Rodolfo Walsh's Last Case, by Elsa Drucaroff

 

9781739298937

Corylus Books, 2024

originally written as El último caso de Rodolfo Walsh, 2010

translated by Slava Faybysh

180 pp

paperback

 (read earlier this month)

Not all that long ago I got a news feed about the 2024  Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, and immediately downloaded the entire list of 148 eligible titles in thirty-five languages.  Some of these I've read,   so I went through and picked out an unread title at random.  It was this book, Rodolfo Walsh's Last Case, about which I hesitated at first because the title sounds like one of those mystery novels where authors use "real historical figures as sleuths" (from an article in CrimeReads) which has never really worked for me and come across as sort of cheesy.  But the more I looked at the synopsis, the more I found myself attracted because of the setting -- the military dictatorship of Argentina in 1976.  

In the author's Afterword, she notes that the idea for this book came to her while having her students read various works by Rodolfo Walsh.  One of these, "Letter to my Friends" as she says,

"in which he recounts the death of his daughter, it struck me that concealed within this extraordinary text lay subtle elements from which a full history could be imagined." 

Rodolfo Walsh was a crime novelist/detective story writer who went on to become an investigative journalist, an activist and eventually the chief intelligence officer for the Montoneros, who were, in a nutshell (and for this novel's purposes) left-wing Peronist guerillas active in  their opposition to the right-wing military dictatorship in Argentina.  His book Operation Massacre (1957) had broken new ground in (as a back-cover blurb of my copy from Seven Stories Press notes) "personal investigative journalism."  Walsh had also founded the clandestine news agency ANCLA in 1976 as a response to government censorship as well as the "Information Chain,"  which produced pamphlets of information  meant for "hand-to-hand" distribution."  In this story, the author imagines Walsh as a "protagonist living in those times, a detective, an artist and a militant," saying that he was "all those things" ... 

"doing what he always did, intervening in events the only way he knew how: as a detective in search of the truth."

Here, that search for truth is paramount as Walsh sets out to investigate his daughter's death.  

Walsh and his wife Lila  are at home visiting with their activist friends Pablo and Mariana who have come to announce their pregnancy.  During the visit, they are all alerted to the radio by the "Radio Colonia jingle."  The "dispatch" comes "from across the river in Uruguay," which offers "all the news that's prohibited by the Argentine military goverrnment" and details an attack at a house in Buenos Aires by the Army.   In that house were five people,  members of the Montoneros, "apparently shot dead."  Of the five, the only woman in the house was known to be María Victoria Walsh,  Rodolfo's daughter.   However, one eyewitness on the scene reported that she had not been killed, but had instead been taken prisoner, alive.  The four are completely in shock at the news, but Walsh holds on to the hope offered by the observations of the eyewitness.  Doing what he can to pick up any information, he visits the scene in disguise (evidently something he did often in real life)  to try to picture what had happened there and to look for any sort of clues that may have been left behind.   Getting Vicky's mother involved, she learns nothing from official channels, but there may be someone who can help.    Not too long after the news of his daughter becomes known, Walsh is asked for a meeting by a retired military colonel who offers to try to find out what had happened to her. As it happens, although on opposite sides, some years earlier Walsh had written a story about  Colonel König who believes that Walsh had "vindicated" and "understood" him for doing "what was right." *  There is just one thing he wants in return: if ever Walsh hears that the Colonel's own wayward daughter might be in danger, he will let König know so that he can takes steps to keep her out of the hands of the military.   This may sound like an uneasy alliance, but Walsh's disagreements with his fellow Montoneros and his growing concern over their changing tactics have left him with very few people he can actually trust. 

While it may be set up as a sort of detective story, Rodolfo Walsh's Last Case is a solid piece of historical fiction, set during one of Argentina's darkest times, and the author has captured the danger, the insecurities and the uncertainties of the period  as well as the fault lines that are developing among various sections of society, including Walsh's own Montoneros.  The green Ford Falcons slowly making their way through the streets of Buenos Aires are constant reminders of state surveillance, and anyone at any time could be in danger of being picked up, carted away and tortured,  killed or disappeared by government agents.   At the same time, the novel probes the psychological effects of people caught up in this maelstrom, as the author explores the internal contradictions of the main characters, which takes this book in a direction I did not expect.   Due to the subject matter it's a difficult story to read at times, but to her credit, Drucaroff never veers off into the sentimental, nor does she load the novel down with standard detective-story fare.

Considering I chose this book completely at random, it turned out to be powerful and compelling, a novel I couldn't stop reading, and one I can certainly recommend to readers who have an interest in this time period.   

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*You can read this story, "That Woman" at World Literature Today .