endeavoring to foster inter-service and regional cooperation by assisting in the organization of integrated command and control centers the establishment of common operating procedures and the conduct of joint and combined training exercises." Īccording to American historian J. Porter stated that "in order to facilitate the coordinated employment of internal security forces within and among Latin American countries, we are.
Operation Condor, which took place in the context of the Cold War, had the tacit approval and material support of the United States.
Such support was frequently routed through the CIA. The United States government provided planning, coordinating, training on torture, and technical support and supplied military aid to the Juntas during the Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations. Ecuador and Peru later joined the operation in more peripheral roles. Condor's key members were the governments in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, while Brazil signed the agreement later on. Although it was described by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as "a cooperative effort by the intelligence/security services of several South American countries to combat terrorism and subversion," guerrillas were used as an excuse, as they were never substantial enough to control territory, gain material support by any foreign power, or otherwise threaten national security. hundreds, or thousands, of such persons-the number still has not been finally determined-were abducted, tortured, and murdered in Condor operations." Victims included dissidents and leftists, union and peasant leaders, priests and nuns, students and teachers, intellectuals and suspected guerrillas. Patrice McSherry gives a figure of at least 402 killed in Condor operations which crossed national borders in a 2002 source, and mentions in a 2009 source that of those who "had gone into exile" and were "kidnapped, tortured and killed in allied countries or illegally transferred to their home countries to be executed. Some estimates are that at least 60,000 deaths can be attributed to Condor, roughly 30,000 of these in Argentina, and the Archives of Terror list 50,000 killed, 30,000 disappeared and 400,000 imprisoned.
ĭue to its clandestine nature, the precise number of deaths directly attributable to Operation Condor is highly disputed. It was officially and formally implemented in November 1975 by the right-wing dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America. Operation Condor (Spanish: Operación Cóndor, also known as Plan Cóndor Portuguese: Operação Condor) was a United States-backed campaign of political repression and state terror involving intelligence operations and assassination of opponents. Intelligence agencies of respective participating countriesĬoncluded after the fall of the Berlin WallĦ0,000–80,000 suspected leftist sympathizers killed Ĥ00-500 killed in cross-border operations Left-wing sympathizers (including Peronists, communists, and socialists) and opponents to the military juntas and right-wing governments in South America