PHOTO: Madres de Plaza de Mayo (2006), Roblespepe on Wikimedia Commons
1976. In the cold streets of Buenos Aires, an estimated 300 academics, activists, trade unionists and journalists are taken from an ordinary van into a nondescript garage named Automotores Orletti in the dead of night. People scream, never to be heard again.
Fifty years on. The nondescript garage still stands; however, the sound of the screams are replaced with a deafening silence. The memory of the desaparecidos (the missing) lies within the soul of an entire continent. From the cries of the grandmothers to discussions at the highest level of politics, the legacy of Operation Condor carries on.
Such events may seem like footnotes in the past. Despite President Javier Milei of Argentina dismissing such events as constituting “a war where excesses were committed”, a sentiment which could only occur in the context of the Cold War, one may find that understanding such events holds the key to understanding US diplomacy and modern authoritarianism within Latin America, and more broadly within the world at large.
Operation Condor
Operation Condor emerged during the Cold War, in an attempt to curb growing leftist influence in South America.
Organised by South American dictatorships that subscribed to the National Security Doctrine, Operation Condor was an organisation officially established in 1975 with US support. It facilitated international information sharing, which relied on three core features: a centralised database located in Chile, a classified communications system called Condortel and an office located in Buenos Aires coordinating the operation.
The organisation conducted a targeted assassination program confirmed to be operating in the USA and Italy, violating international law. Despite documents demonstrating that the US was aware of the human rights abuses, the US continued to strategically support Condor, consulting the participants on methods to be used.
French influence is also to be noted: for instance, the infamous death flights conducted by dictators Jorge Videla of Argentina and Augusto Pinochet of Chile were pioneered by France during the Algerian War of Independence.
Prior to the formalisation of the organisation, in 1971, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) established a spy station in Santiago, Chile, to assist the CIA in intelligence gathering for US intervention.
Within Argentina, the organisation targeted refugees from neighbouring Uruguay and Chile, as well as its own citizens.
Despite aiming to target “subversive” elements of society, the vast majority of victims were not affiliated with armed organisations: only 23% were members or affiliates of guerrilla groups.
PHOTO: Participants of Operation Condor, created by Jeremy Newcombe on Mapchart.net. SOURCE: Countries involved in Operation Condor (16 February 2012), Sannita on Wikimedia Commons
“America’s backyard”
South America, commonly known as “America’s backyard”, has been under the influence of foreign powers since the late 15th century. It has experienced colonialism at the hands of Spain and Portugal, as well as an era of British informal empire that was chiefly commercial.
Following World War II, the continent, and more broadly the Latin American sphere, became embroiled in conflict, beginning with the 1954 overthrow of Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala. This coup is argued to have been done to maintain the interests of US corporations; specifically, to prevent the expropriation of land owned by the United Fruit Company.
Although Argentina itself was not affected by the coup, the threat of US interventionism on the American continent remained. In particular, it strengthened a growing anti-US sentiment, forging radicals such as Che Guevara.
The Perón years
Peron’s supporters rally for his release on 17 October 1945. PHOTO: Plaza De Mayo el 17 de octubre de 1945 (17 October 1945), Anonymous on Wikimedia Commons
During the years of 1946–52, 1952–55 and 1973–74, Juan Domingo Perón served as president of Argentina, executing left-wing populist policies while simultaneously invoking authoritarian right-wing civic nationalist rhetoric.
During Perón’s ascent to power, in November 1945, American officials lacked trust in Perón, stating “this [Peronist] crowd is hand-in-glove with the Nazis”, and that an Americas-wide “joint crack-down on Argentina” was needed. Despite using anti-fascist rhetoric, the foundations for Operation Condor were laid. In fact, the rhetoric regarding anti-democratic activities was later reused when targeting left wing movements in the 1960s and 1970s.
Over this period, British investment dwindled in Argentina, and Perón ordered the expropriation of all British-owned resources. This caused frustration among foreign investors, decreasing trust and subsequently reducing the extent of foreign investment.
The first term of Perón government culminated in the Revolución Libertadora of 1955, which resulted in an exiled Perón and a new military dictatorship led by Pedro Aramburu. The 1955 revolution was significant in that it aligned with US ambitions to replace the populist Peronist tendencies in the Argentinian middle and working classes with “democratic” and “liberal” values, through modernising initiatives.
A turning point in Cuba
PHOTO: Cuban Revolution in Color Photos, January 1959 (5), User on Flickr
Following the ousting of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista by revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, the US feared that the Cuban revolution could inspire similar action around Latin America, threatening US hegemony in the region. Writer Ike Nahem stated that “the victorious Cuban example would resonate in a Latin American soil fertile for revolutionary struggle and change,” engendering a pressing sense of urgency within the US government and allied states to combat all left-wing movements from across the region.
Brazil: the beginning
From the very beginning, Brazil’s 21-year-long technocratic dictatorship received backing from the US, which feared that Brazil under João Goulart was becoming another Cuba. President John F Kennedy even went so far to declare that Goulart was “giving the damn country away to the… communists”. US intelligence even aided the coup-plotters in their coup planning.
The intelligence-sharing element of Condor was established following Brazil’s 1964 military coup d’état. For instance, intelligence regarding Che Guevara’s whereabouts ultimately leading to his assassination in Bolivia was shared between dictator Alfredo Stroessner’s Paraguay and Branco’s Brazil. Political Science professor J Patrice McSherry posits that the origins of Operation Condor lay in the hunt for Che Guevara.
The condor takes flight
On 24 March 1976, General Jorge Rafael Videla led a military coup against Isabel Perón’s left-wing Peronist government to institute a conservative social order and eliminate left-wing insurgency within Argentina and more broadly within South America. The regime that came to be was labelled the National Reorganisation Process (NRP); it had significant support from the United States.
The regime — under the banner of anticommunism and liberty — disproportionately targeted marginalised groups and minorities, especially women, Jews, trade unionists and workers. Thirty thousand people are believed to have been killed by the regime; additionally, 500 children were stolen from their mothers at birth in concentration camps and given up for illegal adoption.
María Macarena Gelman is a survivor of the child abduction conducted by the Condor-affiliated regimes. Her Argentine mother, María Claudia Gelman, was kidnapped from her Buenos Aires home and taken across borders to Montevideo, Uruguay, to be detained. In November 1976, she gave birth to María Macarena. The next month, she was taken from her mother.
In January 1977, she was given to the Uruguayan police commissioner Ángel Tauriño, who subsequently raised her, giving her the name María Macarena. María was only made aware of her family history when a bishop who facilitated contact between adoptive families and biological families revealed her background to her. She has since pursued a career in social justice and human rights, competing in Uruguay’s 2014 elections.
The effects of the regime echo throughout the political landscape of present Argentina. For instance, the current Milei government frames the 30,000 disappeared people as being collateral damage in a war of equal powers fighting, challenging the established narrative dictated in the Nunca Más (Never Again) report published in 1984, which has subsequently been appropriated as a pro human rights slogan, used by various progressive and Peronist groups in Argentina.
Before the junta collapsed due to the failures of the Falklands war, movements such as the Madres de Plaza de Mayo (MPM) (Mothers of May Square) formed, challenging the regime through non-violent resistance.
The Condor’s ghost
Despite the return to democracy beginning with the December 1983 election of Raúl Alfosín, the legacy of Operation Condor and its associated junta continues to influence Argentinian domestic politics, as well as the international relations between states in Latin America.
Within Argentina, the disappearances continue to influence politics and culture. Movements such as MPM and Hijos e Hijas por la Identidad y la Justicia contra el Olvido y el Silencio (HIJOS) (Sons and Daughters for the Assertion of Identity and Justice Against Oblivion and Silence) — a movement for the children of victims of state terror to seek justice — continue to influence discussion and policy in Argentina. The aforementioned movements have been supported by figures such as football icon Diego Maradona, and have won prestigious awards for freedom of thought from institutions such as the EU parliament.
Football legend Diego Maradona (center) was a staunch supporter of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo. PHOTO: Diego Maradona celebrando la obtención del Torneo Metropolitano de 1981 (1981), Anonymous on Picryl
The movements have also directly inspired government policy. From 2002 to 2024, the National Identity Commission investigated human rights abuses that had been committed by government officials between 1976 and 1983. Following the election of anarcho-capitalist Javier Milei as President in 2024, the Commission was shut down to curb public spending and liberalise the economy as part of the administration’s economic shock therapy doctrine.
Madres de Plaza de Mayo criticizes the Milei administration’s decision to close the National Identity Commission.
The MPM’s end-of-year report in 2024 criticised the Milei government for promoting historical revisionism regarding the human rights abuses that were committed by the junta. This prompted discussion across Argentina regarding the role of history in present-day politics.
The Argentinian right, for decades, continues to minimise or outright deny human rights abuses by the junta, by reframing the junta’s state-sponsored terrorism as a defence of “Christian and Occidental Civilisation” against “Marxist subversion,” according to historian Mario Ranalletti. High profile figures linked to La Libertad Avanza (Liberty Advances), the ruling coalition, have even gone so far as to visit convicted criminals who committed human rights abuses, signalling admiration for the junta.
Similarly, Argentina’s foreign policy has recently broken from years of precedent; before Milei’s election and following the return to democracy, Argentina embraced neutrality in West Asia and North Africa, and supported a lifting of the US embargo on Cuba. In 2024, a precedent was broken, when Minister of Foreign Affairs Diana Mondino was dismissed for following precedent and voting for an end to the embargo.
Washington DC, Buenos Aires: Mirrors of each other?
PHOTO: President Donald Trump participates in a pull-aside meeting with Javier Milei, President of Argentina, at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City (23 September 2025), The White House on Flickr
A defining characteristic of President Donald Trump’s second term is a reprioritisation of US influence in the Americas through strengthening alliances between Latin American governments and the US government. To achieve this, the US has courted the Milei government various times: most notably, by offering a $20bn (AU$28.4bn) bailout to stabilise Argentina’s struggling economy.
Despite Milei’s anarcho-capitalist rhetoric and democratic election, Milei’s government has displayed authoritarian tendencies, specifically in how it has increased protest repression and defunded institutions that promote democracy and combat gender-based violence and ableism. This mirrors the Trump administration’s DOGE cuts, which targeted social security initiatives for disabled people. The cuts also targeted democratic decision-making processes in the US federal government.
Both leaders have used the term “woke” as a signifier for the perceived enemy: Milei declared at Davos 2025 that the “sinister age of wokeism” was at an end, and a “global alliance” between leaders such as Nayib Bukele, Benjamin Netanyahu, Giorgia Meloni and Donald Trump was forming to “fight for the ideas of freedom”.
At first glance, Milei’s anti-woke rhetoric and alliance-building may seem to be an adaptation of Trump’s policies for Argentina, however it is heavily rooted in a history of authoritarianism lasting 80 years. In the Cold War era, the Argentine Junta spoke of “institutional, social, and administrative chaos.” Milei speaks of “wokeness” corrupting the nation, similarly implying that progressive ideas are detrimental to the nation.
Other countries formerly part of Operation Condor have also elected leaders echoing Milei’s rhetoric. Incumbent President of Chile José Antonio Kast has replaced the former left-wing president Gabriel Boric. In his electoral campaign, Kast has praised Operation Condor dictator Augusto Pinochet, declaring that had he been alive, “he would have voted for me”.
As with Milei, Kast has begun budget cuts and economic liberalisation, specifically targeting the conservation of history. He aims to strengthen border security, privatise large sectors of the economy such as healthcare and assert military dominance over Chile, resonating with Condor era policies. Furthermore, he has joined far-right counterparts Nayib Bukele, Daniel Noboa and Donald Trump at the Shield of the Americas summit, indicating a shared ideological inheritance.
Men die, ghosts linger
In a time of increasing authoritarianism, not only within the Americas but worldwide, the history of Operation Condor serves as a reminder that memory can play a decisive role in present-day affairs.
Perón is long gone — Castro and Videla in the ground — yet Operation Condor haunts Argentina and South America to this day. The memory of human rights abuses, unilateral intervention and struggles for freedom from grassroots movements continues to shape relationships within Latin America, and Latin America’s relationship with the world at large.
Alessandro Salamone
Alessandro Salamone is a second year Law/Arts student who holds a strong interest in postcolonial history, global justice, and the role of identity and culture in international relations. He is bilingual in English and Italian, and enjoys reading widely to discover new perspectives on politics, history and IR. He is deeply interested in the role of culture, identity and religion in influencing power. Outside of academics, he enjoys running, reading, listening to music and cooking.