Verbitsky, Horacio

(1942– )

   Argentine journalist. Possibly the best-known newspaper columnist in Argentina. Since 1987 Verbitsky has published a weekly political commentary in the alternative daily Página/12 of Buenos Aires. He was awarded the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Media Award in 1996 and the International Press Freedom Award in 2001. A member of the executive board of the Human Rights Watch/Americas, he is also one of the founding members of the Latin American press freedom organization Periodistas.

   Born into a family of journalists—his father and several uncles and cousins were all members of the Argentine press—Verbitsky began his career while still in high school as a movie reviewer for several Buenos Aires publications. In his early years he wrote for the dailies El Siglo and El Mundo as well as for radio and television programs. During the last two years of the government of Juan Perón (1973–1974), Verbitsky joined the Montoneros and wrote for the leftist press, including the weekly CGT, published by the Argentine General Confederation of Labor, in collaboration with the journalists Rogelio García Lupo and Rodolfo Walsh. He combined his clandestine activities with work in mainstream publications such as Confirmado, Primera Plana, La Opinión, and Clarín. Between 1974 and 1975 he lived in exile in Peru. During the last years of the military regime—and after the closing of several publications and the disappearance of fellow journalists—he made a living as a translator for a small agency.

   He is the author of several books on Argentine political and economic affairs. His best-known work is El vuelo (1995), published in 1996 as The Flight: Confessions of an Argentine Dirty Warrior. In it Verbitsky transcribed a series of interviews with Adolfo Francisco Scilingo, a former navy captain and member of the notorious Escuela Mecánica de la Armada (ESMA, Navy Mechanics School). In the first public admission of guilt by a member of the military, Scilingo detailed how, between 1976 and 1983, thousands of political detainees were drugged, stripped naked, and thrown from navy aircraft into the waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

   Nicknamed el perro (“the dog”) for his relentless reporting style, Verbitsky is a frequent contributor to El País, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.