Book Launch; ‘True Crimes; Rodolfo Walsh.’

Wednesday September 18, 2002 13:57

by Mags

‘True Crimes; Rodolfo Walsh.’ (The Life and Times of a Radical Writer) by Michael McCaughan ***************** Book Launch: Liberty Hall on October 8th, 6.30pm, the Connolly room.

Some information about Rodolfo Walsh and the author
*******************
PRESS RELEASE
‘True Crimes; Rodolfo Walsh.’ (The Life and Times of a Radical Writer)
Ed.Latin America Bureau, pp356, stg10.99)

Author: Michael McCaughan

Rodolfo Walsh, (b.1927) was an Argentinian writer and revolutionary of Irish descent. Pulverised by Irish priests in a boarding school for the
poor, he achieved popular success when he wrote ‘Operacion Masacre’, (1957) creating the ‘Truth Novel’, a style of literary non-fiction which placed the writer at the heart of unfolding events. This best-selling book investigated
a police massacre of Peron dissidents in Buenos Aires in 1956,predating Truman Capote’s ‘In Cold Blood’ by nine years.

Walsh travelled to Cuba in 1959, invited by Che Guevara to help launch ‘Prensa Latina’, a news agency set up to challenge anti-Castro
propaganda around the world.

Argentina’s leading expert on crime fiction, Walsh put his cryptography skills to the test when garbled messages came out of a Havana telexmachine in February 1961. After a sleepless week Rodolfo deciphered advanceplans for the Bay of Pigs invasion, launched by Cuban exiles training under US supervision in Guatemala.

Walsh returned to Argentina in the 1960s, where he wrote ‘Esa Mujer’ a short story about Evita Peron, voted ‘Short story of the century’ by 60 prominent critics and writers. A womaniser and an adventurer, Walsh had an affair with Norma Leandro, the only Argentinian actress to win an Oscar (‘The Official Story’).

Michael McCaughan tells Norma Leandro’s story of her relationship with Rodolfo for the first time inside ‘True Crimes.’

He joined the debate on the role of the intellectual in society and was invited to edit a Trade Union weekly (1968) which paved the way for a series of worker uprisings.

Walsh joined the Montoneros, a revolutionary Peronist organisation, in 1973. He infiltrated police and army agents into the security forces and masterminded the Montonero’s two main operative coups. His daughter Vicki died fighting the dictatorship in September 1976, a blow from which he never recovered.

Walsh is survived by his second daughter Patricia, who ran for the presidency in 1999 and was since elected a senator.

Rodolfo was shot dead resisting arrest by an army-police death squad on the streets of Buenos Aires in March 1977. He had just posted five
copies of his ‘Open Letter from a Writer to the Military Junta’, a detailed and devastating critique of army misrule.

The government of Buenos Aires recently approved a law directing all secondary schools to read out his ‘Open Letter..’ on the coup anniversary each year, a fitting tribute to a remarkable life, recounted in colourful detail inside these pages.

Michael McCaughan has covered Latin American issues for the Irish Times and the Guardian over the past eighteen years, living in Mexico, Colombia and Argentina. He specialises in tracking corruption, coups and revolutionary movements.

The independent Irish journalist uncovered corporate malpractise by Irish companies abroad, taking Fyffes banana company to task for anti-union behaviour in Belize and challenging paper giant Jefferson Smurfit Ltd’s bullying tactics in Colombia. These investigations led to a major campaign at home with local organisation Action from Ireland (Afri) inviting the protagonists to Ireland to put their case directly to company executives.

McCaughan has spent much of the past eight years covering the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, south-east Mexico. He was detained by Mexican
army troops in June 1994, accused of being rebel leader Subcomandante Marcos. In Paraguay he narrowly escaped assassin’s bullets when he joined
pro-democracy crowds occupying the main square of Asuncion in March 1999. He witnessed the brief indigenous-army coup in Ecuador (2000) and interviewed Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez shortly before the April coup attempt.

McCaughan is a regular guest on radio shows around the world and has embarked on lecture tours of the US and Ireland. He is available for interview by arrangement in September/October.