Operation Condor was a coordinated campaign in the 1970s between the CIA and the military dictatorships of South America — Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia — to eliminate leftist and Marxist movements. It became a network of state terrorism that caused around 400,000 deaths and disappearances.
Declassified CIA documents later revealed meetings in Chile and Argentina where these regimes organized their joint operations. Chile’s secret police, DINA, led by Manuel Contreras after receiving CIA training, played a leading role. High-profile victims like Carlos Prats and Orlando Letelier were assassinated in exile, showing how far this coordinated repression reached, even into Europe.
In 1992, Paraguayan lawyer Martín Almada discovered the “archives of terror,” exposing the true scale of the operation. He later argued that Plan Condor never really ended — that it evolved into new forms of military cooperation in Latin America, still used to target dissidents under different names.
MATIAS JOFRE 