Remembering Operation Condor

Remembering Operation Condor

With the US' encouragement, the alliance in South America would go on to torture and murder many civilians.

25 Nov 2015 06:58 GMT



Belen Fernandez

Four decades ago, on November, 25, 1975, the Chilean capital of Santiago hosted a meeting of South American intelligence chiefs, military officers, and government officials with a common commitment to exterminating leftism on the continent.

It was the launch of Operation Condor, a collaborative effort between six countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay. With the United States' encouragement, the alliance would go on to torture and murder tens of thousands of civilians.

The codename "Condor", an avian emblem of various Andean nations, was darkly appropriate in other ways. In Argentina, for example, some 30,000 suspected leftists were disappeared during the "dirty war" waged by the military junta that seized power shortly after Operation Condor took off; many were dropped from aircraft into bodies of water. In other words, this wasn't an innocent flight of the condor.

As historian Greg Grandin notes in his book, Kissinger's Shadow: The Long Reach of America's Most Controversial Statesman, the former US secretary of state offered the following - thinly veiled - murderous advice to the junta's foreign minister in 1976: "If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly." And if the US view wasn't already clear enough, he added: "We understand you must establish authority."

More:
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/11/remembering-operation-condor-151124121151390.html

Good reads:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016137992