The prolonged resistance and the reorganization of popular and democratic movements that defeated the sustainability of authoritarian regimes in South America was a complex process. Democratization further deepened the demands for the clarification of crimes against humanity committed by the dictatorships.

The chronology of the recovery of democratic institutionalism in the countries that participated in the repressive coordination of Operation Condor was as follows:

Enrique Rodríguez Larreta was a Uruguayan journalist who was captured in Buenos Aires in July 1976. He had travelled to Buenos Aires to search for one of his children who had disappeared and, in doing so, he was also captured and detained at the Automotores Orletti clandestine torture and detention centre.

Alexei Jaccard Siegler was a Swiss-Chilean and a member of the Chilean Communist Party (Partido Comunista de Chile).

On 13th October 1974, he was captured and tortured by agents from the Chilean Army’s Security Service, which left him with severe physical injuries. On 21st December 1973, just a few months after his release, he went into exile in Switzerland. 

After the Argentine coup d’état on 24th March 1976, repression against the Montoneros political organisation intensified, as its armed guerrilla movement became increasingly fragmented. 

Agustín Goiburú Jiménez was a Paraguayan doctor and political leader of the Movimiento Popular Colorado (Colorado Popular Movement, MOPOCO) and a firm opponent to the dictatorship of Alfredo Stoesser.

On 21st September 1976, former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier was on a car journey with his American colleague from the Institute for Policy Studies, Ronni Moffitt, and her husband, Michael Moffitt, when a bomb, which had been previously placed underneath his vehicle, exploded.

The Partido por la Victoria del Pueblo (Party for the Victory of the People) was founded by Uruguayan exiles in Argentina in 1975. The Party’s militants came from the Federación Anarquista del Uruguay (Anarchical Federation of Uruguay), the Resistencia Obrero Estudiantil (Workers’ and Students’ Resistance, ROE) and the Organización Popular Revolucionaria (Popular Revolutionary Organisation, OPR-33).

On 24th March 1976, the Commanders of the Argentine Armed Forces led a coup d’état against the constitutional government under the then president, María Martínez de Perón, who had assumed the position since July 1974, following the death of Juan Domingo Perón.

The meeting which established Operation Condor took place at the end of November 1975 in Santiago (Chile). The invitations were sent by Manuel Contreras, the Head of the Chilean Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (Directorate of National Intelligence, DINA). One of these invitations was recovered from the Paraguayan Archives of Terror.