Wer erschoss Rosendo G.

One more of those books that came to me attention by the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2010 when Argentina was the featured country. In all the reviews it seemed that Walsh is highly regarded in the new generations of Argentinian writers. I am not sure why. It appears that is has to do more with his life. That is indeed very interesting, sad, and has many contradictory aspects in itself. One regards to this book: he is actually a working class activist (at times communist) but here he accuses the leadership of the unions to have killed inner-unions opponents – he accuses especially a famous leader in the 50ties and 60ties: Augusto Vandor. A fight in a bar turns into a messy shooting incident – where seemingly nobodies knows who actually drew his gun and shot. At the end Rosendo Garcia, Vandor’s buddy in the organization and now his possible successor -is hot dead and with him some guys of the anti-Vandor wing. Evidence is destroyed soon after and the judge closes the case because it is impossible to find out who shot. Rodolfo Walsh then takes it on as an investigative journalist. Very soon it is becoming obvious, that only extremely incompetent investigators or a conspiracy would come to the officially published conclusions.
At time this is a very dry and detailed, and moreover, so far in the past, so distant from our current reality. Walsh praises ideology as medicine against corruption. That sounds very strange for us today. But he tries to uncover as impartial as he is able to, to uncover the pure facts – and they speak for themselves. If Vandor was the villain, nobody can be sure of. But people where murdered – that can be confirmed. It was not an accidental shot-out.
Under the dictatorship in Argentina Walsh was killed in 1977. Such a gifted and sharp investigative journalist was of course a bug threat to them. And that’s what I regard this book – very compelling journalism.