INTERESTING
Carlos Robledo Puch, Sierra Chica
The shadow of the black angel
Jorge Fernández Díaz
THE NATION
Saturday, July 24, 2010
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The prefect of the Sierra Chica prison did not want me to go with hands empty, so I offered to Loco's Hammer. Not a bad bite. It was a serial murderer who had terrorized the country to surprise his victims on the bed, came through the windows and tore them a head blow. But I had traveled to Olavarría to see me face to face with the largest black myth of the history of Argentina, and was very young, did not accept substitutes. The prefect was sincere: Carlos Eduardo Robledo Puch had not received any journalist in thirteen years in prison. To a reporter who had written a letter asking him for an interview, he had sent word that only you would if you bought a Scania truck. I was twenty years old, was crime reporter and had read to Soriano, who wrote an article in La Opinion anthology without having met the multiple murderer. I still remember myself in an old file of the General Hornos street reading those faded and rough cuts which saw the angelic blond boy who unexpectedly Olivos had committed eleven murders, seventeen thefts, a violation and an attempt, an indecent assault, two rapes and two robberies, and that a misunderstanding with his partner he had killed and burned with a blowtorch face and fingerprints. He did not realize that hidden in the back pocket, the victim kept his identity card, the police made the obvious connections and arrested Robledo Puch. I also remember the day he escaped and was alarm throughout Buenos Aires, as if a monster had broken the chains and I wandered through the streets bloodthirsty. He was recaptured a few hours, and in 1980 was tried and convicted by the tribunal of the Board 1a. Chamber of Appeals in San Isidro. "This was a Roman circus say Robledo said. Someday I'll go out and kill everyone. "
Five years later he was confined forever in a tiny cell from that maximum security prison. Do not want to see anyone and spent his days in the gay flag. I simuláramos proposed to prefect a guided tour and take me to his cell. walked through doors and gates, and we got into that galaxy cold gray granite surrounded and guarded by hard eyes and rifles. A stronghold dominated by an indescribable smell. The smell of the beasts. We entered the hall and walked noted that corridor peering through small windows gothic infamous men who survived in the shade. Each prisoner was a violent history and mournful. The official told me the door of truth and ordered it opened. I saw in a flash how Robledo Puch pulled the bunk bed and stood at attention facing the authority. It was not the freckled boy, buckwheat, and sinisterly childish photographs. It was now a mature subject and spent by the disaster. I tried to shake his hand. I pressed it gently, with an unexpected condescension, and listened to my arguments, which seemed an improvisation: "We are visiting the prison, but I love to chat with you, Carlos." Robledo did not mind, I asked him to wait a while. The governor drove me to the round building that overlooks the mouth of the pavilions and suggested I wait for Robledo in a room that was smaller than an elevator. I thought, with tachycardia, if Robledo was aware of my intentions would pull me over and my eyes tear. But I swallowed hard and put up with for a while. Combed and equipped with a recorder and folders, type closed the door and started talking to gush about God, the prophecies, the cherubim who visited him in his cell, the absolute innocence of all crimes with which he saddled and curse that had fallen on those who had condemned: lawyers who were hit by a train, witnesses who had committed suicide, people who were killed or died of horrible and sudden illnesses, and other biblical plagues. Interspersed in their stories, recorded prayers of evangelical pastors who pronounced his sermon, and asked me again and again to try to understand the subtext of these admonitions. We spent four hours standing, side by side, united by their searching gaze and speech screeching and hypnotic.
the end I went with him to his pavilion. Shuffling was poor and ragged beggar. I said shyly that he would write something about all this. We said goodbye. Tortured in a fit of compassion, I stopped at the entrance all the money I had in an envelope with your name. Upon returning to Buenos Aires I felt dizziness, headaches, paranoia, fear and shame dry by having all these feelings. For years I also felt a sort of sticky web who accompanied me and not leave me in peace. It was one of the strangest and most traumatic experiences of my professional life, and went back to remember every detail of that nightmare a few days ago, while devouring The Black Angel, a book just released amazing journalist Rodolfo Palacios.
This experienced writer of nonfiction, which belongs to the new generation journalist, traveled dozens of times at Sierra Chica and engaged a much longer and deep with the man in the dark legend. The dialogue that plays through the pages reminded Silence of the Lambs and disclosures that gloss does not cease to amaze. The scenes unfold. Robledo writing a letter to Galtieri and doing everything possible to be sent to the Falklands War. Robledo fantasizing about robbing a bank and commit the perfect crime, and dreaming of your release and happen to Perón: "I will call young people to lead a revolution." Robledo Puch is now a neo-Peronist able to announce to the world in the way of Cormac McCarthy: "It will come (faster than slow) in an era of cannibalism? This phenomenon will occur when there is shortage on the shelves for the reasons they are. The world will be dominated by insects. The war will begin in prisons, where they will fight together. "
The allusion to cannibalism and fighting mindless prison is the echo of the Easter uprising of 1996 when a group of convicts took 17 hostages and killed eight inmates. It is said that playing ball with the head of one of them and that made the other in mince pies. Robledo Puch ran to the yellow church with his Bible in his hand and locked for days to avoid falling prey to hunters.
Forty-five letters he wrote to his biographer black angel, who counts among surprises how a famous neurosurgeon tried to subdue a frontal lobotomy Robledo, and how he later lost his temper and set a fire in the Sierra Chica carpentry: "He got glasses, a blanket layer and shouted:" Make way, I'm Batman and fly away! "." Palacios described the scene in which he confesses that sought Robledo win a million dollars for Hollywood to sell its great history. The plan was to seduce Francis Ford Coppola, Quentin Tarantino or Martin Scorsese, and be played by Leonardo DiCaprio. "I committed the sin of laughing at his crazy idea", says the chronicler. He hit the table, clenched his teeth, looked at me with hatred and declared: "You're an ignoramus, a timid, a timid and cowardly". "
Despite the horror of their crimes, the delusions of their dreams and their menacing mood swings, Palacios could never see it like a hyena. always maintained a humanitarian view and tried to really understand why an ordinary kid from a wealthy neighborhood had become a multihomicida. His strenuous unpleasant encounters involving requisitions and Robledo finished writing it down as a "friend" and touched by her fate. At the end of interviews used to tell the reporter this significant phrase: "Watch out, here is a hell inside, but outside is worse. Much worse. "
Palacios's work is exciting, and plays two very high when he realizes that no one ever in Argentina will sign the Freedom of the psychopath, however appealing again and again and show good behavior. And then when it breaks with its own story, the dean of the medical examiners, Osvaldo Raffo, who also had long held with the murderer in the courts of San Isidro. "It was not an easy opponent," confesses Raffo thirty years later. Psychopaths are manipulative. The wanted me to play cat and mouse. " Palacios asked the expert: "Do you think that if it comes one day return to kill?". The expert does not hesitate: "Did anyone encourage to free from the cage because it is very old lion who does not eat? ". And that's when the reporter perceived that Raffo again those verbal duels with headache, upset." I found that spending so much time with that character, which distills evil from every pore, I was intoxicated. It was not a human. I felt an uneasiness, something inexplicable. I had gotten into his soul and his mind, had fallen into hell? Be careful, Palacios. I do not know if it was his piercing eyes, the evil halo around him or something mysterious. But surely you are going to feel weird things. "
Reading that common sense actually afflicted afflict the reporter after the doctor returned to that distant afternoon in 1985 when I tried that same cloudy jelly of evil around him and I could never forget. The black eyes of an angel follow you forever. © THE NATION
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