The leader of the Banking Association and Peronist militant Andres Castillowho participated in the Condor Operation that in 1966 diverted a plane to the Malvinas to claim Argentine sovereignty over the islands, died this Monday at the age of 79 after a progressive deterioration in his health, they reported this noon from the guild.
The general secretary of the union, Sergio Palazzo, remembered him as a “great fellow activist” as well as “companion and “friend”, while the national secretariat of La Bancaria dismissed him as someone “with unalterable convictions over time and the circumstances that he had to live”.
Castillo had been a banker since he was 14, when he joined the then Caja Nacional de Ahorro y Seguro in a sort of tradition of those years, since his father was employed there, and he has been since then linked to the union sphere as a general delegate in his workplace, which in times of Menemism led him to be one of the organizers of the resistance to the privatization of that State credit institution, finally materialized in 1994.
Two decades later, he would be elected alongside Palazzo in the leadership of the union: first in 2014, as alternate deputy secretary, and in 2018 as deputy secretary.
Throughout his career, Castillo maintained an unalterable adherence to Peronism and an undeniable will in the fight for sovereigntywith a chapter that brought him notoriety when In September 1966, he participated in the hijacking of an Aerolineas plane together with other militants, some Peronists and others from spaces more linked to nationalism, among whom was his friend Dardo Cabo.
So it was that on the morning of September 29, 1966, they arrived in Malvinas on a flight that carried several famous passengers, such as the then director of the newspaper Crónica, Hector Ricardo Garciawho was guaranteed the scoop and privileged access to the photos.
Today we received the sad news of the death of our dear colleague and my friend, Andrés Castillo.
It is a day of great pain for the banking family and even more personal pain.
Andrés accompanied me in the worst moments that the bank went through. pic.twitter.com/ZLXfw0LVCw– Sergio Omar Palazzo (@SergioOPalazzo) August 29, 2022
The 18 members of the operation, who called themselves “condors” and had the secret financial support of sectors of the labor movement, They sought with this aerial piracy action -the first in Argentine history- to impact public opinion on the need to maintain the claim for sovereignty over the islands, which Great Britain had occupied in 1833.
It was not a random moment: the dictator Juan Carlos Onganía of the newly released “Argentine Revolution” was preparing to receive with honors Prince Felipe of Edinburgh, representative of the British monarchy.
Years later, Castle participated in the irruption of Montoneros, was one of the founders of the Peronist Working Youth (JTP)the trade union group of the so-called Revolutionary Tendency of Peronism and, already dictatorship, he was kidnapped by a task force on May 19, 1977 and taken to the ESMA clandestine detention center, where he was tortured and witnessed how some pregnant women who had been detained and kept there until giving birth had their children in captivityfacts that he testified as a witness before the Federal Oral Court (TOF) 5, within the framework of the “Unified ESMA” mega-cause.
With great regret, we report the death of our colleague and leader Andrés Castillo.
We will say goodbye to you at home, your beloved Banking Association. We invite those who wish to say goodbye, starting at 5:00 p.m.
More Info ? https://t.co/zIrNNBS3U3 pic.twitter.com/qVTsI06jJ8
— Banking Association (@La_Bancaria) August 29, 2022
In his statement before TOF 5, Castillo recalled that there were more than two hundred missing bankers and said that many of them went through the ESMA: two of them were Ernesto Raul Casariegounion delegate, and his wife, Elba Liliana Carrizowho, like him, worked in the then National Savings and Insurance Fund.
That common belonging today unites them with Dora Casariego, Ernesto’s sister and current delegate at La Caja, the private insurance company with the participation of Italian capital created after privatization.
“Andrés Castillo was a born fighter and had an impressive life, an absolute dedication to what he believed and what he continued to believe until the end of his days, with enormous loyalty to the cause and to his companions”Dora Casariego recalled in dialogue with Télam, and then recounted that the unionist helped her reconstruct the story of her brother and sister-in-law from a meeting she had with him in Spain, where Castillo lived for a time after a previous step in Venezuela, once the dictatorship released and authorized a group of militants to leave the country, in the first half of 1979.
For Dora Casariego, Castillo was a “super intelligent, committed and generous” man who displayed “an irreducible militancy” over the years.a definition that is related to the one chosen by another colleague of his, Eduardo Berrozpe, former Press Secretary of La Bancaria and who shared many years with him in various fields.
“From a young age he assumed a commitment to social justice, trade unionism and popular and national sovereignty; he was in the ESMA dungeons, as it is known, and gave his testimony when he testified in the trials. Andrés Castillo always resisted the policies of the oligarchy, the dictatorship and colonialism, consistent with the Constitution by all means when necessary“, Berrozpe described it in dialogue with this agency.
After reporting on Castillo’s death, the Banking Association announced that the wake will be held at the union’s headquarters, Sarmiento at 300, from 5:00 p.m. to 9:30 a.m. this Tuesday, when the priest Domingo Bresci, one of the founders of the Movement of Priests of the Third World (MSTM), officiates a religious response before the procession departs for the Chacarita cemetery.
