By Jorge Luna
Born in the province of Río Negro, Argentina, his testimonial novels, such as “Operación Masacre” (Operation Massacre, 1956) and other investigations, are well known.
He began his work as a proofreader and translator at the Hachette publishing house and published his first book, “Variaciones en rojo” (Variations in Red) in 1953, and “Antología del cuento extraño” (Anthology of the Weird Story) in 1956, among many others. At the same time, he worked for the magazines Leoplán, Panorama, and Vea y Lea.
In 1959, he traveled to Cuba at the invitation of Jorge Ricardo Masetti and other founders of the Latin American News Agency Prensa Latina, like Gabriel García Márquez.
In Prensa Latina, he headed the Special Services department, where he accidentally discovered and revealed secret communications about the organization in Guatemala of the military invasion of Playa Girón (Bay of Pigs, Cuba) by the United States.
The historic event is brilliantly recreated by García Márquez in his chronicle “The Journalist Who Got Ahead of the CIA,” published in the Colombian magazine Alternativa in 1977.
Upon returning to Argentina, he founded the weekly newspaper of the CGT, which he directed from 1968 to 1970. In 1972, he wrote for Semanario Villero and, from 1973, for the newspaper Noticias, which sent him as a correspondent to Palestine.
In 1976, amid the military dictatorship, he created, together with other journalists, the Clandestine News Agency (ANCLA), an information chain that issued more than 200 newswires that circulated from hand to hand.
Walsh joined the Montoneros organization and wrote “Cartas Polemicas” (Controversial Letters) while he was in hiding.
After the first anniversary of the coup d’état, he distributed the first copies of his famous “Open Letter from a Writer to the Military Junta” and on March 25, 1977, at the age of 50, he faced off with soldiers, who wounded him fatally and took his body.
The whereabouts of Walsh’s remains has never been revealed.
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