IN MARCH 1976, Argentina’s General Videla's military coup seized control of the country, enforcing a dictatorship that lasted six years.

Installing a reign of terror against all opponents, in his inaugural speech he proclaimed his aim: to eliminate subversive elements, ranging from communists, socialists and anarchists to trade unionists, intellectuals and the liberation-theory wing of the clergy, followed by their friends and associates and, finally, any citizens still undecided about the regime.
 
The School of Naval Mechanics (ESMA) was reassigned to the Military Intelligence Service, whose officials Claudio Fava calls “the street sweepers who would clean up the country,” in his novel The Silenced.

ESMA was one of about 340 concentration camps and torture chambers within Argentina and 90 per cent of the prisoners who were kidnapped and tortured there died.

This is the backdrop to Fava’s short and explicit novel about the players and coach of the La Plata First XV rugby squad whose refusal to kowtow to this system cost them their lives.

Rugby was introduced in Argentina through elite English and French schools in the late 19th century and became widely popular after WWII, notably with second and third-generation Italian immigrants.

In the late 1970s, the young La Plata squad was composed of workers and students, politically aware and active to a greater or lesser degree. The first to be eliminated had 19 bullets pumped into him, one for each member of the squad.

When the second player was found floating in the Rio de la Plata, having been thrown from a plane with his hands chopped off, his arms bound and a bullet in his brain, the players decided to mark this atrocity with a minute’s silence at the start of their next match.

This turned into a 10-minute homage, with players and fans standing in silence and from that moment the rugby team’s fate was sealed.

A crucial element in the victimisation of the La Plata rugby team was the imminence of the football World Cup to be played in Argentina in 1978. With 300 per cent inflation, unrest and opposition at home and a growing global awareness of the oppression of Videla’s regime, the junta needed to minimise all dissent.

Videla was not prepared to leave anything to chance. If the World Cup was to be a successful public-relations exercise, the true nature of Argentina’s bloody dictatorship had to be thoroughly suppressed.

The junta couldn’t afford the filming of disturbances and demonstrations by the world’s media so, to avoid this embarrassment, the level of imprisonment, torture and murder was increased and the La Plata squad became part of this.

The solidarity the players showed to each other is both heartwarming and heartbreaking. Despite the opportunity to leave Argentina for a tour of France and the offer of political asylum there, they courageously chose to remain at home and finish playing the season, knowing they would be picked off one by one.

Fava has based his fiction on these real events, interviewing not only the sole survivor of that squad, Raul Barandiaran — on whose testimony the novel is based — but also other victims of Argentina’s dirty war against her citizens.

The author’s pared down and filmic style makes this novel an accessible yet deceptive read — his spare handling of La Plata’s story enhances the horror of the events through which sport and politics became fatally entwined.

Published by Polaris Publishing, £7.99.