The 1955 bombing of Plaza de Mayo: fiction revives an Argentine tragedy

Three hundred and nine people whose lives were cut short in Plaza de Mayo and its surroundings by a series of bombings carried out by members of the Navy and Air Force and encouraged by civilian actors seems to have been a small number for the country's literature to have given the crime sufficient depth . More addressed in essays and documentaries than in written fiction, the event is difficult to process, perhaps because of its implausibility , typical of a dystopian series. Or what genre could fit a rain of bombs on downtown streets, a trolley bus 305 with passengers turned into a jumble of metal , a woman who stares in disbelief at how one of her legs is just a fringe of flesh?

The Bombing. Plaza de Mayo, June 1955 (Alfaguara), with compilation work and a prologue by Julián López, brings together thirteen stories that seek to delve into, allude to, suggest, or narrate—in an almost journalistic manner, depending on the text being read—that deep but not always visible imprint on national political history. As the prologist says, the events of June 16 of that year seem captive “to a narrative disorganized by perplexity , by the inability to perform a synthetic reading that acknowledges the historical and political complexities of the case.”

Bombs over Buenos Aires , by Daniel Cichero (Vergara). Cursed Days. From the Bombings of Plaza de Mayo to the Fall of Perón , by Mariano Hamilton (Planeta); Attack on the Casa Rosada, by Horacio Rivara (Sudamericana); The Plaza de Mayo Massacre (De la Campana), by Gonzalo Chaves. Air Battles. Aviation, Politics, and Violence. Argentina 1910-1955, by Alejandro Covello (Ciccus).

These are some of the books that reconstruct the events of that hot June , which foreshadowed Perón's overthrow by three months. The Bombing of June 16, 1955 (Colihue) is another relevant title, in this case based on research from the National Archive of Memory.

And a great little gem is June 16, 1955. Bombing and Massacre. Images, Memories, and Silences (Biblos), edited by Juan Besse and María Graciela Rodríguez, a work that analyzes the media representations of those events and the conflicting and often censored fate of the audiovisual images that record this criminal act.

Based on literature, the book published by Alfaguara, in conjunction with the seventieth anniversary of the air raids, brings together authors of different profiles, ages, and styles . Beyond the order suggested by the index, other itineraries can be considered. For example, Alejandro Covello 's "Latae setentiae" and Luis Sagasti 's "Flying Jesus" pivot with subtlety and intelligence around the role of the Catholic Church in the bombing.

Both also feature, in different shots, the burning of Catholic churches attributed to Peronist militants in response to the massacre. In Covello, it is announced only by a medal bearing the word "Christus Vincit" that the narrator throws into the fire; in Sagasti, there are torches, religious images, and splintered kneelers, shattered glass, and the cry of "Long live Perón, damn it!"

Another possible plane is the fantastical-dreamlike; this seems to be the basis of Ricardo Romero 's text, "Collateral Damage," in which a textile merchant and a National Library employee intertwine their daily lives, amidst daydreams , with the bombs and planes used on those days. Another character appears in the story, Carlos Enrique Carus, named after one of the aeronautical officers responsible for the crime.

Another possible entry is through texts that propose links between the 1955 bombings and the state repression carried out since March 24, 1976. Mariano Dubin 's story "I Don't Forgive You" especially floats along these lines. It interweaves family and political history, with a managerial position at YPF, the working-class neighborhoods of Berisso, a domestic worker born in Cape Verde, a torture session, and ghostly reproaches between a mother and son.

In “Formas de vallar cuerpos,” filmmaker Albertina Carri combines family allusions to the events of June 1955, especially about her maternal grandmother , with micro-stories of her emotional life and references to her parents’ activism in Montoneros.

Mercedes Araujo , with "Los puntos negros" (Black Dots), and Juan Carrá, with "No son flores lo que cae del cielo" (What Falls from the Sky Is Not Flowers), seem to approach a fictional register that is close to journalistic reporting. In the title, Araujo plays with the double register of how tiny people appear from a bomber, as well as the devaluation of Peronist sympathizers, merely nameless, meaningless black spots for the coup plotters and their allies.

In the text, one of the protagonists of the bombing is a naval captain, who was found dead in the late 1990s, supposedly a suicide, entangled in the arms smuggling case committed, ironically enough, by a Peronist government.

Carrá, meanwhile, recounts the stories of victims. A mother who was out for a walk in Plaza de Mayo with her child and was maimed in the attack; a telephone operator who suffered the same fate; a cleaning worker; passersby, employees, and civil servants. All of them, between terror and flight, with bloody fingers, covered in dust, their clothes torn, some, many, dead.

Other texts can form independent blocks; Carla Maliandi , in "Guard Me, Hard Heart," recalls the attack while, alongside an actor who always plays Perón , they reflect on political violence and the possible responses to such situations. Sebastián Martínez Daniell , in "Vórtice efemérides," connects the June coup attempt with other events that occurred on that same June 16 , such as the premiere of Lady and the Tramp in a Chicago cinema, a scene from James Joyce's Ulysses , or a meeting in the United States between the Secretary of the Treasury, William Simon, and the Argentine Minister of Economy, José Martínez de Hoz, in 1976. The connection between the Paraguayan oral tradition of a witness to the bombings, his impatient son, and a discerning editor, on the other hand, drives Humberto Bas 's "Lluvia de flores."

In “La Dormida,” Esther Cross reconstructs the family framework that veiled memories of the massacre. If there was any allusion, it came from an anti-Peronist grandmother who only recounted the burning of churches, hiding the first, bloody part of the event from her granddaughter. As she points out, “the disproportionate and monstrous part had vanished. As if they had repeated a thousand times the excuses to justify what had been done without naming it,” a habit that persists in many families.

In "Anímese," María Pía López constructs parallel narratives between typical anti-Peronists , particularly those with class hatred, and victims of the bombings. Finally, Juan José Becerra frames the interpretations of the June 16 attacks in an essayistic tone , pointing to the "cultural desire to bargain" over the number of victims as an obvious means of justifying the incident.

The author also recalls bitter family arguments between his father and an aunt about Peronism, but the air raids of '55 never appeared. "The erasure of the bombings is a work of factory occlusion of meaning, and ends with the triumph of a propaganda of irresistible effectiveness: propaganda by omission, a propaganda of nothingness conceived to be forgotten," he states, to emphasize that interpretations are made as much by what is told as by what is never said.