The Restoration of Democracy and the Search for Justice

The countries which had participated in Operation Condor’s repressive coordination eventually returned to democracy. The democratic transition reinvigorated the demands for answers regarding the crimes against humanity committed under dictatorship. Today, the search for truth and justice continues for the crimes that the repressive forces committed against individuals and groups and the alliances that the totalitarian governments formed with businesses and powerful actors to strengthen their corruption.

Operation Condor

On 28th November 1975, representatives of the regimes of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Santiago (Chile), where they established the so-called “Condor System” or Operation Condor. Operation Condor reproduced the same range of human rights violations carried out by dictatorships within their borders but strengthening transnational clandestine actions to commit the crimes.

Authoritarian Context and Repressive Coordination

Authoritarian regimes -ideologically inspired by the National Security Doctrine- swept across the length and breadth of South America in the geopolitical context of the Cold War. The growing mobilisation of trade unions, student unions, and peasant movements with demands for better living and working conditions, confronted conservative forces and violent parapolice and paramilitary groups.

Joint monitoring and security with the Argentine consulate in São Paulo

This report is addressed to the head delegate Dr. Silvio Pereira Machado. The unknown writer of this correspondence recounts that, on 15th April 1977, he or she accompanied two Argentine Federal Police officers to a meeting with the Colonel Felix de Souza in São Paulo under the request of the Argentine consul Julio Alfredo Freixas. The Argentine police asked for two Argentine citizens to be arrested while they were living in São Paulo.

​​Report to the DOPS Director

This letter is composed of two parts. The head of the Foreigners’ Specialized Branch of São Paulo Police (Brazil), Homero Honorio Ferreira, writes to the general director of São Paulo Police, Lucio Vieria. Ferreira forwards a receipt to Vieria that he had received from the Argentine police at the Iguazú Police Precinct when they seized four Argentine citizens who were living undercover in Brazil. The Argentines were handed over by the Brazilian police and held at the police station while their records were being investigated.

Romina Patrón

Romina Patrón

Voice reader in Spanish

Romina Patrón is a voice reader who trained at the IPEP and Mediarte vocational schools. She is currently working for Radio Gráfica in Buenos Aires for the radio programme, “De fogón a fogón”.

Andrés Correa

Andres Correa

Voice reader in Spanish

Andrés Correa is a popular communicator. He is the conductor and producer of the radio programme “De fogón en fogón” on the channel Radio Gráfica FM89.3 in Buenos Aires, Argentina and on YouTube. Andrés is also the co-director of the radio station Radio Frecuencia 808 in the city of Salinas in the Canelones department of Uruguay.

Diego Presa

Diego Presa

Original music for audiovisual content

Diego Presa is a musician and composer. He has released over 10 albums consisting of solo music, performances with the groups Buceo Invisible and El Astillo, and a duet with Julieta Díaz. He has developed a renowned career in the Uruguayan music scene.

Clorrie Yeomans

Clorrie Yeomans

English translation and Voice reader

Clorrie Yeomans holds a BA in Modern Languages and Cultures from the University of Durham (United Kingdom) and an MPhil in Latin American Studies from the University of Oxford (United Kingdom). She is a contributor to a magazine called The South America Wine Guide in Argentina.

Pincho Casanova

Pincho Casanova

Production of original audio-visual content

Pincho Casanova is an artist and audiovisual producer. He founded the Centro de Medios Audiovisuales (Centre for Audiovisual Media, CEMA) in 1982 and created a platform for the diffusion of artwork, El Monitor Plástico, in 1994. He is also the co-director of Pozodeagua.

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