This January 25 marks 27 years to the day on which the photographer José Luis Cabezas was found dead, after achieving what until then was a great feat: taking a photo of the businessman Alfredo Yabrana character that no one wanted to talk about, and whose face was practically unknown.
Already at that time, the former Minister of Economy, Sunday Cavallo, had accused him of managing, through front men, several important companies, and of using them to launder money from the drug and weapons tragedy. At that moment, Cabezas and his colleague at NOTICIAS, the journalist Gabriel Michiwere assigned to cover the season in Pinamar, at a time when Yabrán was on those beaches with his wife, Maria Cristina Perez.
In his book, “Heads. A journalist, a crime, a country”Michi tells what it was like to get the photo for which Cabezas paid with his life: “When I got the necessary information with José Luis Cabezas and he captured the photo of Alfredo Yabrán walking in a relaxed manner with his wife Maria Cristina Perez along the beaches of Pinamar, we knew instantly that that image was one of the greatest journalistic achievements of recent times. Yabrán was the man most wanted by the Argentine press. The faceless man. The most enigmatic and powerful man in the country. The enigma that he had revealed to so many.”
“The same one who had boasted some time ago that “not even the intelligence services have a photo of me” or who had maintained that ‘taking a photo of me is like shooting me in the head’, in a summary that his enemies “They could also be very dangerous. Or a tacit demonstration of their transit through a world where laws are either tailor-made or adulterated at their limits in accordance with the conveniences and impunity of power,” Michi relates in his book.
The journalist details the almost total lack of images of Yabrán prior to the photo taken by Cabezas. “There were almost no records prior to the image obtained by Cabezas, except for some very old photographs of a reunion of graduates at the school where he attended high school. Or a very distant shot that NOTICIAS magazine had obtained during the New Year’s night celebrations in 1995 during the fireworks at the La Pérgola spa, in Valeria del Mar, operated by his local partner, the architect “Luis Abruzzesse”says the author.
But taking a photo of the most enigmatic man in the country was not going to be an easy job. Cabezas and Michi had strengthened their network of contacts and had been able to identify the three tents used by the Yabrán family in the spa. Marbella, although they knew that Yabrán was not yet in Pinamar. But on Wednesday, February 14, 1996, Michi received a call from one of his most reliable sources: “Gabriel, ‘El Tío’ arrives tomorrow”.
“The uncle” It was one of the elliptical ways in which they mentioned Yabrán, so as not to name him because of the fear he aroused. In addition, there was the possibility that the phones were tapped by intelligence services aligned with the tycoon. According to the information, Yabrán would be at the spa the next day at 6:00 p.m. La Pergola, Valeria del Mar.
That February 15, Cabezas and Michi went to Valeria del Mar after finishing an interview with the actor Miguel Ángel Solá. At first there was no movement in the place, but then they decided to drive through the door of Yabrán’s house, the mansion “Narbay”: There were several 4×4 trucks in his parking lot, and “some guys wandering around there, looking like custodians.” Later they passed by again and saw smoke rising from the surrounding trees, which announced a night barbecue and the possibility that Yabrán would stay there until the next day, therefore, it was very likely that the magnate would stay. to dinner at his house that first day of stay in Pinamar.
“It was there that José Luis and I decided that the next day, Friday, February 16, 1996, we were going to stand guard very early to see if we could obtain the image of the businessman. We were particularly interested in the photo because I had already resolved the investigation into the suspicious investments that Yabrán was making in Pinamar and we only needed the most desired image to illustrate it,” Michi says in his book.
At 7 in the morning that Friday, Cabezas and Michi arrived at the place and, taking care that no one from Yabrán’s custody detected them, they climbed a kind of dirt hill 50 meters from the door of the mansion, in an open field that It faced Noctilucas Street and where the street ended Of The Mermaidthe same one that ended, at the other end, at the entrance door of Yabrán’s house.
“A few minutes had passed when we saw that Yabrán—against our predictions—returned home. He had a black briefcase in his hand and had gotten up earlier than us, to solve who knows what business he had in the spa. The adrenaline and heartbeats of both accelerated. José Luis even photographed him from behind, entering his house with that briefcase. But just that. They were the first images we obtained of the businessman, but neither he nor I were satisfied. It was a shot that was too vague and did not serve the journalistic objective that we were pursuing,” says Michi.
Then, both journalists recalculated: Michi drove down the street From The Whale, the one from Yabrán’s house, and if he saw him leaving he sent a radio message to Cabezas. He parked about 30 meters from the parking lot with three gates of Yabrán’s house, and around 10 the expected moment occurred: one of the trucks came out. ford ranger and passes by Michi, who rushed to tell Cabezas.
Finally, both journalists went to the complex under construction Golf terraces, that Yabrán was building in that area on Enrique Shaw Avenue. They saw the businessman’s truck touring the place outside, he was showing his wife how the works that were taking place behind a wall of exposed bricks and bars were going. “We were analyzing where we could obtain a map of the tycoon, but it was impossible to do so due to the way his vehicle was moving. In that labyrinth of streets we crossed paths at least three times, but there was no way to photograph it,” details Michi.
Then they saw Yabrán entering his mansion again, they assumed to eat. So they decided to suspend the mission for a while, assuming that later they would find him on the beach enjoying the sun. A source had told Michi that Yabrán was “quite strict—and almost martial—with his customs.” “And among them, going to the beach. He told me that Yabrán went religiously around 4 p.m. and it was a central piece of information for our search,” the author says in the book.
So at that time, Cabezas, Michi and the latter’s wife at that time, Laura Luz Ojeda, they entered Marbella. Cabezas waited in the car and Michi and Ojeda entered the beach, where shortly after they saw a burly, tall, gray-haired man approaching, carrying a lounge chair in his hands. The man places a chair in the sand: it was Yabrán.
Michi went to the car, where Cabezas was waiting, and told him: “I just saw him on the beach. I’m almost sure it’s Yabrán, but I need your photographic look to be completely sure.”
The journalists went down to the spa next door, Salvador Seagull, and they walked towards where Michi had seen the magnate: “Yes, it’s this one,” confirmed José Luís Cabezas. They returned to the car in search of the photographic equipment and went to the Marbella parking lot. From there, with a telephoto lens, Yabrán could be seen enjoying the sun in his beach chair.
“José Luis asked me to act as a tripod because with that close-up lens—which is also quite heavy—any movement takes the lens out of focus. My shoulder was the place of support.(…) José Luis thus obtained some shots of Yabrán sitting at the edge of the sea in a beach chair, some in which you can even see a dog passing by. Relaxed and already fully enjoying his vacation, the businessman never noticed our presence. The same as his guard, who, I would later find out, was also there camouflaged as tourists and with their weapons hidden among the towels. They never noticed our journalistic work,” says Michi in his book.
After a while, Yabrán left, but the journalists wanted more photos: they went to the adjacent spa where Michi’s wife was and waited. After a while Yabrán returned:
“I was facing a coastal walk but the number of people and the proximity between the place where the businessman was leaving and ours prevented José Luis from being able to photograph that moment. We decided to wait with the common sense logic that indicates that if he left he has to come back. And that logic worked. We stayed attentive looking to the north and after 40 minutes we saw in the distance that Yabrán and his wife were approaching where we were and we knew that this was going to be “the” moment. So, my wife and I posed as tourists while José Luis pretended that he was photographing us. But in reality he was photographing Yabrán and his wife. Both walking in a relaxed way on the beach. We in a fictitious foreground and in parallel but behind, the real photograph. “That of the most enigmatic man in Argentina, enjoying the invisibility that he had built for years,” Michi narrates the moment they got the long-awaited photos.
“You can see them well in the foreground, walking. They are spec-ta-cu-lar”Cabezas told Michi when reviewing how the photos had turned out, although I regret having missed, for a few minutes, a shot of Yabrán and his wife kissing. “That was José Luis. A perfectionist. An obsessive about always achieving a little more in his professional work. Our legs were shaking from the achievement. The nervousness we had had during those hours had its reward. That adrenaline that continued but now with the certainty that the objective was achieved,” Michi wrote in his book, remembering the deceased journalist and his great feat. However, he didn’t end there:
“Excited, we wanted more,” explains Michi. The next day, Saturday, February 16, 1996, Michi and José Luís Cabezas went with family and friends to Salvador Gaviota and rented a tent: the mission was to disguise that they were simply people spending a day at the beach and not “put the public on alert.” “yabranistic environment.”
“Yabrán went down to the beach around 4:00 p.m. And the strategy was the same. We let him pass to the north when he faced the same walk from the previous day. And when he returned, José Luis grabbed his camera with a long lens and, while he was taking photographs of Cristina and her friends, he actually put his focus on Yabrán and his wife. These shots were even more frontal than those of the previous day and, with the experience of the previous day, a clearer objective was achieved in this second instance.
At that same moment José Luis interpreted that this sequence was better than the previous day. And he also knew that the journalistic conquest had been completed,” says Michi. The photo ended up being the cover of NEWS.
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