Argentine rugby: Dirty War murders, 1976

La Plata rugby team, 1974 

For the names of these players and all the other killed men,

see El Grito

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

Credit: The Real Argentina

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.