SARE

SARE is an Argentine support network that gives Manuel Arroyo Benítez a precarious livelihood after his arrival in Argentina, but also becomes a form of tutelage he seeks to escape. Its assistance helps him establish himself; the life he builds beyond it becomes, in his own retrospective account, more authentic than either of his earlier assumed identities.

Support and Dependence

After arriving in Argentina, Arroyo receives income from SARE. When he looks for work in 1949, the salary he negotiates at the language academy approaches what he had been earning from the organization, a comparison that shows how important its financial support had been. He does not aspire to higher earnings: securing a modest independent job is enough to begin loosening his dependence.

A Foothold in Buenos Aires

The work Arroyo finds at Academia de Idiomas La Europea gives him a fixed place in central Buenos Aires, away from the residential districts where the Nazis he hopes to avoid live. The academy’s owner also helps solve his housing problem by directing him to a room in the Congreso neighborhood. This practical stability lets Arroyo work, live, and maintain his clandestine investigation without relying on SARE as his sole source of support.

From Assistance to Independence

By March 1949, Arroyo’s decisions are explicitly described as an effort to escape both Kutschmann’s control and SARE’s generosity. The change is not a clean break from his mission: he has already established a route between Madrid and Burnham and made contact with Goodwin. Instead, the attempt to leave SARE’s tutelage helps shape a life that is both more self-directed and still committed to gathering intelligence.

Narrative Significance

SARE’s role is measured through the tension between refuge and autonomy. Its aid offers Arroyo a livelihood, but the modest job and rented room that follow make possible a life no longer defined entirely by the support network or by his cover identities. Looking back, he regards this unexpected Argentine existence as more authentic than his years in Madrid as Adrián Gallardo Ortega or his solitary Geneva work under the name Felipe Ballesteros Sánchez.