11 May 2021

Argentine rugby: Dirty War murders, 1976


La Plata rugby team, 1974 
For the names of these players and all the other killed men,

I remember the commotion of Argentina under the demo­cratically elected Isabel Perón, who served as President between 1974-6 before ousted by a right-wing mil­itary coup. There had been 1,500 political murders in 1975 but things got much worse after the military coup of March 1976. After 1976, when Gen Jorge Videla (1925-2013) took over as dictator-President of Argentina for 5 years, the reg­ime became ruth­less with anyone suspected of involvement with the left and its resis­tance. There was a dark and bleak sensation of power, the greed of the army’s de­sire for impunity. “As many people as necessary must die in Arg­ent­ina so that the country will again be secure,” Gen. Vid­ela pub­licly declared.

The books published recently were Kill the Rugby Player (2020) by Argentinian author Claudio Gómez and The Silenced by Italian author Claudio Fava (2021), where the horrible events were published in Eng­lish. They de­scr­ibed what happened when one of Argentina’s finest rugby teams was seen as “defying the state”.

The Rugby Club in La Plata, a coastal suburb near Buen­os Aires, was where middle-class and leftist ath­letes gat­hered to play, and to dis­cuss their political and social activism. La Plata had very talented players, in a newly booming sport, who were nonetheless never called up to the nat­ional team.

This may be a difficult concept for British country citizens to under­st­and: Rugby was con­sidered a right-wing sport in Argent­ina but La Plata was on the left. Being on the left du­r­ing the Dirty War in the 70s-early 80s was dan­g­erous; 30,000 peo­p­le suspected of opposing the Junta were killed.

Raúl Barandiarán, sole survivor of the orig­inal La Plata’s 1975 rugby squad, said every other one of his 20 teammates was murdered: gunned down, assassinated or dis­app­ear­ed, in an attempt to tear a gen­eration out by its roots. Many had the chance to seek asylum in France when coach Hugo Passarella wanted to organise a team escape while on tour there. Yes these were families who could largely af­ford to send their offspring away to Europe, but they all refused. They believed their destiny was in fighting for equality.

General Jorge Videla
named himself President of Argentina
in March 1976

The first to be murdered in 1975 was scrum-half 21 years old Her­nan Rocca who chose to stay home while the others toured Europe. A para-­mil­itary group Trip­le A-Argentine Anti-Communist Al­l­iance followed Rocca home from training one night. They stopped him en route and murdered him with 19 bul­lets right on the Pan-American Highway.

Then 3 players, Otilio Pascua, Pablo Barut & San­t­iago Sánchez Via­monte, were kidnap­ped to­gether in Mar del Plata beach. A month later, the body of ar­ch­itecture stud­ent and Communist  member Pascua was discovered float­ing in the Rio de la Plata, shot and bloated beyond recognition, arms bound tightly, hands chopped off. Like thousands of others Pascua had been thrown out of an aeroplane. A murder case was opened in the San Isidro Criminal Courts and the body was handed to his family for burial in the Pantheon of Journal­ists' Circle of the La Plata Cemetery.

Note that 15 of the 20 from La Plata Rugby Club who disappeared were never acc­ounted for. Incredibly the team continued to play on, des­pite younger reser­ves having to be drafted to fill the gaps for murdered players. For La Plata’s first match after the murders, the club held a minute’s sil­en­ce for Rocca that exp­anded to 10 minutes, a dangerously defiant act of mourning. On the grass, no­ player mov­ed. Up in the stands, ev­ery­one re­mained fixed, arms by their sides. Even during the game, whenever a try was scored, the team members jumped on each other in solid­ar­ity or perhaps bracing themselves in anticipation.

But while La Plata’s story leaked out in Argentina, in Europe and Australasia it was barely known at the time. No wonder Fava wrote that the tournament was the Jewel in the Crown of the Junta’s propaganda mach­ine. Even for journ­al­ists who opposed the Fascist Junta, the dis­app­earance of rugby play­ers among the thousands of the Disappeared could never have been publicly accounted for.

Argentina's rugby returned to normal
Here they played the UK in the Rugby World Cup

Conclusion
Of c220 athletes who disappeared under the regime, most (152) were rugby players. Yet these men, as talented as they were, accounted for a small proportion of the c30,000 who disappeared before the military regime was overthrown.

Gen Videla handed over power in Mar 1981 and the military regime con­tinued until it failed after 1982 Falklands War. Even af­ter the dictator was tried and gaoled for human rights violations, the only Arg­entinian mem­orial to the massacre is in La Plata Rugby Club: a modest plaque with the players’ names. 

Even in rugby-mad NSW and Qld, The Australian Newspaper seemed to have waited until 2020 before telling the story! The decimation of a lead­ing rugby club by state torture and murder could hardly fail to create fear. In fact during Argentina’s Dirty War, the La Plata rugby players’ stance cost them appallingly.

The Silenced
by Claudio Fava

The 24th March date of the mil­itary coup is still marked in Argentina as a day of Remembrance for Truth and Just­ice with mass gatherings and ceremonies led by the fam­ilies whose sons were murdered by the Junta. Yet surely rugby could do more. Perhaps read The rugby team whose political stance cost them their lives.



 



17 comments:

Sportsman said...

I grew up in Queensland, rugby mad at both the state and international levels. What a horrible and brutal outcome for those young and keen sportsmen.

Hels said...

Sportman

*nod* I also thought that might have been the reason the rugby deaths were not reported in Victoria. But when of Russian ice hockey team players died in a plane crash in 2011, it made the news here in great detail. This was despite the fact that we in Melbourne know even less about ice hockey than we knew about rugby in 1976.

So I am suggesting that a blanket of total secrecy was agreed to in Argentina at the time. Imagine trying to do that now with the internet!

Luiz Gomes said...

Boa tarde Hels, o rugby é um esporte não muito conhecido e divulgado aqui no Brasil. Parabéns pelo seu trabalho excelente.

Joe said...

Most nations are thrilled when their sportsmen do very well. Even Franco and Hitler were very keen to go to football matches and Olympic events, and Mussolini poured endless money into football stadiums.

Hels said...

Luiz

nor in my city, Melbourne, where people are crazy over Australian Rules Football or soccer, but not rugby. Even in Argentina, soccer was always and still is more important than rugby. But their sportsmen were so good at rugby that their fans were passionate.

Hels said...

Joe

I would have thought that nationalistic pride was the most important concern for a government, legitimately elected or taken by a brutal military coup. However the security of the government was far more important, at least as far as Gen Jorge Videla perceived the threats against him.

bazza said...

The political (or religious) orientation of various sports or sports clubs has always amazed me. In the UK rugby union is very much a middle-class and thus right-wing sport but rugby league is the opposite, being very a Northern working man's game. Originally football was played by the universities and cricket by the working classes. That's changed around now.
But I can't recall any political assassinations of rugby players, thankfully.
CLICK HERE for Bazza’s meaningfully mendacious Blog ‘To Discover Ice’

Hels said...

bazza

I had forgotten about class differences in sport and was quite surprised that rugby was a classy sport in Argentina while soccer was for the masses. In Sydney sailing, rugby union and tennis were middle class sports while rugby league was working class.

No wonder Gen Jorge Videos and his military leaders didn't trust La Plata.

Parnassus said...

Hello Hels, It always gets ugly when they politicize sports. It's hard to know how these people could object to what was going on when in that police state they knew that retaliation for them and their families would be immediate. It's even weird that they got replacement players for their teams. My question is that some word must have gotten out about this, so why was Argentina invited to any international sports events at that time, and why weren't there more vocal international objections?
--Jim

Hels said...

Parnassus

good questions. I know the La Plata players were already banned from the national team, even though the club had some of the most successful rugby players in Argentina. So noone watching the international games would have any clue about sportsmen from just outside Buenos Aires. And I couldn't find any English-speaking newspaper stories about the murders before 2018.

That begs another question. Do the international sporting bodies always act when various countries carry out crimes against their own citizens? Sometimes?

Nhà cấp 4 đẹp said...

Great article, I follow you often, thank you for sharing good articles

Mem said...

I gave had contact with refugees from Argentina , I knew it was a bad time but hadn’t realised it was this bad . I am wondering if things have improved or if they also have a version of the vile Bolsinaro of Brazil.

Hels said...

Anonymous Nhà cấp 4 đẹp

thank you. I am guessing you are most interested in the architectural posts :)

Hels said...

Mem

without sounding too paranoid, I am now doubting that we have good knowledge about leaders and governments of many countries around the world.

After all, if it wasn't for the appalling Covid catastrophe in Brasil, would we have known if Bolsonaro was elected democratically or not? that he was a right-wing nationalist, law-and-order fanatic and former army captain who modelled his government on Brasil's military government (1964-85)?

Did the world do anything about Augusto Pinochet and his brutal coup against Salvador Allende (1973)? His brutal regime sent a death squad around Chile, killing people detained in military garrisons.

Hels said...

Eva

I find it extraordinary that even well-read academics were not aware of the terrible events in Argentina (and elsewhere) in the 1970s. Not only myself... I asked heaps of colleagues and no-one had heard of the planned campaign of murders.

Too late for the grieving widows and parents, but thank goodness for blogging.

sarah said...

Nice Blogessay writing service Luton

Hels said...

sarah

thank you. Sometimes the posts are so depressing, I hope readers still find the blog nice.