The head of the Senate, Ramón Puerta, received the call from President Fernando de la Rúa in his department of Libertador and Salguero when he was preparing to take the Cessna Citation Excel plane at the San Fernando airport.
It was twenty to five in the afternoon on Thursday, December 20, 2001, and De la Rúa had given what would be his last message to the country on radio and television. He wanted to know what his offer of “a government of national unity” had seemed to justicialism.
“I heard you, President.” Don’t ever do what I’m fearing, don’t tell me you’re about to quit.
– …
—Don’t do that because we already told you that we are going to vote on the Budget and the laws you need by closed book, except for the articles on financing the provinces; there we will debate.
“Ah, well, well … Puerta, are you going to Merlo, to San Luis?”
“Yes, I’m already going there.” We will be all the leaders of Peronism.
“But what time is that meeting going to be?”
“Well, from here I’m going to San Fernando, there’s a little plane that’s going to take me.” I will be arriving at seven in the afternoon and I estimate that we will open the Merlo airport at eight.
“What I want is for you to call me after the meeting between you is over.”
“I think I’ll be able to call you at nine, or half past nine.”
“No, but it’s going to be night.”
“President, that’s the only sure thing at this point: it’s going to be night at half past nine.”
De la Rúa was not satisfied with Puerta’s responses: it was evident that Peronism was not willing to share the responsibility of governing with him.
Before speaking to the country, De la Rúa communicated with Carlos Maestro, who was the head of the radicalist senators’ bloc, who was in the offices of the senator and former president Raúl Alfonsín.
“I’m going to talk on radio and television.”
-When?
“Now, in a few minutes.” De la Rúa cut off and Maestro told Alfonsín, leader of the party apparatus.
“What is he going to say?” Asked the former president.
Until De la Rúa’s speech, the versions of the different protagonists coincide. But, from this moment on there are differences, some of them substantial.
On the one hand, Maestro affirms that after the presidential speech his secretary told him that he could return to the Senate.
—Raúl, I’m going back to the Senate; My secretary told me that everything is calmer.
However, other sources maintain that Maestro remained in
Alfonsín’s office, from where – along with the former president – he conspired to force – or, at least, accelerate – the resignation of De la Rúa. So much so that several co-religionists continue to consider him “a great traitor.”
De la Rúa remembers that dialogue in this way.
“President, I just spoke with Duhalde, who told me that there is nothing to do,” Master informed him.
“What do you think?”
“There is no other way out than to resign.”
“Well, I take note.”
Master denies that testimony. He confirms that he returned to his office in the Senate and that there he saw that “television already reported deaths in the center of the city and also in other places, such as Rosario, Córdoba, in the province of Buenos Aires … There was already talk of more of twenty dead nationwide, there were images of burned cars on July 9. So I called De la Rúa ”.
“Fernando, there are dead in Plaza de Mayo,” he warned him, according to his version.
—No, nobody informed me of that, not my Interior officials or the head of the Federal Police.
“The television is saying there are dead.”
—Television says many things that are not true.
—It seems to me that this time it is true because they are showing images of fallen people.
Maestro assures that – as soon as he broke up with the President – an employee handed him a press release from the senators and deputies of Peronism, where the main opposition force demanded De la Rúa “a gesture of greatness that allows him to overcome this crisis.” According to Maestro, they also “urgently convened a Parliamentary Assembly.”
Teacher says that he called the President again.
—Look Fernando, Peronism has resolved
withdraw its parliamentary support for the Government. The situation is very difficult and I don’t see a way out.
“I did everything I could; I summoned Peronism to a government of national unity, but I was not listened to.
—President, I give you some advice: make your resignation available to Congress so that Congress, through a Parliamentary Assembly, can decide what to do.
Maestro was referring to a special session of all legislators: senators and deputies. The instance provided by the Constitution to analyze the eventual resignation of a President and designate his successor.
De la Rúa was silent for a few seconds.
“If there is no other solution, I will.”
De la Rúa signed his resignation minutes after six thirty in the afternoon. He wrote it by hand, after summoning some trusted officials to his office. One of the officials who accompanied him in that gesture at the end, recalls that, once he stamped his signature on the resignation text, De la Rúa seemed to regain energy, as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
“Well, we don’t have anything to do here today.” We’re leaving, ”he indicated to his distressed collaborators.
And he left the office to take the private elevator, but he was stopped by the head of the Military House, Vice Admiral Carlos Carbone, who had been in office for less than two days.
“Mr. President, you can’t go out there.” Security depends on me and there are a lot of people in the Plaza.
“I’m going straight, like I always do.”
“No, Mr. President, the helicopter is ready.” You cannot get out by land.
De la Rúa was quickly taken to the roof, where a Sikorsky S76B helicopter was already waiting for him, barely perched to protect the ceiling and walls of the historic building from possible cracks. In a rush and in just one minute, he boarded the machine, along with his aide, Lieutenant Colonel Gustavo Giacosa and the deputy chief of the presidential custody, Deputy Commissioner Marcelo Lioni.
It was seven fifty-two in the afternoon and the white helicopter was rising amid applause, shouts and insults from the people protesting in the Plaza de Mayo. An image that would remain in history.
