Rebellion in Patagonia. Osvaldo Bayer
progressive legislation during his aborted term as governor and the warden replied, “No, you aren’t a prisoner because of your legislation, you’re a prisoner because you allowed Rebellion in Patagonia to be filmed.”18 After the military forced Isabel Perón from power, the government continued its persecution of Bayer and his works—in April 1976, Lieutenant Colonel Gorlieri ordered all copies of Rebellion in Patagonia to be burned “so that this material cannot keep deceiving our youth as to the true good represented by our national symbols, our family, our Church and, in sum, our most traditional spiritual heritage, as synthesized by the motto ‘God, Fatherland, Family.’”19
And so history repeated itself. The repression unleashed on Argentina’s independent left by a populist president supported by moderate union leaders was echoed by the repression unleashed by Isabel Perón on those who attempted to bring the story to light some fifty years later. “This whole episode meant heartache for me and, with my family, eight years of exile,” Bayer wrote in 2004, thirty years after the film was banned. “But, with the passing of time, the truth is ever greener. Whenever I reread the decree of President Lastiri banning Severino di Giovanni, or that of Isabel Perón, with The Anarchist Expropriators, or the names of those who intervened to hide the massacre in Patagonia from the people, and I see my books in bookstores and the film of Rebellion in Patagonia being screened in special showings, I can’t help but smile: the truth provides a path through the darkness, it can’t be killed forever.”20
PRELIMINARY NOTE
In Rebellion in Patagonia, Osvaldo Bayer has synthesized the material presented in the four-volume The Avengers of Tragic Patagonia, whose first three volumes were published in Argentina between 1972 and 1974 and the fourth published in West Germany in 1978. The final volume had to be published abroad as both the author and the editor were forced into exile following the 1976 military coup.
The author has striven to ensure that Rebellion in Patagonia contains all the essential information covered in his previous four-volume study. An abridgment was necessary; it will be easier for the Latin American public to learn of the tragic events surrounding the most extensive strike of rural workers in South American history through a more synthesized study. The appearance of a one-volume edition is also more convenient from a publishing standpoint, as it has proven impossible to reprint a work as long as The Avengers of Tragic Patagonia.
Rebellion in Patagonia closes a cycle that began with the 1928 publication of José María Borrero’s Tragic Patagonia, which dealt with the massacre of the indigenous people of southern Argentina and the exploitation of the region’s rural workers. Borrero promised a follow-up volume titled Orgy of Blood that would deal with the massacre of rural workers during the 1921–1922 strikes. Borrero’s second book—for a variety of reasons—was never published and was perhaps never even written. Rebellion in Patagonia deals with the same subject that would have been covered by Borrero’s book—a subject that, for over fifty years, has remained taboo for researchers into the great deeds of Latin America’s nearly unknown social history.
Prologue: The Exterminating Angel
“Kurt Wilckens, strong as a diamond,
noble comrade and brother…”
Severino Di Giovanni,
Los anunciadores de la tempestad
By 5:30 a.m., it’s already clear that January 25th, 1923 is going to be a sweltering day in Buenos Aires. A blond man gets on the trolley at Entre Ríos and Constitución and pays the workers’ fare. He is heading towards the Portones de Palermo station, near Plaza Italia. He is holding a package, most likely his lunch or his tools. He seems calm. Shortly after boarding, he begins reading the Deutsche La Plata Zeitung that he has been carrying under his arm.
He gets off at Plaza Italia and heads west along Santa Fe, in the direction of the Pacífico station. After passing the station, he arrives at Calle Fitz Roy and stops in front of a pharmacy on the corner.
It’s now 7:15 a.m. and the sun is already beating down hard. There’s a great deal of foot and automobile traffic. The pharmacy faces the barracks of the 1st and 2nd Infantry. But the blond man doesn’t look in that direction: his eyes don’t leave the door of the house at Fitz Roy 2461.
Is today going to be the day? The answer seemed to be no. Nobody leaves the house. Minutes go by. Had he already left? Does he have any suspicions?
No, here he comes. A man in a military uniform leaves the house at 7:55. But it’s the same as before: he’s leading a little girl by the hand. The blond man makes an imperceptible gesture of exasperation. But then the military man stops and talks with the girl. She says that she doesn’t feel well. He lifts her up in his arms and carries her back inside.
After a few short seconds the military man leaves the house again, alone this time. He’s dressed in standard uniform with a saber at his side. He walks towards Calle Santa Fe on the same side of the street as the blond man. His firm character can be seen in his energetic stride. And now he heads towards his appointment with death on a beautiful, if a bit sweaty, morning.
He is none other than the famous Lieutenant Colonel Varela, better known as Commander Varela. Argentina’s workers despise him above all other men. They say he’s bloodthirsty, they call him the Butcher of Patagonia, they accuse him of having murdered 1,500 defenseless peons in the south. He forced them to dig their own graves, had them strip naked, and then executed them by firing squad. He gave orders for his subordinates to beat the union leaders with the flats of their swords before killing them, always with four shots each.
Does Commander Varela live up to the legend? He does in the eyes of the blond man waiting for him.
Not that the blond man is a relative of any of the executed workers. He has never even been to Patagonia, but neither has he received so much as five centavos in payment for the assassination. His name is Kurt Gustav Wilckens. A German anarchist of the Tolstoyan persuasion, he is an enemy of violence, but he believes that, in extreme cases, the only response to the violence of the mighty should be more violence. And he will follow through on this belief with an act of vigilante justice.
When he sees Varela coming, Wilckens doesn’t hesitate. He moves to intercept him and hides in the doorway of the house located at Fitz Roy 2493. There he waits. Even now he can hear his footfalls. The anarchist leaves the doorway to confront him. But it won’t be that easy. In that precise moment, a little girl crosses the street and begins walking in the same direction as Varela, just three steps ahead of him.1
Wilckens has run out of time: the little girl’s sudden appearance threatens to ruin all his plans. But he makes his decision. He grabs the girl by the arm and pushes her out of the way, shouting, “Run, a car’s coming!”
The girl is bewildered, frightened, hesitant. Varela stops to watch this strange scene. Instead of throwing his bomb, Wilckens advances on his prey while turning his back to the girl, as if to protect her with his body, but she is already running away. Facing Varela, Wilckens throws his bomb on the pavement, between him and the officer. There’s a powerful explosion. Varela is taken by surprise and the shrapnel tears apart his legs. But Wilckens has also been hit and a sharp pain shoots through his body. He instinctively retreats to the doorway and climbs three or four steps, taking a moment to pull himself together—the enormous explosion has knocked the wind out of him. It takes just three seconds. Wilckens immediately descends the staircase. The anarchist then realizes that all is lost, that he can’t flee, that he has a broken leg (his fibula has shattered and the pain in his muscles is agonizing) and that he can’t move his other foot because of a piece of shrapnel lodged in the instep.
As he leaves the doorway, he comes across Varela. Though both of his legs are broken, he manages to remain upright by leaning against a tree with his left arm while trying to unsheathe his saber with his right hand. Now the two wounded men are once again face to face. Wilckens approaches, dragging his feet, and pulls out a Colt revolver. Varela roars, but instead of scaring the blue-eyed stranger, it sounds like a death rattle. The officer is collapsing, but he’s not the type to surrender or plead for mercy. He keeps tugging at the saber but it refuses to leave the scabbard.