About Rodolfo Walsh

Rodolfo Walsh was an Argentinian investigative journalist and left wing political activist. He was born on January 9, 1927 about 1000 kilometers southwest of Buenos Aires. He was the descendant of Irish immigrants who came to Argentina in the mid-1800's to escape the ravages of the terrible Famine.



He studied philosophy before beginning a career in journalism in the 1950s. From 1959 to 1961, during the first years of the Castro revolution, Walsh lived in Cuba. There with the assistance of the Colombian writer, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, he helped found Prensa Latina, an international press agency set up to counter the conservative bias of international news agencies like the CIA controlled Reuters. It was Walsh, as an amateur cryptologist, who decoded intercepted CIA messages detailing plans for the Bay of Pigs invasion, thus giving Castro crucial warning of the impending aggression.



Later in the decade he moved back to Argentina to pursue his writing career and he became involved in the newsletter of left wing union organisation the General Confederation of Labour of the Argentine (CGTA). But following the death of Che Guevara in 1967 he decided to take a more active role in political struggle and joined the left wing Montoneros, an urban guerilla organisation. He quickly rose through its ranks, becoming its intelligence officer and infiltrated Montoneros agents into the army and government.



Following the 1976 military coup which gave way to Argentina’s infamous 'dirty war' against its political opponents Walsh was forced to go underground and founded a clandestine Latin American news agency in response to the Junta's press censorship. That same year several members of the Montoneros - including Walsh’s own daughter Victoria - were assassinated by the regime's death squads.



Shortly after posting the first copies of ‘Carta abierta de un escritor a la junta militar’, an open letter in which he protested against the Junta's right wing economic policies and their gross human rights abuses he was followed and ambushed by members of the Junta's military. He defended himself with a handgun but was injured in the firefight and captured, and was subsequently 'disappeared' by Videla's regime on 25 March 1977. His remains have never been recovered.



Although he considered himself a revolutionary above a writer, Walsh will always be remembered for the consistent manner in which his literature sought to uncover and expose the truth. An exponent of new journalism, the founder of investigative journalism and a defender of the free press, he played a hugely influential part in latin american political writing and investigative journalism worldwide.

