Larrabure and His Martydom
“I want to die standing, invoking God in my family, and the Fatherland in my Army.”
In 1974, during a constitutional government, Argentina was going through one of the most violent periods in its history. The ERP (People's Revolutionary Army) planned the takeover of the Villa María Military Gunpowder and Explosives Factory in order to seize weapons and kidnap Major Larrabure, a military engineer and one of the Argentine Army’s leading specialists in explosives.
On 3 November, he was taken to a “people’s prison” beneath a haberdashery in Rosario. His cell measured barely 1 metre by 60 centimetres, with no natural light and minimal ventilation. While life continued normally above, beneath that haberdashery an Argentine Army officer remained kidnapped.
The ERP demanded to exchange him for five of its detained members, but the government decided not to negotiate. For more than a year, he endured hunger, damp, isolation and illness. He lost more than 40 kilograms. They tried to make him collaborate with them by using his knowledge of explosives, but he always refused.
On 19 August 1975, he died after 372 days in captivity. Four days later, his body, wrapped in a sheet and a blanket, was abandoned in a ditch on the outskirts of Rosario, where it was found by the authorities.
In his letters, he asked his children not to hate, to forgive his captors, and never to allow resentment to take the place of faith. That testimony of forgiveness is one of the reasons why the Catholic Church today recognises him as a Servant of God.
Photo: Cadet Larrabure, 1950s.
No comments:
Post a Comment