Murder of Pascasio Báez

Pascasio Ramón Báez Mena (22 February 1925 – 21 December 1971) was a Uruguayan rural laborer whose killing by the National Liberation Movement – Tupamaros (MLN-Tupamaros), a far-left urban guerrilla group, became a widely referenced symbol of the political violence that affected Uruguay during the 1960s and 1970s.

Báez was born in a rural area of the Department of Maldonado, the second of three children and the only son of Dagoberto Báez and Margarita Pascasia Mena. By 1971 he lived in the city of Pan de Azúcar with his wife, Alejandrina Garrido, and their children, earning a living as a field laborer and bricklayer. Garrido died on 23 December 1971, one week after her husband's kidnapping.

On the morning of 11 December 1971, Báez went into the countryside to retrieve a neighbor's mare that had escaped through a fence knocked down by a storm the previous night. The animal had wandered onto the Espartacus ranch, located at kilometer 112.550 of Route 9. While traversing the property, Báez inadvertently discovered a "tatucera," an underground hideout used by MLN-Tupamaros members as a weapons depot. On being spotted, he was forced into the hideout by the group, who feared he would report their presence to authorities. He was detained, interrogated, and then kept sedated.

According to former Tupamaro militant Jorge Zabalza, the movement subsequently debated several options for Báez, including transferring him to the "Cárcel del Pueblo" (People's Prison), an informal detention site the group had set up in Montevideo, covertly moving him to Cuba, or killing him. After more than a week of captivity, the group decided to kill him, administering a fatal overdose of pentothal on 21 December 1971. In May 2025, former Tupamaro militant Henry Engler stated that another option considered was relocating Báez to Chile, but the individual assigned to carry out that plan refused, leading the group to proceed with the killing instead.

On 22 May 1972, National Army officers discovered the hideout and arrested nine Tupamaro militants found there, seizing an arsenal of weapons. Based on statements from those arrested, Ismael Fernando Bassini Campiglia, an advanced medical student, was identified as the person who administered the fatal injection. On 21 June 1972, Báez's body was exhumed from a pasture near the site of the hideout.