and the honorary president of the Observatorio Luz Ibarburu (Uruguay).
Lessa applied the “Page 99 Test” to her new book, The Condor Trials: Transnational Repression and Human Rights in South America, and reported the following:
Page 99 of The Condor Trials offers a snapshot of several core themes at the heart of the book. If browsers open to that page, they will be in a central chapter entitled “The Condor System,” which unpacks in detail the inner workings and mechanisms of transnational repression that South America’s criminal states agreed in late 1975 to hunt down political opponents beyond borders. The page begins with a quote from a Uruguayan female political activist who lived in exile in Buenos Aires which painstakingly articulates the dramatic context in which refugees lived in July 1976, seeing their friends and loved ones disappear at the hands of the security forces. Page 99 quotes her exact words, saying: “Each time, I thought, that’s it, it’s my turn, and yet it wasn’t. You could touch the fear.”Follow Francesca Lessa on Twitter.
The rest of page 99 narrates the spiral of violence that was unfolding in Argentina after the March 1976 military coup, with thousands of people murdered or disappeared, including hundreds of refugees who had called Argentina their home for several years. Two thirds of page 99 are occupied by a section called “Liquidating the MIR,” which focuses specifically on the case of Argentine militant Patricio Biedma, who was the representative of the Chilean Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) to the Revolutionary Coordinating Junta (JCR) in mid-1976. Biedma was at the time responsible for helping the remaining MIR militants in Argentina flee the country, as well as coordinating the transfer of funds and messages for the JCR between Argentina and Chile. Throughout 1976, the security forces targeted and disappeared at least 20 MIR activists in Buenos Aires, including Biedma himself in July.
Page 99 is a great representation of The Condor Trials and the first core theme at the heart of the book, namely transnational repression. The page remarkably features four key elements that permeate the entire book. First, how transnational repression meticulously targeted refugees living in Argentina in the 1970s, especially militants from Uruguay and Chile. Second, the US government’s knowledge of the practices of joint collaboration by South American security forces as well as their brutal methods of repression, which included the murder of political and trade union leaders in exile. Third, the key role played by the Automotores Orletti clandestine detention centre in Buenos Aires, which was the main secret prison associated with Condor in 1976 where hundreds of foreign exiles were tortured and disappeared. Fourth, the simultaneous targeting by the security forces of both revolutionary guerrilla militants and political as well as social activists, while also cutting these groups’ access to the funds that sustained their resistance and opposition to the military regimes.
Page 99, therefore, captures clearly the book’s focus on the concerted efforts by South America’s military dictatorships to target political opponents beyond borders through transnational repression. In the 1970s, South America became a zone of terror for those who were targeted, and of impunity for those who perpetuated the violence. Browsers should, however, keep on reading beyond page 99 to explore the book’s second theme, transnational justice. The second half of The Condor Trials analyses how networks of justice seekers gradually materialized and effectively transcended national borders to achieve justice for the victims of these unspeakable transnational horrors. The story of transnational terror in South America, which page 99 brought to the fore, ultimately became one of justice seeking. Owing to the tireless work of survivors, victims’ relatives, lawyers, human rights activists, journalists, as well as judges and prosecutors, over 100 South American former civilian and military officers, including formers dictators, heads of state, and government ministers, have been convicted of transnational human rights violations against more than 260 victims. If you want to be inspired by the resilience of justice seekers and their search for accountability for past atrocities, dive into The Condor Trials.
--Marshal Zeringue
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