Operation Condor Cold War Latin America refers to a secret transnational campaign of political repression and state terror carried out by right-wing military dictatorships in South America during the 1970s and 1980s. Backed by the United States government, particularly through the CIA, Operation Condor sought to eliminate leftist dissidents, intellectuals, and activists across borders.
A Network of Dictatorships
Operation Condor officially began in 1975 and involved the coordinated efforts of governments in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Brazil—with Peru and Ecuador participating later. These regimes, under the guise of anti-communism, established a system of shared intelligence and cross-border cooperation to track, abduct, torture, and assassinate political opponents.
Human Rights Atrocity on a Continental Scale
Thousands of people—many of them students, union leaders, clergy, and exiles—were “disappeared,” imprisoned without trial, or killed under Operation Condor. Victims were often secretly transported between countries, interrogated, and executed in clandestine torture centers. The plan’s brutality was largely concealed from the public for decades, with documentation only coming to light in the 1990s through declassified U.S. files and South American investigations.
U.S. Involvement and Legacy
Documents released in recent decades show that U.S. intelligence agencies were aware of—and at times supportive of—Condor’s operations. Henry Kissinger, then U.S. Secretary of State, has been implicated in discussions supporting the effort to “stabilize” the region during the Cold War. The Operation Condor Cold War Latin America campaign has left a lasting legacy of trauma, injustice, and impunity that many countries are still grappling with today.
