Publications & Conferences
New Book "The Condor Trials" will be released on May 31, 2022 by Yale University Press
Stories of transnational terror and justice illuminate the past and present of South America’s struggles for human rights.
Through the voices of survivors, human rights activists, judicial actors, and experts, The Condor Trials unravels the secrets of transnational repression masterminded by South American dictators between 1969 and 1981. Under Operation Condor, the regimes of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay closely monitored hundreds of exiles and kidnapped, tortured, murdered, or forcibly returned them to their countries of origin. This cross-border network designed to silence opposition in exile transformed South America into a borderless zone of terror and impunity. Francesca Lessa shows how, gradually, transnational networks of activists materialized and effectively transcended national borders to achieve justice for the victims of these horrors. Based on extensive fieldwork, archival research, trial ethnography, and over 100 interviews, The Condor Trials explores South America’s past and present and sheds light on ongoing struggles for justice as its societies come to terms with the unparalleled atrocities of their not-so-distant pasts.
You can preorder here:
I have delivered numerous presentations about this project at scholarly and practitioner venues across the US, the UK, Chile, Brazil, Italy, Peru, Poland, and Mexico. I regularly present my research at the International Studies Annual Convention, the Law and Society Annual Convention, and the Latin American Studies Annual Conference.
On June 26, 2020, in collaboration with FLACSO Argentina and the Gino Germani Research Institute of the University of Buenos Aires, a virtual panel was organised on "Crimes against Humanity in Latin America: New Horizons and Pending Obstacles in the Search for Justice," chaired by Emilio Crenzel (Argentina), and with the participation of Mariana Risso (Uruguay), Jo-Marie Burt (USA), Lorena Balardini (Argentina), Victoria Basualdo (Argentina), and Francesca Lessa (UK). You can watch the panel here.
Between June 19 and 20, 2019, in collaboration with Oxford Transitional Justice Research and the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, the conference on "Justice for Transnational Human Rights Violations: At the Crossroads of Litigation, Policy and Scholarship" was organised, with the participation of over 50 academics, researchers, practitioners and litigators from the UK, Europe, USA and Latin America. You can find the full conference programme and some photos of the panels further below.
In May 2019, I organised a round table on Operation Condor with renowned experts including John Dinges (Columbia University), Carlos Osorio and Peter Kornbluh (National Security Archive), Melisa Slatman (University of Buenos Aires) and myself; you can listen to the round table here.
I was an instructor for the Rafael Lemkin Seminar for Genocide Prevention (Latin America Edition) in Oświęcim (Poland) in June 2017 and in Montevideo (Uruguay) in July 2016. In April 2018, during a field trip to Washington, I delivered presentations at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Washington Office on Latin America (you can watch the latter here).
I regularly publish my research in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. My most recent article entitled "Operation Condor on Trial" was published in the Journal of Latin American Studies. Furthermore, I have chapters regarding Operation Condor in forthcoming edited volumes. In February 2019, the policy brief "Investigating Crimes against Humanity in South America: Present and Future Challenges" was released in English, Spanish, and Portuguese and is available in this website.
Selected media and publications’ links:
Article in Latin American Research Review 56(1) on "Remnants of Truth: The Role of Archives in Human Rights Trials for Operation Condor;"
Interviewed for The Guardian Long Read article on Operation Condor (September 2020);
Interviewed for Pagina12 - Argentine daily newspaper in Spanish, (July 2020);
Article in LASA Forum Winter 2020 on "Justice beyond Borders: Combining Scholarly Research and Activism in Transnational Trials;"
Interview with BBC Brasil on the memory of the dictatorships in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay (November 2019);
Interview with The Guardian and Radio Uruguay on the recent Operation Condor Trial verdict (July 2019);
Interview on Radio Uruguay;
Book chapter in Portuguese on the Operation Condor trial in Argentina (below);
Interview by Londres 38 (Chile);
Opinion piece for JusticeInfo.Net "In The Footprints of Operation Condor;"
Article in SERPAJ’s Annual Human Rights Report 2016 (pages 25 to 41);
Book chapter in A 40 años del Cóndor (pages 157 to 203);
Chapter below “Transitional Justice in Latin America” from South America, Central America and the Caribbean 2016, 24th edition. pp. 13-17. Copyright Routledge;
Interview on Libres e Iguales;
Interview on El Mostrador;
Interview on Sputnik;
Interview on Radio Cooperativa;
Interview on the BBC;
Interview on CCTV America (video below).
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Talks at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (left) and at the Washington Office on Latin America (right), on April 10 and 12, 2018, in Washington, DC.
Round table on May 27 at LASA 2019 "Operation Condor: New Facts and Analysis about the Alliance that Internationalized Military Repression”.
Peter Kornbluh and John Dinges (left) and photo on the right (left to right), Jo-Marie Burt, Francesca Lessa, Carlos Osorio, John Dinges, Peter Kornbluh and Melisa Slatman.
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Conference programme (left) and Keynote speech by Alejandra Ancheita (ProDesc, right) on "How effective can litigation be in foreseeing and preventing human rights abuses?"
Conference participants on June 20, 2019 (left) and Panel on "Socio-economic and Collective Rights – Transnational Mobilization and Approaches," June 19, 2019.
Press Conference at the Fondazione Basso in Rome on the Operation Condor verdict (left) and Rountable after the screening of the documentary "La Memoria del Condor" (right), Rome, July 9, 2019.
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