Latin America has extraordinary investigative journalism, the best in the world. There are people who conduct amazing, meticulous investigations and publish 600-page books that are incredibly enjoyable to read.
I’m reading La llamada [The Call] by the Argentinian journalist Leila Guerriero, and it’s one of those books of investigative journalism that is not only fascinating to read but also has a definite literary quality. To write the book, Guerriero delved deep into the life of Silvia Labayru who, in the 1970s, belonged to a leftist domestic terrorist organization in Argentina called the Montoneros. Labayru was kidnapped by the military dictatorship and tortured, but she survived and now lives in Madrid. Guerriero spent years in weekly and often daily meetings with Labayru, hanging around, listening, participating in her daily life, trying to build a relationship and gain her subject’s trust.
Labayru’s story is complicated. She has been shunned by her fellow militants for a variety of reasons. As a former member of a terrorist organization, there are things that she doesn’t want to reveal or probably even remember. There is a lot that she and other militants remember differently. Often very differently. It is only because Guerriero put in an extraordinary amount of time, patience, and kindness that she managed to get all of these people to talk to her about their violent and often tragic past.
I will talk about the book itself and the fascinating things I learned from it later, but the point I want to make right now is that there is no aspect of what Guerriero created in this book that any form of artificial intelligence will ever be able to touch. The book is a product of a human relationship.
Guerriero is a very talented journalist. Her skill in organizing the narrative woven out of the testimonies of many different people is outstanding. The book is extremely easy to follow. Guerriero very wisely avoids making the story about herself. The only American journalist of this caliber is Sam Quinones. In Latin America there are many, and I’m overjoyed that I discovered a new one in Guerriero.
AI or no AI, we will absolutely need journalists, but these have to be people who don’t want to go down an easy path and just phone things in without putting in any effort. When you read Leila Guerriero’s book, you feel overpowered by the admiration for the professionalism of this journalist, who is so excellent at what she does.
Clarissa's Blog 
From an Amazon review (Spain):
Retrato de una montonera muy” especial” que tuvo que parir en un campo y que con probabilidad colaboró con los militares bajo presión. Acusada y repudiada por sus compañeros de exilio se nos ofrece la historia de una niña privilegiada, hija de militares metida a revolucionaria con 20 años a la que el fervor revolucionario se le pasa como una especie de acné. Lo malo es que Guerriero se pasa casi todo el relato marujeando sobre los múltiples viajes, amores, diálogos gatos y perros de la protagonista, una niña rica rodeado de toda la gauche divine de Buenos Aires ( me imagino que con la propia Guerriero entre esos intelectuales , artistas etc y OLVIDANDO A LOS VERDADEROS REVOLUCIONARIOS, que al contrario que ella y que la mayor parte de los niños bien del Colegio fueron arrojados al océano desde un avión ..por miles.
Algunos de los pasajes de este libro SON UNA VERGÜENZA AUTÉNTICA para las víctimas pero merece la pena leerlo para ver como se la gastan los pijos jugando a cambiar el mundo …ellos siempre salen airosos.
Would you agree with this take or do you think it ungenerous? Leila Guerriero is one of my favourite writers from Hispanic America but I’m not so sure about this one and I would very much appreciate a comment from you.
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It’s true that both the author and her subject are not leftist fanatics. Labayru grew up. She understood that Montoneros were a terrible organization. She understood and she says it openly that the young kids who participated were used by the leadership in irresponsible and horrific ways. She understood that everything that the organization did strengthened the dictatorship and hurt the country. This is why “verdaderos revolucionarios” hate her.
The description of Labayru as a privileged, very wealthy, and extremely dissipated person is correct, and the book exposes that side of her very openly.
What’s even better, the journalist found a wealth of information about her subject’s family environment and the depiction of what kind of a family creates a clueless, whore-ish, society-hating leftist fanatic of a daughter is priceless.
The book is way too long for me to assign in class, unfortunately, but it would be a great reading for students because it would show them what kind of people lead these revolutionary movements and how nasty they are. Labayru is a preceding version of Zhoran Mamdani. She is a phenomenon that refuses to go away. The book does not conceal anything about who she is, but how people respond to this sort of personality is completely up to them.
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Is there an English translation?
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I don’t think so, unfortunately. I found an Italian one, but not an English one. Back in March, Labayru was denied entrance into the United States and became a mini-celebrity in this country’s news cycle. Maybe that, coupled with the book’s commercial success in Spanish, will prompt a translation.
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It also appears to be available in French
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