In others, including Argentina and Uruguay, newly democratic parliaments aimed to prevent the return of military rule with similar laws. In countries including Chile and Brazil, the outgoing regime sought to guarantee its own impunity with new amnesty laws. Brazil and Uruguay followed suit in 1985, then Paraguay in 1989, and Chile in 1990. The Argentine general election of 1983 hailed the gradual return of democracy and constitutional rule to South America. However, as early as 1976, Uruguayan journalist Enrique Rodriguez Larreta and former trade union activist Washington Perez testified to Amnesty International and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights about the ordeals suffered in Buenos Aires and Montevideo. As Argentinian prosecutors told me, these justice seekers “absolutely galvanised all investigations that occurred: without them, nothing would have happened”.Īmerican journalist Jack Anderson first used the term “Condor” in August 1979, in an article in the Washington Post. Many of these campaigners are women: the mothers, grandmothers, wives, sisters and daughters whose lives have been directly impacted by Condor. How women have fought for justiceĪ group of justice seekers – survivors, victims’ relatives, activists, legal professionals and journalists – have long been dedicated to bringing these human rights violations to light. And four, the secret Teseo unit was tasked with carrying out attacks against leftist targets in Europe. Third, a databank in Santiago, Chile, centralised shared intelligence information. Second, Condoreje, a forward command office, located in Buenos Aires, oversaw operations on the ground in Argentina in particular. First, the secret Condortel communications system allowed members to share intelligence. The Condor system was composed of four elements. On November 25, 1975, representatives of the security forces of Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay were invited by the head of Chile’s secret police to a working meeting of national intelligence in Santiago, Chile. Active in denouncing the crimes against humanity being committed across the region, they came under increasing fire from their respective dictatorships.Ī 2010 exhibition on the people who were disappeared following the 1973 putsch in Chile. They were the first to be targeted.īy early 1974, thousands of Brazilians, Bolivians, Chileans, Paraguayans, and Uruguayans were living in Argentina. The violence saw citizens throughout South America flee their home countries.īrazilians sought safe haven in Uruguay and Chile from 1968, when domestic repression in Brazil intensified. Disappearances, baby thefts and extrajudicial executions were committed. Torture and sexual violence was prevalent. The military dictatorships thus installed brutally repressed all forms of political opposition. Putsches followed in Brazil (1964), Bolivia (1971), Uruguay, Chile (1973) and Argentina (1976). The 1954 coup d'état in Paraguay, which saw President Federico Chávez’s government overthrown by the army, was the first. Military leaderships in South America took inspiration from this doctrine to wrest control of their own civil governments. Within the geopolitical context of the cold war, the national security doctrine was formulated in the United States, founded on the idea that achieving national security trumped all other governmental concerns. My research, however, has shown that from as early as 1969, Brazilian refugees in Uruguay, Argentina and Chile were targeted and, in many cases, killed. Research normally places Condor’s beginnings in 1974-1975.
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