70 years on, Argentine court declares ‘Operation Massacre’ a crime against humanity

Seventy years after the killings known as 'Operation Massacre,' an Argentine court has declared them crimes against humanity. Global Voices reports that in nineteen fifty-six, security forces raided a house in the Buenos Aires suburb of Florida hunting a suspected coup plotter, arrested every man present, and executed five of them at a landfill without trial or charges. Judge Alicia Vence ruled that the dictatorship's highest authorities had ordered the operation, and found that its perpetrators, all now dead, would have faced life imprisonment. The court also granted the reparations the families had long sought — restoring the victims' names, adding the history to school programs, and creating a memorial at the José León Suárez site. The case was famously exposed by journalist Rodolfo Walsh, whose book Operation Massacre is regarded as a foundation of Latin American investigative journalism.

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