Agitated by D. Joni;Sharkey Paul;

Author:D., Joni;Sharkey, Paul;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AK Press
Published: 2022-10-03T00:00:00+00:00

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61. Denís’s handwritten text.

62. Letter from Denís to a comrade from the settlement.

63. Letter from Denís in Perpignan to a comrade from the settlement.

64. Letter from Denís in Perpignan to a comrade from the settlement.

65. Letter from Denís written from Girona prison to his sister in January 1978.

The Murder of Agustín Rueda

They know how to silence mouths with one pass of the scythe

Slowly and mercilessly.

No one will ever know the worry of the hours

Before one catches the last carriage.

—barricada, “el último vagón”

At around 9:30 a.m. on March 13, 1973, warders in Carabanchel Prison uncovered a tunnel in Ward Seven. It was instantly reported to the governor, and questioning sessions began automatically, conducted by the chief warder in the presence of the governor himself, Eduardo José Cantos Rueda. Almost a dozen inmates who had come to prominence for their support for COPEL demands and their prisoner self-organizing, were sent for and beaten by the chief warder and seven or eight other officers. Since the results proved unsatisfactory, the governor decided that the interrogations should continue in the underground cells of the prison under the supervision of Deputy Governor Antonio Rubio Vázquez. In the course of these initial interrogation sessions, even the prison chaplain was on hand; at no point did he voice any objection to what the warders were doing. The chief warder already had two outstanding allegations of torture hanging over his head from the previous year.

At around 11:00 a.m., having endured a brutal beating, Agustín Rueda was placed in one of the so-called “death-penalty cells” He was in a pitiful condition and unable to stand upright. In the cell his condition worsened and, at the insistence of other inmates who had suffered the same treatment, he was visited, twice, by the prison doctors, José Luis Casas García and José María Barrigow Pérez, who confirmed his dire physical condition but did nothing beyond giving him some suppositories. Twelve hours later, Agustín was removed to the prison infirmary where he passed away in the early hours of March 14. The two doctors had left the prison premises when their shift ended without as much as drafting the appropriate report; that report was drawn up the following day, by which time the prisoner was already deceased. They falsified the date in order to avoid subsequent disciplinary measures. When Agustín was removed to the Carabanchel Prison hospital, all the prison doctors could do was sign his death certificate.

Warders spent the morning of March 14 preparing their respective alibis. A false and far-fetched version of events designed to preempt a judicial investigation. Finally, shortly before noon, by which time Agustín had been dead for about ten hours, the governor informed the Police Court.

News of Agustín Rueda’s murder spread through the Carabanchel inmates, who quickly realized that the prison administration was out to hush it up. Prisoners receiving visits from their lawyers that day were given the task of getting the awful news out past the prison walls.

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