-
Prelude to Repression: From Democracy to Dictatorship In March 1976, Argentina’s armed forces overthrew President Isabel Perón in a coup that inaugurated one of the darkest chapters in Latin American history. The new regime, calling itself the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional (National Reorganization Process), promised to restore “order” and “Western Christian civilization.” In practice, it unleashed a campaign of terror against its own citizens—a Dirty War that killed or disappeared as many as 30,000 people. Argentina’s descent into authoritarianism had deep roots. By the mid-1970s, the country was wracked by economic crisis, political polarization, and escalating violence between leftist guerrillas—such…
-
In the mid-1970s, a clandestine network of South American dictatorships coordinated a continent‑wide campaign against leftist dissent known as Operation Condor. Institutionalized at a secret meeting in Santiago in November 1975, Condor united the intelligence and security services of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay in a joint counterinsurgency effort . Brazil formally joined the pact in 1976, followed by Ecuador and Peru in 1978 . Together, these regimes shared information, logistics, and personnel to surveil, abduct, torture, and often murder political exiles and opponents across national borders. As Patrice McSherry observes, Condor was “a secret intelligence and operations system”…