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.