Project Description

SUMMARY

During the decades of state terror in South America, the dictatorial regimes in power at the time brutally and systematically repressed all forms of opposition, targeting members of left-wing armed groups, politicians, teachers, students, trade union leaders, and political activists, and perpetrating thousands of extrajudicial executions, abductions, enforced disappearances, instances of torture and inhumane treatment, baby theft, sexual violence, extortions, and robberies. By the mid-1970s, political repression acquired an additional and sinister regional dimension through Operation Condor, which played a fundamental role in state terror practices and policies. In late 1975, the regimes of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay set up a secret transnational network of intelligence and counterinsurgency operations named Operation Condor. The transnational network was deliberately created to complement policies of repression unleashed at home, taking them to a higher level (see map of Operation Condor countries below). As a result, hundreds of political opponents in exile across South America were kidnapped, tortured, and murdered as a result; only a few survived.

The existing scholarship, within both transitional justice and human rights, has restricted the analytical study and policy response in the study of atrocities to conform to the national boundaries within which they occurred. Thus, the question of how to respond to crimes that transcend state borders has largely been neglected. This project begins to fill this gap. This project initially focused largely on the cases of Operation Condor, which were the most notorious. It has now broadened to encompass all cases of human rights with a transnational element and that occurred as a result of the coordination of repressive policies among South America’s dictatorships, prior to the formal founding of Operation Condor.

In undertaking the project, I have conducted field research in eight countries, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Paraguay, Peru, Italy and the USA consulting archival and legal documents, and carrying out interviews.

OBJECTIVES & METHODOLOGY

The project has two objectives:

1. studying transnational crimes;

2. probing the response of national justice systems to transnational human rights violations.

To meet these objectives, Dr Lessa specifically developed an interdisciplinary three-part methodology, which combines archival research with the analysis of legal documents and targeted interviews. First, in terms of archival research, documents were consulted at five archives: in Uruguay, the archive of the Ministry of Foreign Relations; in Brazil, the archive of the NGO Justice and Human Rights Movement, MJDH; in Argentina, the archive of the NGO Centre for Legal and Social Studies; in the United States, the National Security Archive; and in Paraguay, the Archives of Terror. Second, the analysis of legal documents focuses on eight criminal trials tackling transnational crimes committed in South America: two in Argentina, four in Uruguay, one in Chile, and one in Italy. Finally, three sets of key informants are being targeted through semi-structured interviews, namely survivors and victims’ relatives, experts (academics, investigative journalists, and document analysts), and legal professionals (lawyers, judges, and prosecutors). So far, a total of 101 interviews have been conducted in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Italy, Paraguay, Peru, the United States, and Uruguay.