Reply #35: Operation Condor: Clandestine Inter-American System.

[L. Coyote]

Operation Condor: Clandestine Inter-American System.
by J. Patrice McSherry - http://larc.sdsu.edu/humanrights/rr/PLAarticles/mcsherry.html

McSherry, J. Patrice. "Operation Condor: Clandestine Inter-American System." Social Justice, Winter 1999 v26 i4 p144.
*Article used with author's permission. Full Text COPYRIGHT 1999 Crime and Social Justice Associates

IN THE 10 YEARS SINCE THE COLD WAR'S END, THE WORLD HAS SEEN A GRADUAL
opening up of formerly Secret state archives on both sides of the East-West divide,
as well as truly astonishing developments in human rights and international law.
Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon's request for the arrest and extradition of
General Augusto Pinochet in October 1998 was perhaps one of the most
astounding of these developments, not least because this case involved a
former ally of the U.S. government in the Cold War. Clearly, the collapse of
the Communist bloc and the end of the bipolar system were major structural
changes on the international level, allowing concerns with human rights and
justice to emerge with new strength and begin to challenge the limits set by
Cold War geopolitics. In effect, the struggle against impunity is becoming
"globalized," a positive aspect of the larger phenomena of globalization. Yet
profound questions remain. If a new threat to global U.S. interests were to
emerge or a powerful challenge to the hegemony over the Western political and
economic model were to arise, w ould concerns with human rights again be swept
aside in the name of national security? Would the ends again justify the
means?

The arrest of Pinochet refocused world attention on the dirty wars of the Cold
War era in Latin America. A key focus of Garzon's investigation is Operation
Condor, a shadowy Latin American military network whose key members were
Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Brazil. Condor represented a
striking new level of coordinated repression among the anticommunist
militaries in the region, and its existence was suspected, but undocumented,
until fairly recently. Condor enabled the Latin American military states to
share intelligence and to hunt down, seize, and execute political opponents in
combined operations across borders. Refugees fleeing military coups and
repression in their own countries who sought safe havens in neighboring
countries were "disappeared" in combined transnational operations. The
militaries defied international law and traditions of political sanctuary to
carry out their shared anticommunist crusade. This article shows that Condor
was a parastatal system that used criminal me thods to eliminate "subversion,"
while avoiding constitutional institutions, ignoring due process, and
violating all manner of human rights. Condor made use of parallel prisons,
secret transport operations, routine assassination and torture, extensive
psychological warfare (PSYWAR, or use of black propaganda, deception, and
disinformation to conquer the "hearts and minds" of the population, often by
making crimes seem as though they were committed by the other side), and
sophisticated technology (such as computerized lists of suspects).

Condor must be understood within the context of the global anticommunist
alliance led by the United States. .........