Consent of the Damned: Ordinary Argentinians in the Dirty War

Epilogue: Saving Jorge Omar Merengo

Epilogue Saving Jorge Omar Merengo Even though the Alfonsín administration could not right all its human rights wrongs, democracy brought remarkable, life-altering change for many. For one thing, it saved the life of Jorge Omar Merengo. In early 1977, Merengo was living with his common-law partner, Felisa Villalva, and an adopted son in a run-down section of Dock Sud, a violent working -class neighborhood in greater Buenos Aires. At one time, Dock Sud had been a port of note. Sailors from all over the world had come through with money to spend. Little of that economic hustle and bustle was left at the time of the March 1976 coup. When one of the many taverns where sex workers still plied their trade came on the market the following year, Merengo bought it for a song. The 22 was a bar with a reputation for drugs and fights. Merengo planned to clean it up, to make it a decent venue.1 150 · Consent of the Damned Merengo and Villalva worked hard on improvements and renovations. They opened as a restaurant a few weeks after they bought the property. Just down the street, though, one of the traditional neighborhood bars, El Gato Negro, continued to function. Sex-trade workers outside the bar talked up clients, and inside they tried to sell dances and more. Clients began to find their way to the new 22 after a few hours at El Gato for drinks and a bite to eat. Despite Merengo’s efforts to change the image of his refurbished restaurant, some of the old patrons continued to return to their haunt. He later told authorities that these returning customers harassed and insulted him. Merengo worked long into the night trying to make a go of it at 22, sometimes leaving at 5 a.m. to head for his day job as a sailor in the Argentine navy; he was stationed at the headquarters of the naval police. He was thirty-six years old the night Carlos Ramón Lezcano stumbled into 22, drunk and in the company of a sex-trade worker known as Judith (later identified as Argentina Chacón). They had just come from El Gato. Details of the fight that ensued between Merengo and Lezcano remain unclear. Merengo later complained to arresting officers that Lezcano had brought “his dirty life” over from El Gato. A few days later, Merengo set a plan to kill Lezcano in motion. Just before dawn on 31 May 1977, Merengo, along with fellow naval personnel Víctor Francisco Rodríguez, Carlos Ramón Maidana, and Juan Martínez, stole a Chevrolet 400 and kidnapped both Lezcano and Chacón at the door of El Gato Negro. They drove their prisoners to an abandoned lot. The sailors raped Chacón and then killed both Chacón and Lezcano under a bridge over the Santo Domingo Canal. In 1979, after a two-year trial, federal judge Antonio Borrás condemned Merengo to death for the killings. It was the first sentence of capital punishment in Argentina since 1916; the death penalty had been abolished in the 1960s for all but war-related crimes. In 1976, however, Law 21.388 of the dictatorship era had reintroduced the death penalty, and it was on that basis that Borrás issued his sentence. The sentence was delayed on appeal, and Merengo was not executed. The death penalty under the new democratic government was commuted to seven years in jail (capital punishment was again abolished in 1989). Merengo went free into Alfonsín’s new Argentina. The crime, the arrest, and the sentencing unfolded in a context that was removed from the immediacy of the state terror of the dictatorship. Epilogue: Saving Jorge Omar Merengo · 151 The violence of the military was far less apparent in the Dock Sud suburb than it was in the center of the capital. The contours of Merengo’s story, though, and the murders themselves place the case in late-1970s Argentina. The theft and use of a Chevrolet 400 by naval personnel was typical of hundreds of similar operations during military rule. Merengo’s sense of outrage over what he viewed as moral turpitude and decay in Dock Sud echoed the pronouncements of the military government about moral decay, family, sexuality, and gender.2 At the same time, this was not a typical crime committed with impunity under...