But what really forced Cámpora to grant a total amnesty, and to move up his timetable for doing so, was the events at Villa Devoto Prison in Buenos Aires, where many political prisoners were being held.
By late afternoon May 25, the first columns of demonstrators began arriving outside the prison. The prisoners in Cellblocks 2 and 3 had already rebelled and were in control of the situation on the inside. The Buenos Aires daily La Opinión gave the following account:
"In Cellblock 2, the common prisoners had set fire to bed sheets, blankets, and clothes, which they suspended through the bars of the windows. From the street a poster could be seen that announced `Common Prisoners Back the Guerrillas.'" The common prisoners asked only that their sentences be reduced, as is customary during the granting of amnesties.
"In Cellblock 3, which had been taken over by the guerrilla prisoners, the rioters could be seen through the windows of the three floors hailing the demonstrators who were gathering in the street.
June 14, 1948
While Hitler's barbarous uprooting of whole peoples in
Europe is generally known to the public, not much attention
has been paid to a similar black page in recent American
history. This was the shameful forced evacuation of 120,000
persons of Japanese ancestry from the Pacific coast and
Alaska in 1941.
While the uprooting of all the Japanese-Americans on the
West Coast didn't serve the interests of military security,
it did serve other interests. These were the interests that
lined their pockets by stealing and swindling the property
and savings of the deportees. The deportees left behind them
about $200,000,000 worth of real estate; personal property
and commercial property. Most of that has been gobbled up by
the 200% "Americans" who cloaked their robbery in
patriotism.
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