Operation Condor and Violations of Human Rights
Abstract
Perhaps Operation Condor is a topic not much spoken or known about by the general public. For several Americans who might have a semblance of an idea about what Operation Condor might be, they would probably say that it was a series of American military incursions that liberated Latin American people from the oppressive grip of "communistic" regimes. However, for many Latin American people who have repeatedly heard the stories of those who experienced past times, they would describe Operation Condor as a series of coups under American direction that brought bloody military dictatorships to power in many Latin American countries. In addition, those same Latin American people would equate the American Operation Condor to the almost innumerable statistics and personal stories that detail the many violations of human rights that began with the violent coups and continued with the establishment of American puppet governments. The following writing attempts to recount a few of the personal stories and violations of human rights that were all part of a purposeful outcome that the United States government sought to implement onto the Latin American continent.
Operation Condor was a “an organized system of state terror with a transnational reach” that was created during the 1970s. In this “organized system of state terror,” the military dictatorships of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay sent death squads to each other’s territories to kidnap, torture, and even murder thousands of suspected political dissidents from the left of the political spectrum (McSherry, 2001) (Tremlett, 2020). It was a period of time when abductions, disappearances, torture, and illegal transfers of persons across borders were occurring to such an extent, that more than 60,000 people were killed by the end of Operation Condor (Rohter, 2014). These victims did not only include political dissidents: Students, teachers, in addition to union and peasant leaders were all persecuted without any due process in court (McSherry, 2001). Hundreds of these victims ended up being shackled to concrete blocks before being thrown out of flying planes, or helicopters, into the water of the Río de la Plata (Tremlett, 2020). Operation Condor caused most of Latin America to become, as Dr. Francesca Lessa from Oxford University would claim, “a borderless area of terror and impunity (Tremlett, 2020). All of this was fully endorsed and supported by the United States government.
One of the most significant events that alarmed and impelled the United States to help create Operation Condor was the Cuban Revolution. When the Cuban Revolution started, a wave of anti-imperialist sentiment spread across the Latin American countries. This living sentiment brought popular mobilizations that sought to bring change to the economic, political, and social systems of almost every respective country in Latin America, especially in South America, into fruition. The outcome of this change would have diminished the United States’ influence in the area and would have restored more autonomy to each respective nation concerning the direction it wished to take in its affairs (Costa, 2019). The American oligarchy would not abide to this loss of influence and wealth.
When the Cuban Revolution was completed in the year of 1959, the American government began increasing the number of resources that it was providing to military groups in South America so to equip and mobilize them in unifying over the goal of preventing leftist leaders from obtaining power. Nonetheless, during the 1960s and 1970s, the populist, nationalist, and socialist movements that were gaining popularity among the Southern American people, were able to pass through the hurdles put by the American government and the local oligarchies, and thus were able to ultimately reach power. This, in turn, changed the objective of the American government and the local oligarchies of Southern America. Their new objective was directed towards preventing the leftist leaders that already gained power from continuing in that position of power. In other words, the oligarchies and the American government sought to actualize military coups and the establishment of puppet governments that would satisfy the financial and political interests of the American government and the oligarchies. The United States sought to prevent another Cuba from appearing in the form of another Southern American country, so much so that the prevention of another Cuba became “a stated U.S. policy in Latin America” (McSherry, 2019). Indeed, the American government and the soon-created Condor regimes “feared elected leftist leaders as much, if not more, than revolutionary guerrillas in the region” (McSherry, 2019).
Therefore, during the 1970s, the American government assisted in the creation, and maintenance, of transnational sites across Latin America, where American instructors taught their Latin American military pupils: counter-subversive tactics, counterinsurgency tactics, psychological warfare approaches, torture methods, and instructions on how to organize large-scale abduction and assassination attempts on political dissidents (McSherry, 2019). Much of these tactics and approaches were conveyed with the overtone of “anti-communistic” ideology and general contempt for leftist and populist movements. It comes without saying that many of the pupils who attended lessons at these transnational sites, such as “The School of the Americas,” would soon go on to attempt, or complete, coups throughout several countries in Latin America (McSherry, 2019).
These coups were an essential part of Operation Condor. Just between the 1970s and 1980s, eight U.S.-backed military dictatorships were able to reach the highest positions of power in their respective nations. After reaching these positions of power, all eight U.S.-backed military dictatorships cooperated with each other for the collection of data of leftist and populist “dissidents,” for the interchange of this data, and for the cross-border abductions, arrests, and assassinations of these “dissidents.” In order to “successfully” fulfill these objectives, each Condor-participating government also created police and military units that were allowed to abduct, torture, and execute leftist political dissidents. In order for these actions to be considered “legal” and “acceptable,” once reaching power, many of these military dictatorships modified the constitution to their will. For example, when a military dictator obtained power in Brazil, the newly-installed military regime modified the constitution in such a way that political rights were suspended, individuals were no longer guaranteed to have a trial when arrested, and the national congress was closed. In addition, the Brazilian military regime also institutionalized the violent practices of kidnapping, torture, and homicide of political dissidents by making those actions acceptable within the military and police departments (Costa, 2019). It could be said that, during this particular time period, much of the people who were arrested were arrested on the basis of their political beliefs, rather than on the basis of any actual crime (McSherry, 2019).
A declassified CIA document from the year of 1977 conveys the mode of operation that was in use during the time period in which Operation Condor’s status was active:
“If information is obtained revealing the whereabouts of an extremist abroad, a Condor team might be sent to the location, but only to verify the extremist’s presence and to determine his future travel. If unspecified actions against a particular extremist were desired, the Condor service would ask a security service of the country where the extremist resides to carry out these actions” (Department of State, 1977).
Many times, “these actions” would be of such heinous nature that, albeit perhaps not completely knowable, seemed unprecedented in the whole continent (McSherry, 2019).
Villa Grimaldi, the most important complex used by Chile’s secret police in the outskirts of Santiago, Chile, was a place where “these actions” took place. It is now known that victims, who were abducted and taken to this location, were forced by the secret police to go through the “action” of being locked into tiny wooden boxes for days, before being tied to a concrete beam and thrown into the sea from an airplane or helicopter. For the victims who were women, it is known that they were subjected to even more abominable “actions” by the secret police members. Women who were abducted and imprisoned in this location were subject to receiving electrical shocks to their vagina and being raped by men as well as dogs (Tremlett, 2020). Many of the people who were targeted, abducted, tortured, and/or murdered, were people who were only demanding for their respective governments to end political exclusion and repression, to democratize the political institutions, to un-privatize national resources, and to extend the political and economic rights that pertained to peasants, workers, teachers, students, and all common citizens (McSherry, 2019).
Ever since those “actions” took place, many personal accounts have surfaced. In the following section, 4 personal accounts will be presented:
Macarena Gilman was born in captivity in Uruguay, after her parents had been kidnapped in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Not long after being born in captivity, she was taken away from her parents and raised by a police family. She was only able to discover her true identity after her grandfather, who had launched international efforts, was able to find her. Macarena Gilman is only one of an unknown number of children who were seized from their living parents, or seized after their parents were killed, and given to police or military families to be raised by them (McSherry, 2019).
María Eugenia Bravo, who was a young Chilean mother, a student, and a supporter of the socialist president Salvador Allende, was seized by militant officials before being tortured. She was later released, but she was unable to live with a sense of safeness since she was continually surveilled in her home by armed men. Later on, she was able to secure a visa for herself and her daughter, which permitted them to escape to England (McSherry, 2019).
Catalina Palma was an active member of the Chilean Socialist Party. In the month of December, 1974, after becoming aware that two of her fellow activists disappeared during a time of great political turmoil in her home country, she decided to flee to Argentina. In the month of January, 1975, Catalina became aware that her mother had been kidnapped in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Catalina would later learn that her mother had been illegally transferred to Chile’s infamous Villa Grimaldi. In the month of November, 1975, a commando of Argentines pounded on the door of her home and shouted to her, “We came to do a little favor for Pinochet.” Catalina, along with three friends, were dragged from the apartment they were in and were all brought to a police station, where they were raped, tortured and brutally interrogated by the method of the “submarino,” (near-downing). They were subsequently imprisoned in Villa Devoto before being expelled to England (McSherry, 2019).
Chilean 18-year-old Laura Elgueta and her sister-in-law, Sonia, were both kidnapped from their home in Argentina by armed Chilean and Argentinian police officers. They were blindfolded and taken to the basement of a police warehouse in Buenos Aires. The young women were sexually, physically, and verbally abused in the car that took them from their home to the police warehouse. At the basement of the police warehouse, “the women were stripped, handcuffed, hooded, and given their numbers, K52 and K53” (Tremlett, 2020). “Whoever walked past would insult you, or beat you, or throw you to the ground,” Elgueta recalled (Tremlett, 2020). The sound of many chains could be heard as they walked. The two women were taken to the torture room one at a time. Inside the torture room, they were once again sexually and physically abused, as well as electrically shocked. “They’d say: ‘Now the party can really start.’ Despite all we know and have read, you cannot imagine what human beings are capable of. It was a house of horrors,” Elgueta said (Tremlett, 2020). “When my sister-in-law came out of one session, they had given her such strong electric shocks that she was still trembling” (Tremlett, 2020). The two young women were held for 8 hours until they were blindfolded again, driven away, and dropped off at the corner of the street near their home. “As I left, the one [torturer] who had decided I was his girlfriend was there shouting: ‘Don’t take her away! I want to be with my girl!’” (Tremlett, 2020).
As for the accounts of suffering and death that dissidents in governmental positions went through, they too surfaced to the public light. For example, in 1974, Chilean general Carlos Prats and his wife, Sofía Cuthbert, were both killed in a car bombing in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In 1975, leader of the Chilean Christian Democrats, Bernardo Leighton, and his wife, Ana Fresno, were both shot and wounded in Rome. In 1976, Uruguayan legislators Zelmar Michelini and Héctor Gutiérrez Ruiz, who were opponents of the Uruguayan military regime, both disappeared and were later found dead in Buenos Aires, with clear signs of having been tortured. In 1976, Orlando Letelier, a critic of military dictator Augusto Pinochet, was murdered along with his U.S. colleague, Ronni Moffitt, in a car bombing in Washington D.C.
All of this occurred with the full knowledge and support of the American government. When Henry Kissinger, the then-Secretary of State of the United States, visited Chile, he met with Chile’s dictator, Augusto Pinochet, and several of Latin America’s ranking military officers who had participated in coups. In this meeting, he expressed to them that they had the full support of the American government for the objectives they would want to act towards (McSherry, 2019). Evidence of America’s support for Latin American dictators did not limit itself only to that sort of situation. The American government’s intelligence organization worked so closely with the Latin American military regimes that participated in Operation Condor, that the military regimes of Latin America came to consider the American government as a close ally. The reasoning by the American government for voluntarily doing this was that, even though the governments it was supporting were breaking international law in their crusade against their “communist opponents,” it considered the military regimes as important allies to have during the Cold War (McSherry, 2001).
John Dinges and Saul Landau published a book in the year of 1980 which focused on investigating the assassination of Orlando Letelier and his U.S. colleague, Ronni Moffitt, in Washington D.C. Their book included information on how the U.S. assisted the military regimes that participated in Operation Condor with the creation of assassination units. The authors found a document that was written by an FBI officer shortly after the killings of John Dinges and Orlando Letelier that mentioned “a more secret phase” of Operation Condor that involved “the formation of special teams from member countries who are to travel anywhere in the world to carry out sanctions, [including] assassinations” (Tremlett, 2020). The book by John Dinges and Saul Landau became the main source of public knowledge for knowing who were the architects and supporters of the governmental actions that disappeared and killed thousands of people across a whole continent. The writing and evidence demonstrated in this book conveyed the hypocrisy of the United States: “The United States has positioned itself in forums of international cooperation as the defendant of human rights, but throughout its history it has financed behaviors of states that directly violate the principles of human rights, such as the case with Operation Condor” (United States High Commissioner for Refugees, 2017) (Costa, 2019).
References
Costa, L. L. (2019). Operación Cóndor, la configuración de poder en el Cono Sur y las Violaciones de los Derechos Humanos. Fronteira: Revista de Iniciacao Cientifica Em Relacoes Internacionais, 18(36), 279–297.
Henry Kissinger, “Memorandum for the President’s File,” December 9, 1971, 5, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 282, 16 August 2009, Document 1 at http:// www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB282/index.htm. See also McSherry, Predatory States, 53–58.
McSherry, J. P. (2001). Operation Condor: Deciphering the U.S. Role. GPF: Global Policy Forum. Retrieved from: https://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/163/28173.html).
McSherry, J. P. (2019). Operation Condor and Transnational State Violence against Exiles. Journal of Global South Studies, 36(2), 368–398. https://doi.org/10.1353/gss.2019.0042
Rohter, L. (2014). Exposing the Legacy of Operation Condor. The New York Times. Retrieved from: https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/24/exposing-the-legacy-of-operation-condor/).
Telegram from the Department of State to the Embassies in Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Uruguay and Chile, CIA Summary, Washington, March 24, 1977, 1455Z, in newly released chapters of Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) p. 33. Released October 25, 2017, accessed October 22, 2018, https://ar.usembassy.gov/office-historian -release-chapters-argentina-latin-america-region-frus-1977-1980-south-america-latin -america-region/.
Tremlett, G. (2020). Operation Condor: the cold war conspiracy that terrorised South America: During the 1970s and 80s, eight US-backed military dictatorships jointly plotted the cross-border kidnap, torture, rape and murder of hundreds of their political opponents. Now some of the perpetrators are finally facing justice. The Guardian. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/sep/03/operation-condor-the-illegal-state-network-that-terrorised-south-america