/ARTS-ENTERTAINMENT/BOOKS-POLITICS: Reviewing the Years of Operation Condor

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, May 4 1999 (IPS) - Seven years of research by Argentine journalist Stella Calloni is reflected in her book “The Years of the Wolf: Operation Condor” which details the support given by the United States to South American dictators in the 1970’s and 1980s.

The book, launched at the end of last month at the Buenos Aires Book Fair, chronicles the events contained in the so-called “archives of terror” found in Paraguay by lawyer Martin Almada.

Almada, a Paraguayan survivor of Operation Condor, discovered the archives of the police force operating under the command of ex- dictator Alfredo Stroessner in Asuncion.

Calloni, a correspondent for the newspaper La Jornada, of Mexico, told IPS that her book is just “the tip of the iceberg” of what occurred during those years.

The journalist explained that her idea was to collect information previously existing only in fragmentary form and released in dribs and drabs to illustrate how Operation Condor worked, which to some experts was an “international (group) of death.”

The operation involved military and civil members of ultra- right organisations in southern cone countries and including the kidnapping and transportation of opponents of the dictatorships to other countries or “free” zones where they were usually murdered.

Calloni collected proof of the connection between the militaries of countries of the region and the support of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), above all through the U.S. embassy in Asuncion.

He book registers the cases of both prominent and unknown persons who were victims of this repressive network.

She records the assassination in Washington of Orlando Letelier, the ex-foreign minister of the Chilean government of Salvador Allende, that of Chilean general Carlos Prats in Buenos Aires, of Bolivian Gen. Joaquin Zenteno and Uruguayan Col. Ramon Trabal, both in Paris, and of Spanish diplomat Carlos Soria in Chile.

In addition, she details that the joint militaries of the embassies of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay were key players in obtaining documents, investigating people and illegally transporting them across international borders.

Calloni stresses in her book that the connection between military officials was clandestine, because not every member of the armed forces of those nations was aware of Operation Condor.

She also notes that one of the antecedents of the plan was “Operation Phoenix”, implemented by the CIA in 1966 in Vietnam and which included among its most notable acts the ouster of President Sukarno in Indonesia.

“The Cold War supplied the global context of an anti-communist pathology,” and Washington provided its Latin American allies with military and ideological instruction, inspiration, financing and technical assistance, declares Calloni.

“The United States could have planted the seeds of Operation Condor,” for which Almada and other victims are demanding compensation from Washington for its participation in torture and other crimes, she says.

Washington’s support of the dictators of the Southern Cone was recognised recently by US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, who lamented the “errors” committed during those years, Calloni recounts in her book.

The author also notes the aid of the United States in overthrowing the socialist president Allende in Chile and installing the dictator Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), as another precursor to Operation Condor.

Part of the archives of terror found in Asuncion were passed along by Almada to the Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon, who is investigating crimes against humanity committed by the dictatorships in Chile and Argentina (1976-1983).

That proof could prompt Garzon to ask for the extradition of the Paraguayan ex-dictator Stroessner (1954-1989), whose political asylum in Brazil is due to expire in August.

The documents on Stroessner include letters written on military letterhead, personal correspondence and relating to ex- detained people, log books detailing the movement of prisoners and border inspections, photographs of torture victims and cassette recordings of telephone conversations.

One of the cases documented is that of Matilde Artes, an Argentine actress kidnapped in Bolivia in 1976 by forces of the dictatorship headed by the current president Hugo Banzer. Artes was accused of belonging to the then-guerrilla Movimiento de Liberacion Nacional-Tupamaros, of Uruguay.

Artes’ daughter Graciela and her young grandchild Carla were kidnapped shortly thereafter. Matilde charged that her daughter was tortured in La Paz by agents of the Argentine Federal Police in front of her small child, who was naked and bound at the feet to further terrify her mother.

The archives also included a letter from the Chilean ex-general Manuel Contreras, then head of the Department of National Intelligence, the secret police of the dictatorship, in which he asks Pinochet for 600,000 dollars for “diplomatic missions” in Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Costa Rica and Belgium, with the goal of “neutralising” presumed “adversaries.”

Another key document in reconstructing the history of Operation Condor, according to Calloni, is a report sent to Washington intelligence chiefs by a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Robert Scherrer, from Buenos Aires in 1976.

“Condor is the code name for the collection, exchange and storage of intelligence information on leftists, marxists or communists recently established among South American intelligence services, which are cooperating with each other to rid the zone of terrorist-marxist activities,” Scherrer wrote.

The agent added that “Condor is facilitating joint operations against terrorist objectives in the member countries to undertake reprisals, including the assassination of suspected terrorists or their supporters, or to persecute them in member nations of the Operation.”

Calloni estimates that from just one of the four tonnes of archives inspected in Asuncion, it can be inferred that there were at least 1,000 victims of this operation, of which very few survived, like Almada.

The journalist warned that this structure “was not dismantled,” but rather simply deactivated.

Calloni lamented that the Paraguayan army retired additional documents shortly after the archive’s discovery, arguing that the release of the papers compromised regional security and that they were not linked to cases of human rights violations. Notwithstanding, she believes that what remained is sufficient.

“Taken together, the archives provide the base for prosecution of whoever committed the crimes – as long as there is the political will to do it – and shed new light on the relationship of the United States with the dictators of the region and their organs of repression, especially with Paraguay,” Calloni notes. (FIN/IPS/tra-mv/dm/cr-hd/99)