia di Liscia y Germán Soprano (comp.), Burocracias estatales. Problemas, enfoques y estudios de caso en la Argentina (entre fines del siglo XIX y XX) Rosario: Prohistoria Ediciones:9-42
• DURÃO, Susana; GONÇALO GONÇALVES, Candido; ÍNDIAS CORDEIRO, Graça. 2005. “Vadios, mendigos, mitras: prácticas clasificatorias de la policía en Lisboa”. Política y Sociedad, 42(3): 121-138
• ELIAS, Norbert. 2000. The Civilizing Process. Sociogenetic and psychogenetic investigations New York: Wiley.
• FOUCAULT, Michel. 1971.L’Ordre du discours. Leçon inaugurale au Collège de France prononcée le 2 décembre 1970 Paris: Gallimard.
• FOUCAULT, Michel. 2003. Society Must Be Defended. Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-1976 London: Picador.
• FOUCAULT, Michel. 2008. The Birth of Biopolitics. Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-1979 London: Palgrave Macmillan.
• FRANCO, Marina. 2012. Un enemigo para la nación. Orden interno, violencia y “subversión”, 1973-1976 Argentina: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
• GALEANO, D. 2009. Escritores, detectives y archivistas: la cultura policial en Buenos Aires. 1821-1910 Buenos Aires: Teseo.
• GAMARNIK, Cora. 2017. “La imagen de la ‘subversión’: cómo se construyó la imagen del enemigo (1976-1979)”. Sudamérica, 7:19-52
• GARRIGA ZUCAL, José. 2010. “‘Se lo merecen’. Definiciones morales del uso de la fuerza física entre los miembros de la Policía Bonaerense’. Cuadernos de Antropología Social, 32: 75-94
• GATTI, Gabriel. 2011. Identidades desaparecidas. Peleas por el sentido en los mundos de la desaparición forzada Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros.
• GILLESPIE, Richard. 2011. Soldados de Perón. Historia crítica sobre Los Montoneros; Argentina Buenos Aires: Sudamericana.
• GORDILLO, Mónica. 2019. “La excepcionalidad del Cordobazo”. In: M. Gordillo (comp.), 1969. A cincuenta años. Repensando el ciclo de protestas Buenos Aires: CLACSO. pp. 63-86.
• LE BRETON, David. 2008. Anthropologie du corps et modernité Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
• LYNCH, Kevin.1981.A theory of good city form Cambridge: MIT Press.
• MBEMBE, Achille. 2011. Necropolitics Durham: Duke University Press.
• MELONI GONAZALEZ, Carolina. 2019. “Fenomenología de un necrolugar. Huella, memoria, y trauma en la provincia de Tucuman (Argentina)”. Kamchatka. Revista De Análisis Cultural, 13: 341-371.
• MONTERO, Maria Lorena. 2019. “Violencia política y disciplinamiento social durante la última dictadura militar argentina. Modalidades represivas en Bahía Blanca, Argentina (1976-1977)”. HiSTOReLo. Revista de Historia Regional y Local, 11(21): 60-89
• MORA, Natalia. 2008. “El tratamiento burocrático y clasificación de personas desaparecidas (1976-1983). Un Hospital y una Comisaría”. In: Avá, 13: 143-156
• MUZZOPAPPA, Eva. 2018. Secreto en el Estado. Militares, Justicia e inteligencia en Trelew Bariloche: Tesseo Press.
• MUZZOPAPPA Eva; VILLALTA, Carla. 2011. “Los documentos como campo. Reflexiones teórico-metodológicas sobre un enfoque etnográfico de archivos y documentos estatales”. Revista Colombiana de Antropología, 47(1): 13-42
• ORTIZ, Laura. 2019. Políticas de la memoria sobre la sobrevivencia obrera en el terrorismo de Estado (1976-1982) Córdoba: Editorial UNC.
• PAIARO, Melisa. 2016. “Exhibir el terror. El Comando Libertadores de América: Entre el asesinato político y la restauración de la honra”. In: A. Solís y P. Ponza (comps.), Córdoba a 40 años del Golpe: estudios de la dictadura en clave local Córdoba: Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. pp. 105-122.
• PONTORIERO, Esteban Damian. 2019. “Insurrección y represión. El impacto del Cordobazo en las estrategias de intervención en seguridad interna del Ejército en los años sesenta y setenta”. In: M. Gordillo (comp.), 1969. A cincuenta años. Repensando el ciclo de protestas Buenos Aires: CLACSO . pp. 175-192.
• PONTORIERO, Esteban Damian. 2014. “El tratamiento de los prisioneros de “guerra subversiva” en los reglamentos de contrainsurgencia del Ejército argentino (1955-1976)”. Revista Izquierdas, 19: 131-142.
• RAFECAS, Daniel. 2021. Historia de la solución final. Una indagación de las etapas que llevaron al exterminio de los judíos en Europa Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI Editores.
• RANALLETTI, Mario. 2007. “La legitimación de la tortura como herramienta en tareas de inteligencia. Estudio de caso a partir de los reglamentos del Ejército argentino (1968-1976)”. Actas del 2do. Encuentro Internacional análisis de las Prácticas Sociales Genocidas, Buenos Aires, Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, 20 al 22 de noviembre.
• ROBLES, Miguel. 2010. La Búsqueda. Una entrevista con Charlie Moore Córdoba: Ediciones del Pasaje.
• SARRABAYROUSE OLIVEIRA, María José. 1999. “Grupos, lealtades y prácticas: el caso de la justicia penal argentina”. Revista de Sociologia e Política, 13: 81-104.
• SARRABAYROUSE OLIVEIRA, María José. 2011. Poder Judicial y dictadura. El caso de la Morgue Buenos Aires: Editores del puerto.
• SARTI, Cynthia. 2011. “A vítima como figura contemporánea”. Caderno CRH, 24: 51-61.
• SCHINDEL, Estela Carina. 2012. La desaparición a diario: sociedad, prensa y dictadura 1975-1978 Villar Maria: Editorial Universitaria
• SEGATO, Rita Laura. 2013. La escritura en el cuerpo de las mujeres asesinadas en Ciudad Juárez Buenos Aires: Tinta Limón
• SERVETTO, Alicia. 2004. “Córdoba en los prolegómenos de la dictadura. La política del miedo en el gobierno de Lacabanne”. ESTUDIOS, 15: páginas s/d.
• SERVETTO, Alicia. 1999. “El derrumbe temprano de la democracia en Córdoba: Obregón Cano y el golpe policial (1973-1974)”. Estudios sociales. Revista Universitaria Semestral, 17: 91-109.
• SIRIMARCO, Mariana. 2017. “El relato del ‘caído en cumplimiento del deber’: cuando la falla se vuelve gloria”. In: J. Garriga Zucal (comp.), Sobre el sacrificio, el heroísmo y la violencia Buenos Aires: Ed. Octubre: 43-65
• TELLO, Mariana. 2012. La vida en fuego. Un análisis antropológico sobre las memorias de la “lucha armada” en los ‘70 en Argentina Doctoral thesis in Social Anthropology. Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.
• TISCORNIA, Sofia. 1999. “Entre el imperio del “Estado de policía” y los límites del derecho Seguridad ciudadana y policía en Argentina 1”. In: Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales-CELS: Derechos Humanos en la Argentina Informe anual, enero-diciembre 1998, Buenos Aires: Eudeba.
• TISCORNIA, Sofia; SARRABAYROUSE OLIVEIRA, María José. 2004. “Sobre la banalidad del mal, la violencia vernácula y las reconstrucciones de la historia”. In: Sofia Tiscornia (comp.), Burocracias y violencia. Estudios de antropología jurídica Buenos Aires: Antropofagia: 325-342.
• TISCORNIA, Sofia et al. 2014. “Equipo de Antropología Política y Jurídica: problemas y líneas de investigación”. Quehaceres, 1(51): 48-52.
• VILLALTA, Carla. 2010. “Uno de los escenarios de la tragedia: el campo de la “minoridad” y la apropiación criminal de niños”. In: C. Villalta (comp.), Infancia, justicia y derechos humanos Bernal: Ed. UNQ: 199-243
• WEBER, Max. 1958. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism New York: Scribner.
• WEBER, Max. 1968. Economy and Society: An outline of interpretive sociology New York: The Bedminster Press.
• ŽIZEK, Slavoj. 1994.Mapping Ideology New York: Verso .

Notes

• 1
  The Virtual Memorial Presente is available on the official website of the Archivo Provincial de la Memoria (AMP): https://apm.gov.ar/apm/portada Accessed on: 24 Feb. 2022.
• 2
  The Montoneros was one of the most important armed organisations in Argentina with regard to the flow of people it mobilised: ‘the organisation of the Peronist left Montoneros, whose philosophy was based on a fusion (...) of urban guerrilla tactics with popular struggles of the Peronist Movement’ (Gillespie 2011: 74) Audio-visual record available on Canal Encuentro: http://encuentro.gob.ar/programas/serie/8071/1050?temporada=1
• 3
  Besides the use of italics for the proper names of relevant institutions, italics also indicates expressions, phrases, fragments or native terms collected in the field, either from interviewees or the documents analysed.
• 4
  In the early morning of 22 August, 1972, 16 political prisoners detained at the Almirante Zar Naval Air Base, in the city of Trelew, were murdered by members of the Argentine Navy. All were militants of political-militant organisations who had managed to escape from the Rawson prison unit and, when realising it was impossible to escape the country, had surrendered to the armed forces. It is worth mentioning that Mariano Pujadas was also present at this event and was murdered in the massacre.
• 5
  The plan initially imposed in 1967 by the Minister of Economy of the Onganía dictatorship, Adalbert Krieger Vasena, had frozen wages and suspended collective bargaining, promising to restore these by the end of 1968. At that time, the promise was not fulfilled. Within a complex socio-economic framework, a general strike was launched for 24 hours in the province, on 30 May, 1969. The police violence that prevented the march of the masses, under the order not to let the protesters reach the centre, generated the first confrontations, the rupture of the initial organisation and the support of numerous social sectors that joined spontaneously, transforming the worker-student protest into a ‘popular rebellion’ (Gordillo 2019: 20).
• 6
  The Viborazo was configured as a social explosion that occurred in Córdoba in March 1971. A massive protest against Uriburu’s appointment as governor led to an urban insurrection. Pontoriero (2019) considers that in the Viborazo - organised by the Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores [Revolutionary Workers Party], which becomes one of the targets in the Lacabanne intervention, from September 1974 to September 1975 - a central change was attempted in the repressive methodology, as it had been developed since the mid-1960s, incorporating the use of the armed forces.
• 7
  Lt. Colonel Antonio Navarro led an uprising against the government authorities of the province, Governor Ricardo Obregón Cano and Vice Governor Atilio López, who established the governmental policies of the Frente Justicialista de Liberación (FREJULI) [Judicialist Liberation Front].
• 8
  Obregón Cano became governor of Córdoba Province following the elections of March 1973. Constitutionally elected, it was the FREJULI policies that had received the support of the most radicalised sectors of Peronism, the unions and the most combative union leaders.
• 9
  Atilio Lopez became vice-governor of Córdoba Province following the elections of March 1973. He was kidnapped on 16 September, 1974, in the nation’s capital, and his body was found riddled with bullets in Capilla del Señor, a city located in the northeast of Buenos Aires Province, together with that of Córdoba’s former Undersecretary of the Economy, accountant Juan José Varas.
• 10
  Audio-visual record available on Canal Encuentro, http://encuentro.gob.ar/programas/serie/8071/1050?temporada=1
• 11
  Part of the Fondo de la Policía [Police Archival Collection] of Córdoba Province, which is currently in the Archivo Provincial de la Memoria, is composed of photographic negatives taken between 1964-1992. They portray people detained for political reasons whose names were recorded in a distinct list under the title Registro de Extremistas.
• 12
  Data provided by the Área de Investigación [Research Area] of the Archivo Provincial de la Memoria.
• 13
  Raúl Oscar Lacabanne was an Argentine military officer of the Air Force, appointed Federal Controller of Córdoba from 7 September, 1974, to 19 September, 1975.
• 14
  Decreto Secreto 261/1975 of the Poder Ejecutivo Nacional [Executive Branch]. Available at: https://www.argentina.gob.ar/normativa/nacional/decreto-261-1975-210287#:~:text=Resumen%3A,EN%20LA%20PROVINCIA%20DE%20TUCUMAN Accessed on: 25 May, 2023.
• 15
  Decree reproduced in Portugheis (2012). Available at: https://es.wikisource.org/wiki/Decreto_2770/75_(Argentina) Accessed on: 15 October, 2023.
• 16
  Diario Córdoba, edition 8 August, 1975. CISPREN newspaper library consulted on 5 July, 2022.
• 17
  Diario Córdoba, edition 9 August, 1975. CISPREN newspaper library consulted on 5 July, 2022.
• 18
  Diario Córdoba, edition 20 August, 1975. CISPREN newspaper library consulted on 5 July, 2022.
• 19
  Diario Córdoba, edition 22 August, 1975. CISPREN newspaper library consulted on 5 July, 2022.
• 20
  Diario Córdoba, edition 22 August, 1975. CISPREN newspaper library consulted on 5 July, 2022.
• 21
  Diario Córdoba, edition 23 August, 1975. CISPREN newspaper library consulted on 5 July, 2022.
• 22
  Diario Córdoba, edition 6 October, 1975. CISPREN newspaper library consulted on 5 July, 2022.
• 23
  Diario Córdoba, edition 20 October, 1975. CISPREN newspaper library consulted on 5 July, 2022.
• 24
  Gamarnik states that ‘quantitatively, one of the most used strategies to refer to “subversion” was the use of headlines with the absence of images. Newspapers and magazines were filled daily with headlines announcing “elements killed”, “extremists dead’, “corpses found”, “subversive criminals”, with no photographs showing who, were dehumanisation strategies par excellence adopted by the mass press’ (Gamarnik, 2017: 25-26).
• 25
  Data provided by the research area of the Archivo Provincial de la Memoria.
• 26
  Alianza Anticomunista Argentina [Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance], created by José Ignacio López Rega while at the Ministerio de Bienestar Social [Ministry for Social Welfare].
• 27
  Information obtained from the Archivo de Documentos Emilia Villares de D’Ambra [Document Archive] available at: https://apm.gov.ar/archivosdelarepresion/organizacion-y-funcionamiento-del-departamento-de-informaciones-policiales/ Accessed on 18 July, 2022. Also available at the Reglamento Organico del Dpto. Informaciones Policiales (R.O.D.I.P. - R.R.O.P.5) [Organic Regulation of the Police Information Department]: http://www.saij.gob.ar/553-local-chaco-reglamento-organico-dpto-informaciones-policiales-rodip-rrop-5-h19710000553-1971-12-22/123456789-0abc-355-0000-1791hvorpced?&o=1&f=Total%7CFecha/1971%5B20%2C1%5D%7CEstado%20de%20Vigencia/Derogada%7CTema/Defensa%20y%20seguridad%7COrganismo%7CAutor%5B25%2C1%5D%7CJurisdicci%F3n/Local%7CTribunal%5B5%2C1%5D%7CPublicaci%F3n%5B5%2C1%5D%7CColecci%F3n%20tem%E1tica%5B5%2C1%5D%7CTipo%20de%20Documento/Legislaci%F3n&t=10 Accessed on 18 July, 2022.
• 28
  In this regard, Da Silva Catela (2014) states that ‘Charlie Moore is an “uncomfortable” presence in the memory of police repression in Córdoba. Militant of the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (ERP), his person detonates simplistic analyses concerning the recent past (...) the history of the Córdoba Police Information Department - D2 from 1974 to 1978 - would be difficult to tell if the controversial and ambiguous “character” called Charlie Moore were not included’ (p. 38).
• 29
  The practice by which someone who is illegally detained goes through some form of administrative processing in order to make the entire process appear legal. A close equivalent in English is probably the documentation process involved in laundering money from illicit sources.
• 30
  The research area is a large office located on the second floor of the APM, where there are three offices, a bathroom, and an archive in which APM documentation that has not yet been digitized is located, in better conservation conditions. Among other things, this is the area that provides information to both researchers and relatives of disappeared people or former political prisoners, by filling out a form that is delivered by APM workers, and which involves searching for information on them or others in the contexts of illegal detention and disappearance, as well as generating documentation that enables you to request that the state execute the reparatory laws sanctioned in the first instance during the government of President Carlos Menem (1989-2000).
• 31
  According to Sarti (2011), the modern figure of the victim constitutes a framework for the interpretation and intelligibility of suffering, a powerful element in identity-based social movements as they generate identification in those who perceive this suffering through the story. In this regard, the reading provided by Tello (2012) interesting in reference to the fact that the idea of victim has been configured since resuming the idea of innocence.
• 32
  One of the issues that should be considered in the profuse production of provisions and rules of police procedure involves heeding that: ‘If anything distinguishes the writings that the police produce on an institutional basis, it is the type of knowledge that is displayed in them. There is a constant tension between the possibility of setting rules in writing and the impossibility of putting them into practice. [...] Police knowledge transits a liminal space, a territory of negotiation between the codified and the discretionary, a being between the rigidity of the written norm and the urgencies of practice. And that between should not be understood as a passage, but as an ontological condition of the police’ (Galeano 2009: 50-51).
• 33
  These documents would undoubtedly be extremely powerful for analysing the daily life of the Córdoba police’s Comando Radioeléctrico - a police unit that had mobile radio communication. However, nothing specific appears there in relation to the arrest of Marcos Osatinsky. Despite this, they enable reflections on the general writing methods of the Command at that time.
• 34
  Known as La Megacausa La Perla [lit. The La Perla Mega-cause], it began in November 2012 in the city of Córdoba. The name reflects the magnitude of the trial, in which the sentencing was read on 25 August, 2016, and which included a large number of names of victims, witnesses and plaintiffs. This case brought together the cases of 416 victims among the murdered, disappeared and survivors. The majority passed through La Perla, one of the largest clandestine detention centres in the country, although there were also cases of captivity in the Campo de la Ribera Clandestine Centres, the Police Information Department D2 (in its successive headquarters), and the Casa de Hidráulica and Puesto Caminero, in the town of Pilar. The majority of the 45 accused repressors were Army members, including officers, non-commissioned officers and civil intelligence personnel, as well as provincial police officers. Members of the gendarmeríe and the Air Force were also charged.
• 35
  The work by Canosa and Kahan (2021) reports that Osatinsky and Solarz met when they were young at a local Jewish social club, linked to the non-Zionist left. Sara was two years younger than him and her family was of Polish origin, with a leftist tradition and had been decimated during the First World War. Her maternal grandfather had been a rabbi, while her parents were decidedly atheists and communist sympathizers; in fact, they collaborated with the local party headquarters. Besides the religious issue, Sara remembers that during her childhood, practices typical of Jewish culture were preserved in her home, such as the celebration of certain festivals, food or language (p.154).
• 36
  In this regard, Calveiro (2004) highlights that ‘the use of language is significant, avoiding certain words by replacing them with others: in the camps there is no torture, there is “interrogation”, therefore the torturers are simply “interrogators”. There is no killing, there is “manda para arriba” [sending up] or “se hace la boleta” [the ticket is made]. There is no kidnapping, there is “chupa” [sucked]. There are no cattle prods, there are “máquinas” [machines]; there is no suffocation, there are “submarinos” [submarines]. There are no collective massacres, there are “traslados” [transfers], “cochecitos” [prams], “ventiladores” [fans]’ (p. 24).
• 37
  Audio-visual record available on Canal Encuentro. http://encuentro.gob.ar/programas/serie/8071/1050?temporada=1.
• 38
  Horacio Mendizábal was one of the Montoneros commanders and, according to Moore, someone of higher rank in the organisation than Marcos Osatinsky. During torture carried out by ‘Captain Vargas’, the pseudonym of Héctor Pedro Vergez, Osatinsky managed to convince him that he was the head of the regional organisation. Mendizábal was transferred to Buenos Aires, where some time later he managed to escape from his captors. It is interesting to note that in the a posteriori accounts concerning this event - testimonies, left-wing newspapers - the event is narrated as before being murdered, he saved the lives of Mendizábal and other comrades, he decided to give his life to save a comrade, reinforcing an image of Osatinsky as a hero.
• 39
  Rey was appointed in 1974, as soon as the Lacabanne intervention takes place. Rey came from directing the Tucumán Police, where he had already been denounced for torture.
• 40
  Here, I recommend the work of María Eugenia Marengo entitled ‘Lo aparente como real: Un análisis del sujeto “comunista” en la creación y consolidación del servicio de inteligencia de la policía de la Provincia de Buenos Aires (1930-1962)’ [The apparent as real: An analysis of the ‘communist’ subject in the creation and consolidation of the police intelligence service of Buenos Aires Province (1930-1962)] (2015) in order to understand the manner in which the figure of the communist subject was constituted in the country.
• 41
  José López Rega was private secretary of Juan Domingo Perón and María Estela Martínez de Perón. He was Ministro de Bienestar Social during the governments of Héctor J. Cámpora, Raúl Alberto Lastiri and Perón himself and organised the Alianza Anticomunista Argentina. Forced to resign from his position in 1975, he fled to Europe with an official position granted by the Executive Branch and was a fugitive from justice for 10 years. He was arrested in the United States and transferred to Argentina, where he died in 1989 while being prosecuted on charges of multiple homicides, illicit association and kidnappings.

• Translated by

  Philip Badiz

Edited by

Dossier editors

María Gabriela Lugones (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2115-5672) - Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades, Facultad de Lenguas, Argentina

María Lucía Tamagnini (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1645-0244) - Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades, Departamento de Antropología, Argentina

María Cecilia Díaz (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3874-3286) - Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades, Departamento de Antropología, Argentina

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  17 May 2024
• Date of issue
  2024

History

• Received
  17 Aug 2022
• Accepted
  22 Sept 2023