On Saturday, May 11, 1974, priest Carlos Mugica was shot to death. He was a founding member of the Movement of Third World Priests, a reference for village priests and openly identified with Peronism. Mugica is the first religious to be murdered in the midst of the political violence that characterized Argentina in the ’70s. It is 50 years since his death.}
In the town of Retiro, Carlos Mugica was not alone. At his side, like a faithful and indispensable companion, was the Jesuit José María Meisegeier, who, in fact, after the crime, remained in charge of the Cristo Obrero parish, which he had founded.
As that German surname is difficult to pronounce, perhaps from before arriving in the town and until the end of his days (he died in December 2011), locals and strangers preferred to simply call him “Father Pichi”, a nickname whose origin has been lost. .
It is not an exaggeration to say that Father Pichi became aware very early of what they were both experiencing; One could even imagine that he came to suspect the consequences that the double expression that they gave to the option for the poor that they had taken with Mugica would entail: not only was it, for them, a way of living their priesthood, since, at the same time , implied strong militancy in Peronism.
Roberto Baschetti, who met Meisegeier in the mid-1960s, in the middle of adolescence, when he was his student at the Colegio del Salvador, on his website he was able to remember the words with which “Pichi” justified his militancy in the Villero Movement Peronist: “We realized that the popular force passed through Peronism. Above all, the Peronism that was experienced from ’68, ’70, which was taking a very strong shape with respect to the rescue and resurgence of popular groups and forces.”
The work of the witness
The “singing voice” of that duo was Mugica; and Pichi, a “privileged witness” with the capacity and dedication necessary to rise to the occasion. So, the Jesuit dedicated part of his time to gathering all the materials that could describe both Mugica’s preaching and its repercussions, and he even wrote a chronology about Mugica’s activities.
Thus, an immense and rich archive was generated in which original documents, manuscripts, pamphlets, flyers, posters, photographs, videos, newspaper articles, magazines and books coexist, which years later was strengthened with the generosity of Mugica’s family, who understood that Pichi was the right person to receive all of Mugica’s papers: the notebooks and the loose pages where he wrote down his ideas, his curriculum vitae, his missal and his correspondence, to which was added even the police report and the death certificate.
Through this documentary annexation, we can see that Mugica himself made an effort to preserve and organize his papers. When a writer or an artist from another discipline does this, we usually say that he did it in anticipation of the future academic who would investigate his work. By analogy, here it is worth thinking about it with respect to one priest… or, to be fair, two.
As if he were an experienced archivist, Meisegeier organized all the collected documentation into a neat and methodical inventory. We are talking about 242 books and 33 boxes with documents in perfect condition.
Córdoba custody
This invaluable cultural heritage is in Córdoba and available to anyone who wants to consult it through a custody agreement signed in 2007 by the Argentine Province of the Society of Jesus with the Catholic University of Córdoba, with the obvious participation of whoever was its owner. Just go to the campus, enter the Jean Sonet SJ library and request access to the José M. Pichi Meisegeier SJ Collection-Carlos Francisco Mugica Archive.
The material has been cataloged following the original scheme given to it by Father Pichi. The content of the collection can be consulted on the library’s website, where there is also related bibliographic information. From the beginning, the digitization of the material was planned, but it is an arduous and expensive job for which, in all the years since the documentation arrived in Córdoba, it has not been possible to obtain the required budget.
It is worth clarifying that the material is only available for consultation in the reading room. It cannot be removed to take home, and photocopying is not permitted. But, given the possibilities that current cell phones offer us, it is allowed to take photographs of the document consulted.
This basic rule, as you can imagine, is violated when the researcher reports that he lives a considerable distance away and that it is impossible for him to travel to our city. In the library there are cases of German and Japanese scholars, for example, who requested by email the possibility of receiving digitized specific documents that they needed for their respective research. And at the same time, there is the case of an Italian researcher who, after a first contact to request certain digitization, preferred to travel and work in the library with her originals.
