Between 1976 and 1978, the South American dictatorships carried out a campaign of violent repression against dissidents and political exiles who demonstrated against internal repression and military rule.
The Condor Plan, as this campaign is known, has since inspired multiple novels, plays and exhibitions, not to mention an HBO series. The latter, based on The condor’s ashesthe 2014 novel by Uruguayan writer Fernando Butazzoni, tells the story of a young man whose parents fled Uruguay during the military dictatorship.
In 1992, a cache of some 700,000 documents was discovered in a police station in Asunción (Paraguay). Called the Terror Files, these documents exhaustively recorded the activities of the Paraguayan secret police during the dictatorship of General Alfredo Stroessner (1954-1989). Since then, academics and journalists in Chile, Argentina, and the United States have investigated this transnational terror network.
Between 2017 and 2020, I compiled the first database on cross-border violations of human rights in South America. I registered at least 805 victims of kidnappings, torture, sexual violence, baby theft, as well as extrajudicial executions and disappearances that occurred between 1969 and 1981.
How the Condor Plan came about
As I explain in my new book, The Condor Trialsthe new case that was opened against the naval officer, the Italian-Uruguayan citizen Jorge Néstor Tróccoli, constitutes the 48th criminal investigation into these years of terror since the 1970s. The first hearing was held in Rome on the 14th of July 2022. Tróccoli is accused of the murders in the 1970s of three people: an Italian citizen, Rafaela Filipazzi, a Uruguayan, Elena Quinteros, and an Argentine, José Potenza.
My research has shown that the majority of the Condor victims (48%) were Uruguayan nationals. Argentina was the main theater of operations, since 69% of all victims were attacked there. In addition, the main targets were political activists (40%), followed by members of guerrilla groups (36%).
Investigations usually place the beginnings of Cóndor in 1974-1975. However, my research has shown that since 1969, Brazilian refugees in Uruguay, Argentina and Chile have been persecuted and, in many cases, killed.
In the geopolitical context of the Cold War, the doctrine of national security was formulated in the United States, based on the idea that the achievement of national security was above all other governmental concerns. The military leaders of South America were inspired by this doctrine to carry out coups against civilian governments.
The 1954 coup in Paraguay, in which the government of President Federico Chávez was overthrown by the army, was the first. Coups followed in Brazil (1964), Bolivia (1971), Uruguay, Chile (1973) and Argentina (1976).
The established military dictatorships brutally repressed all forms of political opposition. Thousands of illegal arrests were made. Torture and sexual violence were frequent. Kidnappings, baby thefts and extrajudicial executions were committed. The violence caused citizens across South America to flee their home countries.
Brazilians sought refuge in Uruguay and Chile beginning in 1968, when internal repression in Brazil intensified. They were the first to be attacked.
At the beginning of 1974, thousands of Brazilians, Bolivians, Chileans, Paraguayans, and Uruguayans lived in Argentina. Active in denouncing the crimes against humanity that were being committed throughout the region, they came under increasing fire from their respective dictatorships.
On November 25, 1975, representatives of the security forces of Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay were invited by the chief of the Chilean secret police to a national intelligence working meeting in Santiago, Chile. This is how the Condor Plan was born.
The Condor was composed of four elements. First, the secret Condortel communications system allowed its members to share information. Second, Condoreje spanned the operational axis and included a forward command office, located in Buenos Aires, which oversaw operations on the ground, especially in Argentina. Third, a data bank in Santiago de Chile centralized the shared intelligence information. And fourth, the secret Theseus unit was in charge of carrying out attacks against leftist targets in Europe.
How women have fought for justice
A group of justice seekers – survivors, families of victims, activists, legal professionals and journalists – have long dedicated themselves to exposing these human rights violations. Many of these activists are women: the mothers, grandmothers, wives, sisters, and daughters whose lives have been directly affected by Condor. As the Argentine prosecutors told me, these people “promoted absolutely all the investigations that were carried out: without them nothing would have happened.”
The American journalist Jack Anderson used the term “Condor” for the first time in August 1979, in an article in the Washington Post. However, as early as 1976 and 1977, Uruguayan journalist Enrique Rodríguez Larreta and former union activist Washington Pérez testified before Amnesty International and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights about the ordeals suffered in Buenos Aires and Montevideo.
The Argentine general elections of 1983 marked the gradual return of democracy and the constitutional regime to South America. Brazil and Uruguay followed suit in 1985, then Paraguay in 1989, and Chile in 1990.
In countries like Chile and Brazil, the outgoing regime tried to guarantee its own impunity with new amnesty laws. In others, such as Argentina and Uruguay, the new democratic parliaments tried to prevent the return of military rule with similar laws. As a result, all criminal investigations into past atrocities were closed.
Despite these setbacks, multiple criminal investigations into Condor atrocities have been conducted since the late 1970s. Thirty of these cases have reached a judgment, four trials are ongoing, three have been archived and 9 are in the investigation phase.
To date, 112 South American military and civilian officials, including former dictators and government ministers, have been brought to justice. Most likely, this figure only represents a part of the culprits. Although there is no official estimate of the total number of them, it is likely that they number in the thousands.
This process is important for the victims, their families, and the broader societies that suffered in the past. It is also crucial to prevent such atrocities from happening in the future.
In addition, the transnational repression of exiles and dissidents remains a pressing problem around the world. According to him thinktank American Freedom House, in 2021 alone there were 85 such incidents. Justice for the crimes of the Condor Plan stands, therefore, as a clear warning for today’s authoritarian states.