Operation Condor - History

History

On 25 November 1975, leaders of the military intelligence services of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay met with Manuel Contreras, chief of DINA (the Chilean secret police), in Santiago de Chile, officially creating the Plan Condor. However, cooperation between various security services, in the aim of "eliminating Marxist subversion", previously existed before this meeting and Pinochet's coup d'état. Thus, during the Xth Conference of American Armies held in Caracas on 3 September 1973, Brazilian General Breno Borges Fortes, head of the Brazilian army, proposed to "extend the exchange of information" between various services in order to "struggle against subversion".

Furthermore, in March 1974, representatives of the police forces of Chile, Uruguay and Bolivia met with Alberto Villar, deputy chief of the Argentine Federal Police and co-founder of the Triple A death squad, to implement cooperation guidelines in order to destroy the "subversive" threat represented by the presence of thousands of political exilees in Argentina. In August 1974 the corpses of the first victims of Condor, Bolivian refugees, were found in garbage dumps in Buenos Aires.

According to French journalist Marie-Monique Robin, author of Escadrons de la mort, l'école française (2004, Death Squads, The French School), the paternity of Operation Condor is to be attributed to General Rivero, intelligence officer of the Argentine Armed Forces and former student of the French.

Read more about this topic:  Operation Condor

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.
    Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)

    This above all makes history useful and desirable: it unfolds before our eyes a glorious record of exemplary actions.
    Titus Livius (Livy)

    It would be naive to think that peace and justice can be achieved easily. No set of rules or study of history will automatically resolve the problems.... However, with faith and perseverance,... complex problems in the past have been resolved in our search for justice and peace. They can be resolved in the future, provided, of course, that we can think of five new ways to measure the height of a tall building by using a barometer.
    Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)