By Francesca Lessa
Fifty years after South America’s dictators formalized Operation Condor, new research and recent court rulings reveal both the scale of this transnational terror network and the extraordinary persistence required to expose it. Far from being an automatic product of democratization, today’s understanding of Condor’s crimes is the result of decades of mobilization by survivors, families, journalists, lawyers, and judges who challenged impunity across borders.
Exactly 50 years ago, on November 25, 1975, military intelligence officers from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay gathered in Santiago, Chile, for a national intelligence meeting. Three days later, they officially set up what they called the “Condor System.” Better known as Operation Condor in English, this secret transnational network allowed these countries to persecute political opponents living in exile in South America and beyond, leaving behind a legacy of kidnappings, disappearances, murders, and torture. This anniversary forces us to confront an uncomfortable truth: the progress achieved in unveiling unprecedent atrocities and prosecuting Condor’s crimes was not the inevitable result of democratization but the hard-won product of decades of activism by survivors, victims’ families, journalists, lawyers, and the leadership of judicial actors willing to challenge impunity.
[…] the progress achieved in unveiling unprecedent atrocities and prosecuting Condor’s crimes was not the inevitable result of democratization but the hard-won product of decades of activism by survivors, victims’ families, journalists, lawyers, and the leadership of judicial actors willing to challenge impunity
The Operation Condor transnational terror network rested onto four pillars. First, its members states could communicate secretly and efficiently through the Condortel system. Second, they centralised intelligence information in a dedicated data bank in Santiago, Chile. Third, they coordinated joint operations spanning national borders in South America, which comprised surveillance, abductions, clandestine transfers, and secret detention centers where torture was the norm, through the Condoreje operative axis. The latter also included a forward command and coordinating office in Buenos Aires. Lastly, the Theseus Unit(Teseo) – a distinct initiative but which reflected Condor’s collaborative philosophy – was composed of specially trained agents from Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, and tasked with eliminating targets in Europe, in both Paris and London.
Brazil joined this system of intergovernmental cooperation in repression in 1976, whilst Peru and Ecuador did so in 1978. Whilst Condor’s founding agreement was formally signed on November 28, 1975, several South American countries had already previously collaborated in informal and ad hoc ways since 1969. Operation Condor, as a multilateral forum for cross-border repression, stopped working in late 1978, but bilateral operations continued until early 1981.
Because of Condor’s top-secret nature, there are no official lists of victims. However, research I conducted between 2017 and 2025 confirmed there were at least 805 victims between August 1969 and February 1981. They came from various backgrounds, but mostly comprised political and social activists, and members of revolutionary armed groups, who were primarily citizens of Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile.
The unparalleled nature of Condor’s atrocities prompted an exceptional set of efforts to reveal the crimes perpetrated and bring those responsible to justice. The fact that today we know names, dates, perpetrators, and chains of command is therefore not a gift from history — it is the result of the tireless efforts by local and transnational activists as well as judicial leadership.
The unparalleled nature of Condor’s atrocities prompted an exceptional set of efforts to reveal the crimes perpetrated and bring those responsible to justice.
Although Condor operations peaked in 1976, survivors, relatives, and exiled activists were already denouncing the crimes before international bodies — the UN, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and the US Congress. They worked with journalists and human rights organizations to collect testimonies, reconstruct clandestine transfers, and identify the patterns that defined this coordinated and transnational repression. Prominent examples include the pioneering testimony before Amnesty International in 1977 in London by survivor and Uruguayan journalist Enrique Rodriguez Larreta, and the first newspaper article, “‘Condor’: South American Assassins” by journalist Jack Anderson in The Washington Post in 1979, which revealed the role of this transnational criminal network in the assassination of Orlando Letelier. Progress was limited however whilst the dictatorships were still in power.
The return of democracy to South America opened a short window of opportunities, with groundbreaking achievements, including the 1985 Trial of the Military Commanders in Argentina. Yet the sanctioning of so-called “impunity laws” by the democratic Parliaments of Argentina and Uruguay in 1986 and 1987, alongside the existing amnesty laws in Brazil and Chile from 1978 and 1979, meant that the possibility of seeing perpetrators in the docket would be delayed for decades.
Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, families of the disappeared, survivors, human rights organizations, exiled networks, and investigative journalists continued the search for answers, sometimes at great personal risk. In the aftermath of the landmark 1998 detention of Pinochet in London, the tide for justice finally began to turn and the tireless efforts of justice seekers finally began to bear their fruits.
In the last 15 years, there has been unprecedented progress in the criminal investigation, prosecution, and sentencing of the state agents for Condor’s atrocities.
Through my research, I have identified and mapped at least 50 criminal trials that, since 1976, endeavoured to shed light onto Condor’s crimes. Convictions have been handed down in 40 verdicts so far, with over 100 civilian and military officers sentenced to prison, including high-profile figures, including former dictators Reynaldo Bignone of Argentina and Juan María Bordaberry of Uruguay, and high and middle-ranking military officers, such as Colonel Manuel Contreras of Chile, Admiral Antonio Vañek of Argentina, and Coronel José N. Gavazzo of Uruguay.
Most of these trials have taken place in South America, with 13 verdicts dictated in Argentina, eleven in Uruguay, and seven in Chile. Recently, on September 15, 2025, Uruguayan judge Verónica Pena Molina sentenced to 12 years the retired military intelligence officers Carlos Alberto Rossell and Glauco Yannone for the abduction and torture in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1978 of political activists Universindo Rodríguez and Lilián Celiberti, alongside her two small children. Despite a 41-year-long delay, this sentence is especially significant given that Lilián and Universindo were the first to file a lawsuit for the crimes they had suffered in both Brazil and Uruguay in February 1984, when Uruguay was still in the grips of its military dictatorship.
Notably, five criminal trials were also held in Italy. Just a month ago, on October 21, 2025, Rome’s Third Assize Court, presided by judge Antonella Capri, sentenced to life imprisonment the former Navy officer Jorge Troccoli. Troccoli, who is a double Uruguayan Italian national, had fled to Italy in 2007 to avoid prosecution in his native Uruguay. This is the second trial that Troccoli faced in Italy: in this case, he was convicted for the murders of Italian Rafaela Filipazzi, Argentine José Agustín Potenza, and Uruguayan Elena Quinteros. Alessia Merluzzi, one of the lawyers in this trial whom I consulted for this article, underscored how this second prosecution “not only confirmed once more the existence of Operation Condor, but probed deeper into its violent and operative mechanisms and structures, revealing the modus operandi of the repressive agents beyond borders and the specific, planned, and methodical organisation of the atrocities suffered by the three victims.” Italian courts became the venue of justice only because survivors and lawyers strategically pursued accountability across citizenships, borders, and decades.
Despite unprecedented progress, impunity still dominates many cases. Key archives remain inaccessible, perpetrators and accomplices have died, and families are still searching for their loved ones. As the Inter-American Court of Human Rights recommended in 2021, all the former Condor members states should work together to uncover Operation Condor’s human rights violations.
A regional truth commission with representatives from all former Condor countries would be a step in the right direction on this 50th anniversary. The story of Condor shows that justice is not delivered by time, or by the transition from dictatorship to democracy, but by pressure: the persistence of families, activists, organizations, journalists, archivists, lawyers, and bold judges determined to make the law speak.
The story of Condor shows that justice is not delivered by time, or by the transition from dictatorship to democracy, but by pressure: the persistence of families, activists, organizations, journalists, archivists, lawyers, and bold judges determined to make the law speak.
The legacy of Condor, therefore, is not only the terror it inflicted — but the lesson that even the most sophisticated project of repression can be exposed when memory becomes mobilization and when the pursuit of justice outlasts the regimes that sought to destroy it.
Francesca Lessa is Associate Professor of International Relations of the Americas at University College London.
An earlier version of this analysis was published in The Conversation.
This article is published under the sole responsibility of the author, with editorial oversight. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the editorial team or the CEU Democracy Institute.
