Sleight of Hand: Violence As Performance and the Spectacle of Absence in the Southern Cone

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Sleight of Hand: Violence as Performance and the Spectacle of Absence in the Southern Cone

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Authors Barefoot, James Collin

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SLEIGHT OF HAND: VIOLENCE AS PERFORMANCE AND THE SPECTACLE OF

ABSENCE IN THE SOUTHERN CONE

James Barefoot

______

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

In the Graduate College

THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

2015

STATEMENT BY AUTHOR

This thesis has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library.

Brief quotations from this thesis are allowable without special permission, provided that an accurate acknowledgement of the source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the copyright holder.

SIGNED: James Barefoot

APPROVAL BY THESIS DIRECTOR

This thesis has been approved on the date shown below:

May 7, 2015_____ Jadwiga Pieper Mooney Date Professor of History

Acknowledgements

My name is listed as the author of this work, but I had plenty of help along the way. My advisor, Dr. Jadwiga Pieper Mooney, pushed me to excel in my writing and spent many hours reading and discussing this work with me to ensure a quality finished product which I am proud of. My committee members, Dr. Bert Barickman and Dr. Linda Green, aided the development of my analytical skills as a historian and fostered my interest in interdisciplinary approaches to my subjects. I am grateful to all of you and the trust you all displayed towards my production of this work means a great deal to me.

The University of Arizona permitted me to excel as a graduate student. The wonderful faculty I have had the pleasure of working with over these few years, especially my advisor and committee members, enhanced my understanding of this field and influenced the ways I viewed my argument and produced this work. I also acknowledge and thank Texas A&M University for instilling in me the discipline and work ethic to enter the profession of history and complete a thesis worthy of defense and academic pride. Thank you to those who came before me and generated a historiographical base upon which I could build my own work. Whether we agree or not, we are all in this together to enhance our collective knowledge of both the past and present.

Last, but not least, I thank my friends and family for aiding me in my life, as well as my academic endeavors. Without the unconditional love and conditional funding from my wonderful parents, James and Lindy Barefoot, I do not know if this journey could have come to fruition. Thank you to my sister, Ashley Skinner. Here’s to competing in our undergraduate studies and for your watchful eye keeping me on track. Thanks to Jon Skinner for feeding me through many years of college, as well as being a great friend and brother-in-law. Thank you to my grandparents, Don and Bobbye Collins and Inez and the late James Weldon Barefoot, for providing me with years of love and stories which encouraged me to become a historian. Thank you to Danielle Blalock for putting up with me while this work was in progress and for all the proof reading, debating of ideas, and general aid you provided. Finally, thank you to George Carroll for being a great friend/colleague and for our frequent lunches/discussions at Panda.

This work is dedicated to my mother, Lindy Barefoot. Without your care, guidance, and patience, this work and my life would not be possible. Thank you and I love you.

Table of Contents

List of Acronyms ...... 6 Abstract ...... 7 Introduction ...... 8 I. Performances of Violence and Power ...... 23 A. Origins ...... 23 B. I Am Legion for We Are Many ...... 29 C. Babylon Undone ...... 34 D. All the World’s a Stage...... 38 E. Tactical Violence ...... 46 F. The Lone Star of the South and the Sun of May ...... 51 II. Inside the Argentine Inferno: Violent Spectacles as Communication ...... 56 A. The Gang ...... 57 B. Caught in the Middle ...... 66 C. Enter the Exile ...... 74 D. Those Who Killed the Least ...... 79 III. The Red, White, and Blue Elephant in the Room ...... 88 A. Do You Have a Receipt? ...... 88 B. A Meeting with HR ...... 97 C. Look Who’s Talking to Whom ...... 106 D. Burning Like Dry Ice ...... 111 Conclusion ...... 120 Bibliography: Primary Sources ...... 126 Bibliography: Secondary Sources ...... 150

List of Acronyms AAA – Alianza Anticomunista Argentina (Argentine Anticommunist Alliance) ARA – Bureau of Inter-American Affairs, U.S. Department of State BA – Bureaucratic Authoritarianism CIA – U.S. Central Intelligence Agency CNI – Central Nacional de Informaciones (National Information Center – Chile [Post-1977]) CONADEP – Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas (National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons) DIA – U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency DINA – Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (National Intelligence Directorate – Chile [1973 1977]) DOD – U.S. Department of Defense ERP – Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (People’s Revolutionary Army) ESMA – Escuela Superior de Mecánica de la Armada (Navy School of Mechanics – Argentina) FBI – U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation GOA – Government of Argentina INR – Bureau of Intelligence and Research, U.S. Department of State ISA – Ideological State Apparatus JCR – Junta Coordinadora Revolucionaria (Revolutionary Coordinating Junta) MIR – Movimiento de Izquierda (Revolutionary Left Movement – Chile) RSA – Repressive State Apparatus RSO – Regional Security Officer, U.S. Department of State SIDE – Secretaría de Inteligencia de Estado (Secretariat of State Intelligence – Argentina) UN – United Nations UNHCR – United Nations High Commission for Refugees

Abstract

I explore the changing use of political violence by the new Latin American military regimes, specifically post-1976 Argentina with comparative analysis towards Augusto Pinochet’s Chile, as well as by those who protested military authoritarianism during the Dirty War and Operation Condor. These military dictatorships adopted aggressive anti-communist ideologies and displayed them through internal, covert violence. In this study, I adopt definitions of the ‘spectacle of violence’ and the ‘spectacle of absence’ that seek to explore the politics of diplomacy behind violent acts that have informed the processes of staging, or hiding, both the methods and outcome of inflicted violence. Geopolitics of the post-human rights legistlation era and the Argentine military’s perception of a failed judicial system fostered the institutionalization of a new violent performance, the spectacle of absence, in opposition to the guerrillas’ application of the public spectacle of violence. My analysis of violent spectacles within Argentina and their reception at home and abroad displays the various meanings transmitted and received through the medium of political violence as performance.

Introduction

After the Second World War, with growing competitions between the capitalist West and the communist Eastern Bloc, both armed guerilla groups and military regimes in the Americas employed, at one point or another, violence as a political strategy. However, the use of violence and its political consequences hardly remained static or unchanging and we find multiple forms and displays of violence as political tools. In the aftermath of such global standard bearers as the

1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1976 International Bill of Human Rights in the UN, many governments proved less prone to use violence to control their own populations.

Overt acts of violence either ceased to occur or continued covertly under civilian or military leaders of countries which sought to join the ranks of democratic states in appearance, even if not in practice. National governments practice of the latter and their performance of a spectacle of absent violence inspired this study.

I explore the changing use of political violence by the new Latin American military regimes, as well as by those who protested military authoritarianism in Argentina and Chile during the Cold War. These military dictatorships adopted aggressive anti-communist ideologies and displayed them through internal, covert violence. Simultaneously, they disputed evidence of the use of violence to control civilian populations in their engagements with the international community. They insisted on an alliance with the latter through verbal assurances of compliance with human rights initiatives. However, this same covert medium of violence, designed to avoid producing evidence of an international crime, embodied the tool through which resistance received its own voice because of the necessity of secrecy and silence. While the tensions of the

Cold War and the United States’ anti-communist crusade and its allies appeared to justify anti- communist action by any means necessary, the emergence of a new, parallel global discourse on

human rights transformed the legitimacy of violence as a political tool. I argue that we can trace both continuity and change in the Argentine military’s uses of political violence and find that a new performance of violence, now hidden behind closed doors in concentration camps and torture centers, fulfilled the same functions of aggressive public uses of violence in the past while producing a new means of resistance. Therefore, performances of violence and resistance adapted to the emerging global concern for human rights in the realms of political violence and malicious denials of habeas corpus. My analysis of the perceptions and results of this new performance of violence, from both inside and outside of Argentina, permits a new understanding of political violence as a communicative medium for power and authority, as well as resistance.

My perspective on spectacles of violence gained inspiration from historian Jocelyn

Olcott’s depiction of the events at the Plaza de Armas in Matamoros in 1930.1 The Mexican regional government gave a public performance of violence which conveyed a message of authority to the survivors of the event and the surrounding community. Communists battling local authorities in the street displayed the repression and violence of the government as a spectacle which the surrounding area could witness. The Mexican government publicly destroyed opposition to its legitimacy and authority through violent means without repercussions from the international community.

1 Jocelyn Olcott, “Mueras y Matanza: Spectacles of Terror and Violence in Postrevolutionary Mexico,” in A Century of Revolution: Insurgent and Counterinsurgent Violence during Latin America’s Long Cold War, Greg Grandin and Gilbert M. Joseph (eds.), (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010), 65-66.

In my discussion of human rights discourses, I focus on human rights from the perspective of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.2 Human rights, in this context, pertain to authoritarian violence which harmed and eliminated civilians, as well as legal measures of military governments to destroy democracy and remain unaccountable for political prisoners by denying both habeas corpus and the defendant’s ability to receive a trial. However, I also interpret a number of specific histories as evidence that the spectacle of violence, as a government coercive tactic, no longer possessed international legitimacy in countries self- identifying as civilized during the age human rights and international press coverage. The local and international backlash from instances such as the Mexican Tlatelolco Massacre in 1968 or the U.S. Kent State shootings in 1970, display that perspective. These examples highlight the political obligations which the Argentine and Chilean juntas navigated in the post-Nuremburg and post-1960s world, where the capitalist side of the Cold War, which they identified with, claimed to have a moral monopoly on human rights and counterterror violence. The military juntas employed creativity in their performances of violence in order to avoid signs of death entering the public eye and created a war of words where they claimed victims were arrested, exiled, or had simply disappeared. However, the requirement of secrecy also provided the opening of an avenue of resistance. Thus, The Dirty War and Operation Condor provide an excellent opportunity to analyze resistance and the spectacles of violence and absence as combat/political tactics.

In this study, I adopt definitions of the “spectacle of violence” and the “spectacle of absence” that seek to explore the politics of diplomacy behind violent acts that have informed the

2 Saunders, Harold H. (INR), To: U.S. SecState, “The OAS in Perspective: What Kind of Inter-American Organization?,” (Y89) [UNCLASSIFIED], June 12, 1976, 8-10, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=OAS&beginDate=19760101&endDate=19781231&publishedB eginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=. Officials at the U.S. State Department viewed this group as a Latin American front through which to both attack U.S. regional policy and condemn violent dictatorships in the region.

processes of staging, or hiding, both the methods and outcomes of inflicted violence. The

“spectacle” therefore, does not represent the military’s use of torture or killing of citizens, but rather the public display of information of such acts. I define the spectacle of violence as an active performance of violence, primarily political, by one person or a group towards another individual or group in order to incite fear and/or submission amongst the surviving population through news of or actively witnessing the event. Thus, it represents political violence as a tool to manifest psychological violence. We find multiple examples of this use of violence in recent

Latin American history, most notoriously employed by Mexican drug cartels in Ciudad Juarez, who kill their rivals in the street and display the mutilated corpses for their enemies to see. While examples of recent spectacles of violence abound, analysis of specific contexts in Argentina, with comparative analysis towards Chile, reveal a process in which human rights legislation and the ideological competition of the Cold War, rather than preventing atrocities, provoked a transition in violent performances from an overt display to clandestine operations.

I adopt an analytical perspective that is also inspired by sociologist Michael Humphrey, who argues “The spectacle of violence is a strongly rhetorical politic because it is created largely for its effect on victims and witnesses.”3 While I agree with key parts of Humphrey’s assertion, I find the performances communicate with an intended audience who remain absent during the acts, rather than the actual participants. I am, hence, in agreement with anthropologist, Christian

Krohn-Hansen, who posits that performances of violence induce a conversation which all parties involved received and variously understood.4 While the separate camps may not understand the ideologies of the other, violence becomes a convincing means of communication that provides a

3 Michael Humphrey, The Politics of Atrocity and Reconciliation: From Terror to Trauma, (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), viii.

4 Christian Krohn-Hansen, “The Anthropology of Violent Interaction,” Journal of Anthropological Research, 50, no. 4, (Winter, 1994), 378.

Tower of Babel in which different ideologies converse. I depart from Krohn-Hansen on the subject of the degree of mutual understandings in the “conversations” of violence. Given that both the military and the guerrillas who fought the military employed violence and terror as strategies, we do not find the unspoken confirmation of messages brought up in the

“conversations” that Krohn-Hansen describes. The combatants participated in this

“conversation” by other means. However, many third party spectators received punishment from one side or the other, with no means or will to communicate in kind. Thus, the idea of violence as a conversation must devolve into a means of communication with fluid levels of dialogue based on negotiations of structural power.

My reference to the “spectacle of absence,” therefore, expresses the dramatic shift from previous spectacles of violence, also marking what I consider a historical watershed period in the performance of violence in the Southern Cone. The spectacle of absence represents the dramatic changes in a global discourse on political violence, a move that linked violence to violations of human rights, newly defined. Authoritarian leaders and those who protested authoritarianism negotiated their own relation to the spectacle of violence in response to global paradigm shifts.

The spectacle takes its shape from the public absence of individuals and/or dead bodies, the reappearance of tortured victims, and the psychological assault of not knowing whether the disappeared are alive or dead, as well as who committed the act. Dead bodies remain absent from the public eye, but the occasional broken and disheveled bodies of torture victims replace the public’s perceptions of the ‘bodies’ left behind in warfare. Michael Humphrey argues “The victim’s wounds make visible, and real, the violence done. These wounds produce the horror of the ‘tortured body’ (Foucault 1977) as a sign of power. Thus pain, through violence, is made a

spectacle and projected as power.”5 The bodies of these victims provide part of the spectacle, but this same spectacle conveys a message to the outside world that human rights abuses occurred against said body. Therefore, a broken body displays the doubled-edged sword of the spectacle of absence which may also provide a vehicle for the communication of resistance designed to produce local and international outrage.

I argue Argentina’s use of the spectacle of absence does not merely generate the occasional broken body, but also the absence of bodies as the term suggests. ‘Disappearances’ convey both the junta’s coercive power to dispose of undesirables and probable cause to assume human rights abuse through the denial of habeas corpus.6 Therefore, the absence of citizens and the broken bodies of the interrogated become the symbols of power and authority, as well as mediums for resistance, which the bodies of the dead and wounded in open combat left on the

‘stage,’ through the spectacle of violence, previously projected. Disappearances promoted confusion because the actions which might hinder or aid the condition of those missing family members and comrades remained unknown.

The disappeared, to the outside world, manifest the theory of Schrödinger’s Cat because their unknown status creates a circumstance in which he or she occupies the spaces of both death and life until their condition manifests within the collective knowledge of the public sphere.

Disappearances develop into the control mechanism rather than death. Popular violent resistance towards the aggressors declines as long as the possibility of a hostage situation persists.

However, violent resistance evolves into non-violent resistance by means of communication

5 Ibid.

6 ‘Desaparecidos’ (disappeared) is a term which the Argentine military coined to identify people kidnapped or arrested who were imprisoned or murdered clandestinely by security forces during the Dirty War. The disappeared had obviously not vanished, but the military used the term to deny knowledge of the whereabouts of political prisoners and deny habeas corpus on the grounds that the individual was not officially ‘detained’.

using broken and absent bodies. With this tactic, the initial performance of violence enters a private sphere where other captives, and the occasional survivor, are able to observe the performance and receive its intended message. The secondary message, which results from this performance, remains public as recipients redirect this message to the outside world. Both performances, in their initial manifestations, represent forms of the spectacle of violence within public and private spectrums. The term ‘private’ does not intend to represent the home, but rather to convey the secretive and confined world of black operations and clandestine prison facilities.

Therefore, in the labelling of these tactics, I focus on the original public aspect which results in the spectacle of violence and the spectacle of absence.

Implementation of the spectacles of violence and absence represent a descision made by the responsible party in relation to internal or international concerns of legitimacy. First, the perpetrator(s) decide whether or not violence serves as the appropriate action to be taken. Then, whether or not the performance of violence requires an audience represents the all-important choice. Thus, the question as to whether the performance is designed to punish the direct victim or to punish and convey a message to an audience without having to enact violence upon a larger group takes precedence. I analyze the tactics of national governments because of their position atop national politics and their use of legitimacy and authority to control the military and other coercive apparatuses. In this period of communication by violent means, the national government has both the loudest voice and the international obligation to create the façade of compliance with UN and U.S. human rights initiatives. Therefore, the national government’s obligations to the international community leave them the most susceptible to victims utilizing the covert nature of said violence as a means of resistance.

I found inspiration for focusing on government supported violence in the groundbreaking works of Argentine political scientist Guillermo O’Donnell and his label of bureaucratic authoritarianism (BA) for the Southern Cone military regimes of the 1960s and 1970s. In BA regimes, the military, as an establishment, occupies the entire state space and transforms the government into an exclusionary bureaucracy of professional military elites and a select few civilian economic experts meant to save the country from an economic or political crisis in the most efficient manner possible.7 Despite the historiographic battle which followed O’Donnell’s analysis of the industrialization methods of the, then, emerging regimes, his work provides avenues to analyze the transformation of violent spectacles. Beyond any discussion of industrial development or economic transformations, four of O’Donnell’s themes support my argument.

First, BA regimes seek to deactivate or silence highly politicized populations who previously possessed the capacity to influence government policy through political parties, unions, and popular uprisings. Second, popular deactivation separates the state space from the general public and limits traditional methods to garner legitimacy. Third, a legitimization crisis promotes the use of coercive tactics to defeat challenges from the public sphere and solidify military rule.

Finally, a desire to promote international investment requires legitimacy abroad.8 The guerrillas represent the extreme end of the politicized population to deactivate from political participation and the Argentine junta’s desire to defeat all forms of subversion as quickly as possible fostered coercion through violent performances. In an attempt to maintain legitimacy at home and abroad, the Argentine military employed the spectacle of absence to attempt to hide the violence used to

7 Guillermo A. O’Donnell, Modernization and Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism: Studies in South American Politics, (Politics of Modernization Series), (Berkeley: University of California, Institute of International Studies, 1973), 30- 31 and 91-102.

8 Ibid., “Tensions in the Bureaucratic-Authoritarian State and the Question of Democracy,” in The New Authoritarianism in Latin America, David Collier (ed.), (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 292-4.

solidify junta control. Therefore, a new form of authoritarianism brought a new violent spectacle into the political legacy of Southern Cone military regimes.

The spectacle of absence represents the primary tactic of the Dirty War and Operation

Condor. These operations remain deliberately covert and involve top secret detainments, interrogations concerning subversive operations, and the removal of foreign ideologies which clashed with the specific nationalist atmosphere the juntas and their allies desired. However, differences existed between the Dirty War and Operation Condor. The Dirty War featured limited combat between the government and non-government forces and, thus, displays both spectacles. Operation Condor only used the spectacle of violence as a tactic in a select few, but extremely public, Phase Three assassination operations abroad. Chile focused on more discreet operations after the violent spectacle of events in the National Stadium in 1973. Argentina displays both spectacles through a sustained period. Therefore, Argentina is the primary focus of this work to elucidate the duality of these spectacles and their application within Operation

Condor and the Dirty War with a comparative analysis of the Chilean case.

Historians and Political Scientists, such as Paul H. Lewis and J. Patrice McSherry, have often prioritized studies of the causes, philosophies, and practices of the Chilean junta, the

Argentine junta’s ‘Dirty War’, and Operation Condor.9 The historiography of Operation Condor and the Southern Cone regimes’ collective efforts to track, capture, and destroy subversion and/or simple opposition, at home and abroad, permit a scholarly analysis of how national governments, military or not, navigated the ideological battlefield of the Cold War and transformed the spectacle of violence into the spectacle of absence. Not all violence displays

9 See J. Patrice McSherry, Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America, (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2005) and Paul H. Lewis, Guerrillas and Generals: The “Dirty War” in Argentina, (Westport, Connecticut and London: Praeger, 2002).

performance and that assertion provides a fundamental difference in my work. Not only do I specify that the violence I analyze is performance-based, but I also focus on how this specific form of political violence transformed through the socio-political influences of the Cold War and how various actors involved perceived and responded to the messages conveyed through these violent performances.

I build on the more inclusive work of political scientist, Paul H. Lewis, whose study of

Dirty War violence provides equal attention to the top-down military violence and the guerrilla organizations which performed violence before and after the coup of 1976. Lewis’s study remains paramount to my analysis of political violence in a historiography that tends to focus solely on the actions of the military and does not distinguish between the performance of violence and acts of violence which mean to punish the recipient of said violence through injury or death. For example, historian Martin Andersen argues that the myth of the ‘Dirty War’ was that it was a war at all.10 The Argentine military arrested, tortured and killed numerous innocent people, but this does not erase the fact that several guerrilla groups, from both the left and right, performed similar acts on a smaller scale. Both camps performed violence rather than committing singular acts of violence towards individuals. Each group also favored different spectacles to engage with their broader enemy. I focus on the evolution of violent performances of the Argentine junta and resistance generated through this tactical evolution, but this subject cannot be analyzed in a vacuum. I utilize Lewis’s position regarding the actual numbers of guerrilla groups and the Argentine military’s implementation of counter-terror tactics in order to present a clearer perspective on the history of political violence and how the governing junta and

10 Martin Edwin Andersen, Dossier Secreto: Argentina’s Desaparecidos and the Myth of the “Dirty War”, (San Francisco and Oxford: Westview Press, 1993), 1-6.

populations which opposed them chose to operate within this dichotomy of global human rights initiatives and local resistance versus military tactics.

Historian J. Patrice McSherry argues, “Operation Condor was an offensive weapon of the parallel state and a component of it.”11 For McSherry, the parallel state presents a subsidiary to the public face of a government and operated in the shadows for the sake of maintaining internal and external legitimacy. McSherry’s assertion provides my breaching point into the historiography of political violence, as a result of the Dirty War and Operation Condor, because of the fact that the shift toward a preference of clandestine operations signifies the evolution of the performance of violence, from the spectacle of violence into the spectacle of absence. A comparison of these spectacles, how one gained prominence over the other, and how these performances garnered meaning in a Cold War and militarized Southern Cone context represent key elements of my analysis.

A majority of the documents I analyze to form the basis of my argument are from the

U.S. State Department and CIA. However, I also focus on numerous secondary sources from

Argentina and primary documents from foreign states. My focus is on the theme of violence and the shift in the use of violent spectacles which pertain more to the perceptions of outsiders rather than the actors performing said violence. I agree with McSherry that the very selection of documents for declassification is able to create a selective history in the political favor of the country which reveals them. U.S. sources abound and the Argentine and Chilean sources I currently have access to remain classified, destroyed, or limited. However, I engage with texts written in the period or with the first-hand memory of the period. Guerrilla publications, official

11 J. Patrice McSherry, Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America, (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2005), 8.

statements to the press, journals from inside prisons, and interviews about murder and torture provide fascinating fountains of information, but also remain equally as subjective and problematic as declassified and foreign assessment documents. Taking numerous sources that spin their own version of history from numerous angles permits these documents to provide a foundation to this body of work, as well as permit my analysis to take the road less travelled in my investigation of how violence is performed with or without the intention of generating a public spectacle.

I connect Argentine performances of violence and the evolution of tactical spectacles to its primary partner in Operation Condor and the capitalist camp of the Cold War. In order to accomplish this goal, I engage with McSherry’s and Lewis’s aforementioned works, as well as the scholarship of Political Scientist Federico Finchelstein, Journalist John Dinges, and

Sociologist Patricia Marchak.12 However, I depart from their works to provide much needed analysis to the performance aspect of violence. The spectacles I examine represent military decisions based on internal and external realities, ideologies, and politics which crafted the Dirty

War and Operation Condor into the histories of Argentina and Chile. The analysis from inside this historical ‘snow globe’ embodies a storm of emotion, reactionary elements, and customs.

Therefore, I also investigate the perceptions of international subjects to understand the situation in the globalized context of human rights and bloc politics. The comparative aspect of this work aids my analysis of political violence and spectacle tactics within both a regional and global context. In Argentina, the lines between spectacles of violence and absence blurred. The performances of violent spectacles require an international perspective from the careful analysis

12 See Federico Finchelstein, The Ideological Origins of the Dirty War: Fascism, Populism, and Dictatorship in Twentieth-Century Argentina, (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). John Dinges, The Condor Years: How Pinochet and his Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents, (New York and London: The New Press, 2004). Patricia Marchak, God’s Assassins: State Terrorism in Argentina in the 1970s, (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999).

of historical documents from all three countries featured in this work to better understand the history of violence in Operation Condor and Dirty War Argentina.

In Chapter 1, I situate the spectacle of absence within the broader context of the Dirty

War and Operation Condor. A perfect storm of socio-political history and a legacy of Argentine military paternalism institutionalized the Argentine junta’s employment of the spectacle of absence. I begin with the unique origins of the spectacle of absence within Argentina and display how this tactic overtook the spectacle of violence during the war between military authoritarianism and guerrilla radicalism. I include the Argentine junta’s relation to the clandestine legions of Operation Condor to analyze the transnational growth of covert national security intertwined with political violence in the Southern Cone’s age of repression. I proceed into the theoretical constructs which promoted the spectacle of absence. These constructs represent the Argentine military’s occupation of the state space, the junta’s requirement to create a façade of human rights compliance in order to maintain legitimacy at home and abroad, and the desire to carry on the struggle against subversion of all types fostered the conditions for the evolution of violent spectacles. Finally, the Argentine security apparatus learned the international faux pas of annihilation from its temporary ally across the Andes Mountains, Augusto Pinochet’s

Chile. From these analyses, I proceed into an internal analysis of the modernization of massacre.

Chapter 2 takes the analysis into the Argentine inferno of memory. Violent performances serve as means of communication during warfare and the spectacles of absence and violence provide the modes to convey these messages. I utilize the voices of individuals who both conveyed and received violent messages during the Dirty War to understand the meanings generated for violence, power, and resistance. First, the memories of soldiers and military officials illustrate the mentality of the strongest purveyor of violence and the intended recipient

of guerrilla assaults. Second, the non-combatants bore the brunt of both the military and guerrillas, but did not transmit violent messages of their own. The meanings for violent spectacles crafted by this portion of the population embody the most pronounced historical memory of the Dirty War. Third, exiles drew the ire of both the Argentine military and its

Condor allies which sought to monitor and/or exterminate threats to their own national experiments. Exiles remain unique figures of any history, but as both conveyors and receivers serve an equally unique role in interpreting the violence within Dirty War Argentina. Last, but not least, the leftist guerrilla organizations occupied the role of the most prominent performers of the spectacle of violence. These groups exhibited a great disposition for making their understandings of violence, which they both conveyed and received, known to the world through their publications. I include guerrilla voices to complete the dialogue of violence which permeated the Dirty War.

Finally, Chapter 3 examines U.S.-Argentine relations within the context of Cold War politics and the Argentine junta’s employment of the spectacle of absence. The Argentine junta desired an alliance with the superpower of the West and frequently communicated with numerous high-ranking officials of the U.S. government. U.S. officials generated their own meanings for the covert violence in Argentina and utilized their own intelligence agencies to bypass Argentine rhetoric. I examine the failed U.S. struggle to control the Dirty War from afar and the junta’s manipulation of reality in retaliation. I then analyze the subject of human rights violations as the greatest threat to U.S.-Argentine cohesion. Next, the participants in communications from each side influenced the violent performances on the ground. The U.S. desire to both control and remain friendly with the Argentine military during negotiations aided the tactical favoritism of the spectacle of absence over the spectacle of violence because of

certain U.S. officials’ requirement of evidence to condemn junta on the world stage. Finally, comparison to Chile gains attention once again as the U.S. also viewed both military regimes through the same political lens. However, Chile once again provides the least favorable end of the scale and, just as in the first chapter, the Argentine military took notice and evolved its applications of political violence and methods of extermination.

I – Performances of Violence and Power

A. Origins

In order to analyze the transition from the spectacle of violence to the spectacle of absence in Argentina, I first discuss the setting in which these events occurred. The ‘Dirty War’, as the internal war waged by the Argentine junta is labeled, represents the primary event which displayed this clandestine transformation of violence. The diverse origins of this event are best explained through three themes. These themes include the development of right-wing extremists who would occupy important positions in the Dirty War junta, the arrival and transformation of various guerrilla groups in Argentina, and the results of the judicial system under a previous junta regime in the country. Historian Federico Finchelstein focuses on a period of fascist- nationalist growth from the 1920’s onward.1 The small fascist group continued to grow throughout the twentieth century and desired a powerful Argentina which embodied a bastion of

Catholicism against the development of Latin American liberalism and Communist atheism.2

The nacionalista group identified with Benito Mussolini’s Italy and Adolf Hitler’s Nazi

Germany. After the 1961 arrest of Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, vengeful nacionalista members of the Tacuara terrorist organization proclaimed, “Jews to the crematorium! Honor to

Eichmann.”3 This remark, aside from its blatant anti-Semitism, displays the brotherhood mentality of post-World War II fascists in their struggle against liberalism and communism. In

1 Fascism is not a label I placed on the group, but rather a term this group self-identified with. The group did not have a popular backing, but they did support violence as a legitimate means of achieving politics and stood in complete opposition of communist ideologies.

2 Federico Finchelstein, The Ideological Origins of the Dirty War: Fascism, Populism, and Dictatorship in Twentieth-Century Argentina, (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 33-4.

3 Ibid, 105. Finchelstein cites this quote from Archivo Dipba. In Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem, Eichmann claims he will remember Argentina alongside Germany and Austria.

Finchelstein’s thread, the nacionalistas began to justify political violence as a necessary reaction against oppositional violence, real or imagined, as well as against supposed anti-Catholic forces which might compromise the ‘godly’ state of Argentina.4 Justifications for political violence in the period of World War II continued to thrive until they found their way into the hard-liner core of the 1975 Argentine junta. Legitimacy of violence was, therefore, not a reactionary response which appeared in the Peronist or post-Peronist period, but rather developed over the duration of about fifty years.

Argentine President Juan Perón (r. 1946-1955 & 1973-1974) did not discourage fascism during his reign as president or during his influential years in exile. Perón, ever the Populist opportunist, promoted both right-wing and left-wing politics when it suited him. Finchelstein argues that the army and the Church allied with Peron until 1955 when he broke the alliance in an event which led to the burning of churches and the split divided Argentine fascism.5

Nacionalistas of the aforementioned Tacuara movement divided into leftist and rightist Peronist camps during the post-Perón period. The nacionalistas on both sides maintained fascist tendencies, but the right maintained its stance towards nationalist violence while the left identified with the violent revolutionary politics of Argentine national, Ché Guevara, and

Vietnamese revolutionary Ho Chi Minh.6 Legitimized violence became the standard of both active sides of the Peronist spectrum. In the absence of their leader, the internal battle began without the military as a belligerent and both sides claimed to represent the idealized Argentina.

However, the political violence of the guerrilla and paramilitary groups which emerged

4 Ibid., 45.

5 Ibid., 94-5.

6 Ibid., 112-13. And Paul H. Lewis, Guerrillas and Generals: The “Dirty War” in Argentina, (Westport, Connecticut and London: Praeger, 2002), 39-41. Lewis argues that the urban guerrillas of the left would be the militarized arm of the movements with support from labor unions, protests, and student groups.

embodied the tactic of the spectacle of violence through random shootings, bombings, robberies, and kidnappings.

Finally, I include the Argentine judicial system’s relationship to the Dirty War junta’s transformation of violent spectacles. Political Scientist Anthony W. Pereira argues that the

Argentine junta was far-and-away the least likely to use its judicial system in dealing with

‘subversives’ and the most likely to exterminate prisoners extra-judicially.7 The legitimization of fascist-based violence and my argument that Argentina continued a clandestine war to maintain a façade of Human Rights compliance means that individuals could not see the inside of a courtroom to speak of what occurred. Pereira displays that legitimization of violence was not the only reason for Argentina’s anti-legal stance. The 1966-1973 Argentine junta tried and imprisoned guerillas through the efforts of the National Penal Court (CPN). However, after the

1973 election of Peronist Hector Cámpora, 300 political prisoners obtained freedom and the efforts of the military unraveled in one declaration.8 For the 1976-1983 junta, if the enemies of the regime did not survive the regime, then they could never obtain freedom or ‘threaten’ the ideal Argentine state in the future.

The field of battle in the Dirty War included belligerents from both the military and civilian populations. It is important for the understanding of violent spectacles to grasp that this matter is an unconventional war of revolution and political cleansing. On the political right, the military junta combined with the Alianza Anticomunista Argentina (AAA or Triple A). The AAA formed from the breakup of the Tacuaras and favored nacionalista ideology. The group gained

7 Anthony W. Pereira, Political (In)justice: Authoritarianism and the Rule of Law in Brazil, Chile, and Argentina, (Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005), 21 and 117-19.

8 Ibid., 121-25.

notoriety for brutal public spectacles of violence and its tendency to include Jews amongst its enemies, as well as its connection and service to the governments of Isabel Perón (1974-1976) and the military junta which followed.9 Former AAA member, Lt. Hector Paino, told an

Argentine congressional committee that the ‘counterterror’ group took orders from and was funded by the Argentine Social Welfare Ministry. He also claimed that the group targeted and assassinated prominent political figures.10 However, the notorious terrorist group did ally itself with the capitalist side of the Cold War and warned American business owners in Argentina, for example Pepsi Co. executive Norman Heller, that they were targeted by an un-named leftist group.11 Whether the threat was credible or not is not the issue. The AAA understood that the

U.S. was Argentina’s most valuable supporter during the Dirty War and harm to U.S. businesses would hinder their position with the Americans and their stream of funds.12

For the left, the two primary guerrilla groups were the Peronist Montoneros and the

Marxist Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (ERP). In 1970 alone, a Third World Priests and leftist guerrilla journal, Cristianismo y Revolución, reported that the armed groups (including

9 American Embassy in Buenos Aires, To: U.S. SecState, “Human Rights Situation in Argentina,” (I116) [UNCLASSIFIED], August 27, 1976, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Triple+A+Member&beginDate=19700101&endDate=1980010 1&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

10 Ibid., “Former Triple A Member Talking to Congressional Committee.” (I007) [UNCLASSIFIED]. February 5, 1976, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Triple+A+Member&beginDate=19700101&endDate=1980010 1&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

11 Ibid., “AAA Warning to PepsiCo Executive,” (H009) [UNCLASSIFIED], February 11, 1975, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=AAA+warning&beginDate=19750101&endDate=19800101&p ublishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber= .

12 Ibid., “Political Violence in Argentina,” (BF004) [UNCLASSIFIED], June 15, 1975, 4, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=unconventional+war&beginDate=19750301&endDate=198212 30&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=. U.S. officials acknowledge the same economic risks of violence from the Right.

smaller organizations) carried out 240 acts of urban guerrilla warfare.13 These ‘acts’ predominantly pertained to robbery, murder, bombings, kidnapping, and ransom. The leftist groups also utilized the public spectacle of violence and were similar to the AAA, but lacked the arms, numbers, and support of the military and police. The rivalry between leftist guerrilla groups and the military escalated as a result of the armed left’s terrorist attacks on military bases.

On January 19, 1974, ERP commandos raided a military barracks in Azul, Buenos Aires

Province which resulted in several deaths on both sides. The ERP went as far as to publish an account of the assault in their revolutionary journal, Estrella Roja, which included a map of the battle.14 The battle was not enough of a public spectacle and the ERP felt the need to not only claim responsibility, but also to glorify their resolve in leading an assault on an actual base. In the case of the ERP, the Marxist revolution required the public to see their violence and know that the military could be challenged. I do not believe they ever questioned the legitimacy of their own violence in the thread of foco ideology. The military went on to kill numerous people which had no connection to the guerrilla groups. However, the armed left’s assaults and their unarmed support groups led to the paranoia which plagued the junta during the Dirty War.

The direct antecedent of the Dirty War’s spectacle of absence came in the form of a 1975 anti-guerrilla military campaign in the mountains of the western province of Tucumán. However, the Tucumán campaign took the form of a ‘conventional’ military enterprise against guerrillas

13 Torres Molina, Ramón, “La etapa actual de las guerrillas argentinas,” in Cristianismo y Revolucion, Año VI, No. 29, Junio 1971, 17, http://www.ruinasdigitales.com/revistas/CyR29.pdf.

14 Estrella Roja, Suplemento – El Combate de Azul, Unknown Vol., Unknown Date [presumably between 1974 and 1976 – Action occurred January 19, 1974], http://www.ruinasdigitales.com/revistas/EstrellaRojaSuplementoElCombate.pdf.

attempting to conduct a foco in a rural mountainous area.15 The American Ambassador to

Argentina, Robert Hill, believed the enterprise would be short and decisive because he viewed the ERP commandos as “weekend warriors” which would not stand and fight, but rather dissolve and flee.16 However, Estrella Roja, provided the only public reporting on the Tucumán campaign because of the military’s enforcement of a press blackout. For Estrella Roja, the campaign would sap the military, with a casualty ratio favoring the ERP’s Ramon Rosa Jimenez Company, despite the military’s repression of the peoples in the surrounding area.17 In spite of this ERP optimism, the foco never stood a chance. Paul Lewis argues that the military campaign’s commander, General Acdel Edgardo Vilas, was well-versed in both revolutionary and counterrevolutionary ideology. General Vilas sat his army in the villages and waited out the starving guerrillas.18 This campaign legitimized, in the minds of the future junta leaders, the necessity of a national anti-revolutionary war to save Argentina from ‘Communism’.

After a popular coup to dispose of the ever unpopular Isabel Perón on March 24, 1976, the junta issued a statement of purpose on the same day.19 The junta proclaimed that they seized the country in order to rescue the economy and to restore the rule of law, in regard to the

15 I employ the term ‘conventional’ because the military action included two armed forces engaging in combat on a rural battlefield. This is the way in which most warfare occurred for millennia before the institutionalization of urban warfare. 16 American Embassy in Buenos Aires, To: U.S. SecState, “Army Commences Anti-Guerrilla Campaign in Tucumán.” (H008) [UNCLASSIFIED]. February 12, 1975.

17 Estrella Roja, No. 51, Lunes 31 de Marzo de 1975, 8-10, http://www.ruinasdigitales.com/revistas/EstrellaRoja%2051.pdf.

18 Paul H. Lewis, Guerrillas and Generals, 107-113.

19 American Embassy in Buenos Aires, To: U.S. SecState, “Coup in Argentina: SITREP No. 1,” (E121) [UNCLASSIFIED], March 23, 1976, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Coup+in+Argentina+SITREP&beginDate=19760301&endDate =19760330&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=. SITREP’s 1-9 illustrate a complete calm in Buenos Aires during the coup. This reflects how unpopular President Isabel Perón truly was. Paul Lewis argues that several Argentine newspapers from both the left and right predicted the coup two days before it occurred. Lewis, 126.

guerrilla terrorism, in the name of God and country.20 This crusade takes on further millenarian contexts from the Vicar General of the Armed Forces, Adolfo Tortolo, in the junta-issued “El

Ejército de Hoy.” Tortolo argues that the soldiers of Argentina possessed a sacred valor and that the guerrillas of the left shed blood in an unjust manner.21 For the Catholic-conservative or hardliner sects of the junta, God was on the side of the military and the political right which legitimized any form of violence in the name of a Catholic Argentina. Legitimacy of state- sponsored violence was not in question, but considering the secretive actions of the junta, public spectacles of violence did not maintain legitimacy towards the outside world. The transition from the spectacle of violence to the spectacle of absence within Dirty War Argentina will appear in the following chapter.

B. I Am Legion for We Are Many

Operation Condor, established in 1975, is both an extension of the Dirty War and an international approach to continuing the Southern Cone’s right-wing war against anti- authoritarian opposition and real or imagined Communism. Condor member states included

Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Brazil. An FBI communique from an internal

Condor source provides the layout of this covert program. Phase 1, the initial purpose of

Operation Condor, was an intelligence gathering and data collecting partnership to aid the

20 Videla, Jorge Raphael (General), Emilio Eduardo Massera (Admiral), and Orlando Ramón Agosti (General). “Proclama del 24 de Marzo de 1976.” March 24, 1976, http://www.elhistoriador.com.ar/documentos/dictadura/proclama_del_24_de_marzo_de_1976.php. And American Embassy in Buenos Aires, To: U.S. SecState, “Junta Elaborating Security Policy,” (E134) [UNCLASSIFIED], March 25, 1976, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Junta+security+policy&beginDate=19760301&endDate=19760 330&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=. The Americans are clear that they believe the Argentine junta with reinstitute the rule of law to contain the ‘terrorist’ cells from both sides.

21 Vicario General Adolfo Tortolo, “Mensaje Final: Sangre Fecunda,” in “El Ejército de Hoy,” 17 de Agosto de 1976, http://www.ruinasdigitales.com/revistas/dictadura/Dictadura%20%20El%20Ejercito%20Hoy.pdf.

Southern Cone regimes’ ability to monitor ‘subversives’ moving throughout the region. Phase 2 expanded the cooperative nature of the organization to include actions and assassination operations against targets within the member states. In this fashion, Chile could target a ‘threat’ to its state security in Brazil or Argentina or vice versa. Finally, Phase 3 included assassinations in countries outside of the Condor states, such as exiles in Europe.22 Phase 3 represented the most blatant spectacle of violence for the normally clandestine organization.

The historical works pertaining to Condor involve stories from the Chilean presidency of

Salvador Allende (r. 1970-73) and the Argentine Dirty War (1976-1983) through the end of

Condor activities and Southern Cone military regimes throughout the 1980’s.23 Operation

Condor presents a complex, multi-national ‘security’ and death-dealing enterprise. Unlike the

Dirty War, Condor operations were less hampered by national boundaries. The current consensus amongst journalists and scholars displays a purely Cold War institution and I argue that the clandestine nature of the program, as well as the unlikely alliance of regionally rivalled military regimes, permitted a bypass of Human Rights legistlation. Operation Condor remains an integral piece in the, ever-expanding, history of violence from the Cold War era in Latin America.

Information gathered on the history of Operation Condor began before the existence of the (now) infamous Southern Cone agency. Aside from studies on Cold War spy agencies and forms of espionage, research covering U.S. policies and actions against the Chilean presidency of

Salvador Allende provided insight into understanding the academic works on Condor. Both the historian, J. Patrice McSherry, and the journalist, John Dinges, agree that Condor’s inception

22 U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), “Operation Condor Cable,” (CHILBOM), September 28, 1976, http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/nsaebb8.htm.

23 See McSherry, Predatory States, and Dinges, The Condor Years. See also, Samuel Blixen, El Vientre Del Cóndor: Del Archivo Del Terror Al Caso Berríos, (Montevideo, Uruguay: Brecha SLR, 1994).

directly resulted from Augusto Pinochet’s (r. 1974-1990) Chilean coup d’état and the rise of

General Manuel Contreras’s Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA). John Dinges argues,

“Pinochet’s coup was not just another military takeover… It was the beginning of a total war justified as a ‘war on terrorism,’ whose principal targets were the political forces perceived by

Pinochet and his allies as infecting their countries with the alien cancer of Communist revolution.”24 Contreras and DINA embodied the U.S. foreign policy of containing Communism at all costs. Many Capitalists, inside and outside Chile, condemned Allende as a Communist and feared the spread of Communism in Latin America outside of the isolated Cuban regime. J.

Patrice McSherry states, “One DINA operative explained DINA’s strategy as follows: ‘First the aim was to stop terrorism, then possible extremists were targeted and later those who might be converted into extremists.’”25 The ‘terrorists’ and ‘extremists’ (often claimed to have Communist ties) represented anyone who opposed the Southern Cone military regimes. Historical works about all Condor countries present the Cold War ‘Communist’ witch hunt as the legitimacy factor for all aggressors involved.

Chile took the lead on Condor, but Argentina followed suit and tied the international enterprise into its local Dirty War. A Department of Defense (DOD) memo from September 30,

1976 argues that Argentina and Chile, alongside Uruguay, appeared to be the most active in the group. The memo argues that Argentine Secretaría de Inteligencia de Estado (SIDE) agents, in coalition with Uruguayan military intelligence units, destroyed OPR-33 (Uruguayan activist cell)

24 John Dinges, The Condor Years: How Pinochet and his Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents, (New York and London: The New Press, 2004), 3.

25 J. Patrice McSherry, Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America, (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2005), 57.

in Buenos Aires.26 While this document does not speak to the clandestine nature of Phase 2

Condor operations, it does provide a glimpse into the blending of the Dirty War and Operation

Condor. The Argentine junta permitted Condor states to hunt their own nationals within

Argentina, via SIDE monitoring, while the Argentine military focused on its own targets and citizens. For the Argentine junta, unwanted subversives needed to be removed and if other states would use their own resources, then the operations possess a better chance of eradicating subversion. Therefore, the Argentine government both permitted the agents of other countries to risk the unwanted attention associated with the spectacle of violence and increased the case for plausible deniability through letting those same foreign agents participate.

The star of Argentina’s Dirty War and Operation Condor activities, from the limited sources on the subject, appears in the form of Army Intelligence Unit, Battalion 601. In August,

1979, a 601 operative using the name Jorge Contreras met with U.S. officials to explain its operational capacity for unknown objectives. The U.S. official who transmitted the details of the interview explained, “A central problem in trying to control the anti-subversive campaign was the fact that the same person who received intelligence about allegedly subversive activities was the person whose responsibility it was to make arrests, conduct interrogations, etc.”27 Repression required a division of labor to keep the process clandestine and the intelligence coordinated

26 U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), “Special Operations Forces,” (1613) [UNCLASSIFIED], September 30, 1976, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Operation+Condor&beginDate=19750301&endDate=1980123 0&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

27 Jorge Contreras, “Nuts and Bolts of the Government’s Repression of Terrorism – Subversion,” (AZ086) [UNCLASSIFIED], August 6, 1979, 6, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=nuts+and+bolts&beginDate=19750301&endDate=19801230&p ublishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

through officers whose job was to research the specific target of that department (See Figure 1).28

The document continues, “Competition among many units put a high premium on fast action, which often meant that action was ill considered.”29 The mishaps Contreras spoke of are not clear in the text, but through examination of numerous Dirty War communications, the problems occurred from sloppy execution of operations which revealed the clandestine structure through hasty actions and spectacles of violence. Bodies in the street resulted from competition between security agencies and a lack of intelligence analysis.

The point of an organization like Battalion 601 is to employ the spectacle of absence rather than the spectacle of violence. A national government does not develop a military intelligence agency for targeting internal subversives if the plan is for a military officer to receive information and act upon that information by shooting enemies of the state on sight. The

28 James J. Blystone, To: The Files, “Organizational Chart of 601,” (BO003A) [UNCLASSIFIED], February 6, 1980, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=601&beginDate=19750301&endDate=19801230&publishedBe ginDate=&publishedEndDat=&caseNumber=.

29 Jorge Contreras, “Nuts and Bolts of the Government’s Repression of Terrorism – Subversion,” 6.

post-1976 Argentine plan did not include arresting subversives and sending them to trial. If trial or summary execution were not options for a sophisticated command structure like Battalion

601, then the alternative was clandestine arrests for detainment or execution at undisclosed locations. This is the circumstance which highlights the intersection of unchangeable violence and malleable spectacles. The Argentine junta’s clandestine detainment centers represented the destinations for the victims of the spectacle of absence.

C. Babylon Undone

I argue that the stories of exiles from across the Southern Cone play important roles in my engagement with the history of violent spectacles in Argentina during Operation Condor and the Dirty War. Historians need to include these subjects because exiles and emigrants/immigrants, perceived as threats to the country, were two groups Operation Condor was designed to engage with and destroy. Numerous exiles and emigrants continued to passively or violently resist the authoritarian powers of the Southern Cone. Operation Condor hunted down political and non-political ex-patriots throughout the member states (Phase 2) and across the world (Phase 3). Chile and DINA provided the origins and headquarters for the international

Condor operation. Thomas C. Wright and Rody Oñate Zúñiga argue, “Pinochet’s coup affected not only Chile: it was a catalyst for mass exile from South America and, later, Central

America.”30 The exile story after the rise of Pinochet, DINA, and Condor support the overall historical narrative of violent spectacles. Argentina was the last of the Condor states to suffer a military coup and was the closest regional safe haven for the displaced populations of Chile,

30 Thomas C. Wright and Rody Oñate Zúñiga, “Chilean Political Exile,” Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 34, No. 4, Exile and the Politics of Exclusion in Latin America, (July, 2007), 32.

Uruguay, Paraguay, and parts of Brazil. In 1976, the U.S. State Department displayed great concern for the duality of violence towards exiles in Argentina and positive relations between the

U.S. government and the newly established junta. The State Department report explains that the

United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) feared for the safety of at least “1000 of the Chilean exiles,” amongst several hundred others, because of the dangers posed by the

Argentine junta, groups like the AAA, and the other military regimes in the region.31 The watchful eye of the UNHCR influenced the Argentine junta’s and its Condor allies’ employment of the tactical violence.

It is important to note when the term refugee is used instead of exile. A document produced by the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires provides the importance of this language distinction. In response to the U.S. congressional inquiries about the status of Chilean refugees in

Argentina, the author explains, “We assume that we are referring to persons living in Argentina who cannot for political reasons return to Chile… and who are not actively engaged in terrorist activities against either the GOA [Government of Argentina] or neighboring governments.”32

The U.S. embassy used language to legitimize certain actions of violence or disappearances by distinguishing that there were two types of displaced peoples. The document’s author dissuades international attention towards the possibility of Argentina forcibly deporting Chilean refugees back to Chile. The author dismisses claims of wrongdoing on the part of the Argentine junta by

31 U.S. State Department, To: U.S. Delegation Secretary, “Brief Implication of Political Murders in Argentina,” (V021) [UNCLASSIFIED], June 9, 1976, 2, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Brief+Implication+of+Political+Murders+in+Argentina&begin Date=19730101&endDate=19801230&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

32 American Embassy in Buenos Aires, To: U.S. SecState, “Chilean Refugees in Argentina,” (I032) [UNCLASSIFIED], May 13, 1976, 1, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Chilean+refugees+in+Argentina&beginDate=19750301&endD ate=19801230&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

explaining that the men were members and leaders of the Movimiento de Izquierda

Revolucionaria (MIR), a Marxist, anti-authoritarian terrorist group in Chile.33

The force that Chilean exiles fled from, DINA, served the uniquely Cold War task, “to ferret out and persecute the remaining left.”34 Wright and Zúñiga present the fear that exiles and emigrants felt from outside Chile in what should have been a safe haven from DINA (according to international law). John Dinges expands the exile dimension beyond the Condor member territories as he describes a Condor DINA agent’s and neo-fascist Italian hitmen’s assassination attempt on Bernardo Leighton in Rome. He claims, “The death of a revered figure like Leighton would strike terror in the hearts of exiles everywhere and demonstrate not only DINA’s international power but its utter ruthlessness.”35 Despite the failure of the operation, the enemies of Condor and exiles of less political importance had to fear the juntas and dictators of the

Southern Cone from abroad. The spectacle of violence abroad proved necessary as the Condor states could not hunt down every dissident or opponent in non-member states. I argue that the exiles in Europe and the U.S. were deemed a danger because of the relative impunity in which they could operate and the self-identified civilized and pro-human rights status of their host countries. The exiles in Argentina, however, were vulnerable whether they resisted the junta or not. U.S. officials, after being pressed by a chairman associated with the UNHCR, displayed concern over an incident at the Argentine Catholic Commission on Immigration in June of

1976.36 Ten armed men broke in and stole refugee/exile records for unknown purposes. Given

33 Ibid., 2.

34 Wright and Zúñiga, “Chilean Political Exile,” 34.

35 Dinges, The Condor Years, 131.

36 American Embassy in Buenos Aires, To: U.S. SecState, “Refugee Records Stolen in Armed Break-In,” (V022) [UNCLASSIFIED], June 9, 1976,

the track record of the Argentine junta and its allies, the robbery of those documents served the purpose of gathering intelligence on foreign nationals within Argentina.

Exiles, in the Condor member states and beyond, are an integral part of understanding violence in the Southern Cone because of the Argentine junta’s assertions that Communism and the Left are foreign afflictions that could not originate in Argentina. Another document from the

U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires illustrates this point when the author argues that many of the

Argentine officers perceive their war against the Left is part of “World War III” and “Argentina has been chosen by “international Communism” as a testing ground in its campaign to conquer the world.”37 This is another example of the millenarian ideology associated with legitimacy concerns of the Argentine junta. For the subject of spectacles of violence or absence, a war against America’s enemies, as well as their own, provides insurance in the case of the spectacle of violence being used in place of the emerging spectacle of absence.

The greatest exile ‘threat’ to the Argentine junta and its Southern Cone allies was the

Junta Coordinadora Revolucionaria (JCR). The JCR supposedly was a transnational union of the remaining guerrilla organizations in the Condor member states during the 1970s. The organization appears like a ghost in the declassified documents of the period. There was speculation that the group was headquartered in Europe or even in South America.38 However, a

http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Refugee+Records+Stolen+in+Armed+Break- In&beginDate=19730101&endDate=19801230&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

37 American Embassy in Buenos Aires, To: U.S. SecState, “The Military Government After Four Months in Power,” (I070) [UNCLASSIFIED], August 23, 1976, 5, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=the+military+government+after+four+months+in+power&begi nDate=19750301&endDate=19801230&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

38 American Embassy in Paris, To: U.S. SecState, American Embassy in Paris. To: U.S. SecState. “Revolutionary Coordinating Junta (JCR) Statement,” (I033) [UNCLASSIFIED], May 16, 1976, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=unconventional+war&beginDate=19750301&endDate=198212 30&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=. The U.S. embassy in Paris notes a JCR article

detailed CIA discussion on the group argues that the JCR never claimed responsibility for any attacks, which was and is a strange tactic for guerrilla or terrorist organizations anywhere.

Despite questioning the existence of the JCR and the actual threat of Southern Cone terrorism, the CIA meeting concluded by arguing, “It is the fear that individual guerrilla groups throughout

South America will unite that has motivated the recent intensification in cooperation among security officials in the Southern Cone.”39 The actual threat exiles posed means nothing in the analysis of violent spectacles in the Southern Cone. What mattered was that the juntas’ perceptions of fear, real or not, were there. Perceptions generate violence, just as perceptions both dictate and result from the spectacles used to perform violence.

D. All the World’s a Stage40

Before proceeding any further, I first define power. The scholarship on power goes far beyond this study and finds individual definitions based on the specific parameters in each work because it is the social sciences’ equivalent of energy for physicists and is, thus, intangible.41

Power may be neither created nor destroyed and has a fluid character which permits it to continue in new forms and locations due to that fact that it is in constant contestation. I define power as the ability to influence the agency of a person or group in order to foster a certain appearing a local news source, Le Monde, which claims the group will bring Civil War to Argentina and views all Southern Cone military regimes as a combined enemy.

39 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), “Memorandum: Terrorism in South America,” [CONFIDENTIAL], August 8, 1976, 5, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Memorandum%3A+Terrorism+in+South+America&beginDate =19750301&endDate=19801230&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

40 A quote from William Shakespeare’s play, As You Like It, that claims life is a play and the world is its stage. The violent spectacles I analyze are performances for the ‘stage’ of global politics and human rights discourses.

41 Scholars such as Michel Foucault and Eric Wolf generated widely-accepted definitions and categories of power. I utilize Wolf’s categorizations of power, but I choose to exclude his and Foucault’s base definitions of generalized power in order to define the term on the grounds of my own work. For further interest in Foucault’s works on power, see Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of a Prison, (New York: Second Vintage Books, 1995). See also Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality – Volume 1: An Introduction, (New York: Vintage Books, 1990).

behavior or set of choices. When a person or group possesses this ability, then legitimacy, authority, and the capacity to rule behind the ‘mask of the state’ are able to be manufactured through the Gramscian concepts of coercion and hegemony. The actions of displaying and garnering power by a dominant group are hegemonic and coercive processes. Thus, hegemony and coercion are kinetic, or active, power.

In the context of the Dirty War and Operation Condor, the Argentine military occupied the space of the ‘state’. Anthropologist Eric Wolf’s conceptualization of ‘structural power’ represents an influential group which has to operate within a specific power setting, but may also alter the playing field in which power is displayed and contested.42 The Argentine junta represented the sole structural power within the geographical setting of the country. However, on an international level, Argentina interacted with many structural powers which altered the field on which the junta’s violent crusade occurred. External structural powers of U.S. and its Cold

War allies, the UN, and the court of public opinion’s relation to economic opportunities forced

Argentina to evolve the spectacle of violence into the spectacle of absence. Robert Hill, the U.S.

Ambassador to Argentina, displayed the structural power of the U.S. during his meeting with

Argentine President Jorge Raphael Videla on September 21, 1976. During their conversation,

Hill informed President Videla of the U.S. opinion on Human Rights violations. The ambassador writes, “U.S. was seriously concerned with Human Rights issue not just in Argentina but around the world, and we now have legistlation under which no country determined to be consistently guilty of gross violations of Human Rights can be eligible for any form of U.S. assistance, be it

42 Eric Wolf, “Distinguished Lecture: Facing Power – Old Insights, New Questions.” American Anthropologist, New Series, 92, no. 3, (Sep., 1990), 586.

economic or military.”43 Argentina’s junta of course possessed agency, but the U.S. limited or altered its choices through threats to cancel military and economic aid. This threat from the U.S. government embodied their kinetic power in the realm of international relations in the Western

Hemisphere. However, because of the junta’s commitment to violence, the choice remained between the spectacle of violence and the spectacle of absence. President Videla, a crafty historical agent, employed plausible deniability when he attributed the deaths of public figures to a few mistakes and dismissed Hill’s line of questioning by expressing his government’s troubles with the economy and the ever-present ‘threat’ of terrorism.44 He both reacted to the power of the U.S. through his later employment of the spectacle of absence and negotiated with said power through the generation of a common legitimacy in relation to the Cold War ideology of

Right versus Left.

Geographer Mark Purcell defines how legitimacy and consent operate in relation to the state-society discourse. For Purcell, consent creates legitimacy. Only a negotiation of similar goals between the government and the social sphere may produce said legitimacy.45 However, because the state remains imaginary, the space does not have to serve all of the social sphere nor the social sphere in general. The space warrants legitimacy on some level within the international community because of the acceptance of the state structure. Legitimacy merely makes operating within the constructed space of the state and the international community more efficient and maintains the illusion of the state, the Argentine state in this case, in the social imagination. The

43 American Embassy in Asunción, To: U.S. Secretary of State (SecState), “Second Meeting with Chief of Staff Re Letelier Case,” (R22B) [UNCLASSIFIED], October 20, 1978, 1, http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010306/condor.pdf.

44 Ibid., 2.

45 Mark Purcell, “The State, Regulation, and Global Restructuring: Reasserting the Political in Political Economy.” Review of International Political Economy, 9, no. 2, (May, 2002), 295-6.

requirement of some notion of legitimacy provokes the importance of contact between the social space and the state space.

Governments actively reproduce the social construct of the state, as well as maintain legitimacy and authority through space and time. I examine the reproduction of the state in order to display that it is imaginary. For philosopher Louis Althusser, the concepts of the Repressive

State Apparatus (RSA) and the Ideological State Apparatus (ISA) prove necessary to create a functioning and surviving state space.46 RSA’s represent coercive government rule via the execution of power through actions which are repressive to the social sphere. ‘State’- or government-sanctioned political violence exists in this realm and, thus, creates legitimacy from this kind of violence in the eyes of those which attempt to judge the success or failure of a state, such as the Cold War partners of Argentina. ISA’s represent functions of hegemony which produce legitimacy and may generate consent in the population to submit to the individuals who occupy the imaginary state sphere, as well as their primarily elite ideology. The Argentine government, during the Dirty War, favored violent RSA’s to achieve its agenda. Due to the inability to employ ISA’s to convert the Leftist groups to the junta’s elite ideology, the military risked legitimacy from the rest of the population to obtain coercive submission of those who resisted the authoritarian agenda.

Purcell synthesizes theoretician Antonio Gramsci’s ideology, “In the Gramscian tradition, the state engages in ‘hegemonic projects’ geared toward establishing the political dominance of a particular set of social relations.”47 Education is the current most powerful ISA, especially in

46 Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation).” in An Anthropology of the State: A Reader, Aradhana Sharma and Akhil Gupta (eds.), (Blackwell Publishers, 2007), 94-5.

47 Mark Purcell, “The State, Regulation, and Global Restructuring: Reasserting the Political in Political Economy,” 293.

cases where the government has a heavy hand in the material.48 Schools educate children throughout their childhood with concepts of nationalism, nationalist history, and the rule of law which display the ability to normalize the concept of the state. Consent from the social sphere predominately through government employment of ISA’s with the assistance of RSA’s (which are legitimized through ISA’s) to ensure that the occasional challenge to the status quo is hampered. Thus, governments both reproduce elite ideology and reify the state in the imagination of the social space through ISA’s. The illusionary reification of the state is the theoretical doorway through which global powers are able to categorize something that does not exist into a series of failures and successes in order to legitimize their own policies toward other governments, rather than the local populations. This aspect of the reification process displays the

U.S. government’s desire to control the Southern Cone juntas and its judgement of each one based on levels of top-down political violence performed in a public or internationally visible manner.

As I have shown, legitimacy remained a key concern throughout the Dirty War for

Argentina and the repressive actions of the junta displayed its favorability towards RSA’s in relation to population control. Argentina and its Condor allies created at least one terrorist group in Argentina to maintain the legitimacy required to continue the war against subversives. Former

Chilean DINA and Condor operative, Michael Townley, recalls this incident in an interview with the FBI in 1982. Townley claims that anti-Castro Cubans and civilian SIDE agents designed the group and distributed pamphlets about several bombings from the fake organization to take responsibility for the aforementioned operatives’ false flag kidnapping of a Dutch banker in

Argentina. The kidnapping never took place, but the pamphlets were distributed in Mendoza and

48 Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State”, 97.

Cordoba. Townley believes, “the purpose of utilizing the “Grupo Rojo” pamphlets in claiming credit for the bombings in Mendoza and Cordoba was to create the impression that the “Grupo

Rojo” was a viable Marxist terrorist organization.”49 Townley’s account not only displays the

Argentine junta’s willingness to create a new reality to complete its war against subversion, but also unveils a desperate attempt to generate legitimization for counter-terror operations in the first year of the junta’s reign. The U.S. heard rumors of junta attempts to generate false threats. A

U.S. State Department document entails a warning to the embassy in Buenos Aires that the

Argentine junta dug false tunnels underneath a prison in Cordoba in order to create a false escape and execute several prisoners.50 The Nunca Más report also claims falsifying circumstances to kill official prisoners who could not be legitimately executed without proper cause. The report argues that “If it had been decided that they should die, they were shot down in an 'escape attempt' or appeared as the casualties of an 'armed shoot-out'.”51 Whether or not the allegations of false flag operations are true is beside the point. The issue is that legitimacy remained a key theme throughout the Argentine junta’s administration.

Argentine junta officials also legitimized total war against subversives to their troops. A circulated document, from 1977, produced by the Argentine Air Force displays the ideology that the junta projected upon its underlings. The document explains to military members that communism “is a totalitarian and intolerant ideology,” and that it threatened both Christianity

49 U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). “Direccion de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA).” January 21, 1982, http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/docs/doc02.pdf.

50 U.S. State Department, To: American Embassy in Buenos Aires, “Atrocity Warning,” (I085) [UNCLASSIFIED], July 30, 1976, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Atrocity+Warning&beginDate=19730101&endDate=19801230 &publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

51 “Deaths in ‘armed confromtations’, in Nunca Más: Report of CONADEP, 1984, http://web.archive.org/web/20030729224318/http://www.nuncamas.org/english/library/nevagain/nevagain_158.htm.

and the very existence of an Argentine nation.52 This legitimization propaganda corresponded to the millenarian ideology of the Argentine junta in relation to the ‘Third World War’ against global communism. Within this text, the ideal result of this message did not promote absolute loyalty to the military junta, but rather to the Catholic Argentine nation as a whole. This concept remains embodied in President Videla’s, September 24, 1976, speech to honor the fallen soldiers of the Tucumán campaign. The President exclaims,

They died defending their Argentine brothers so that they were free men, fully realized in a society where justice, solidarity and the word of Christ prevail. We will continue their struggle until total victory. Soldiers, worthy sons of the Fatherland: Interlock your arms, strengthen your spirit and renew the oath to defend the flag until death and that victory, like yesterday and as always, will be our victory.53 The junta built a façade in which they were the Argentine state, rather than a group of men with their own ambitions, and their goal was to protect the social space of the civilian population and the Argentine nation.

I expand on Philip Abrams’s argument, “The state is not the reality which stands behind the mask of political practice. It is itself the mask which prevents our seeing political practice as it is.”54 Thus, the state is a mask, behind which the people of the government stand in order to rule and to displace the image of what or who receives the power and legitimacy given by the

52 Circulo de la Fuerza Aerea: Dirección de Publicaciones, “La Verdad Sobre El Marxismo-Leninismo,” el 15 de abril de 1977, http://www.ruinasdigitales.com/revistas/dictadura/Dictadura%20-%20Marxismo-Leninismo.pdf.

53 Jorge Raphael Videla (General). “Mensaje pronuciado el día 24 de septiembre de 1976 por el Excelentísimo Señor Presidente de la Nación, teniente general Jorge Rafael Videla, arengando a las tropas formadas en la Plaza «General Belgrano», en la Ciudad de San Miguel de Tucumán, durante la realización del Acto Central de Homenaje a los miembros del Ejército Argentino muertos o heridos en la lucha contra la subversión, así como a aquellos integrantes de la Fuerza que se destacaron por su heroicidad en actos de combate,” In Mensajes Presidenciales: Proceso de Reoranizacion Nacional, Tomo 1, Republica Argentina, 24 de Marzo de 1976, 90, http://www.ruinasdigitales.com/revistas/dictadura/Dictadura%20-%20Discursos%20de%20Videla%20- %201976.pdf.

54 Philip Abrams, “Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State,” in An Anthropology of the State: A Reader, Aradhana Sharma and Akhil Gupta (eds.), (Blackwell Publishers, 2007), 125.

people. In the case of the Dirty War, the junta created the illusion that Argentina as a country was powerful rather than the military. Purcell reiterates the government’s role as a repressive apparatus behind the mask of the state and simplifies the state apparatus discourse of sociologist

Jürgen Habermas. Purcell argues, “In the case of Habermasian tradition, the state helps avoid a legitimation crisis in society by masking and partly resolving social relations that can lead to social upheaval.”55 The real threat of social upheaval remained the threat of the majority of the population rising up against or rejecting the authority of the junta. The junta’s perceived threat labelled the subversive elements as the possible vanguard of such an uprising. However, the

Argentine junta sought to separate the subversives from the general population and partially dispelled the notion that they represented a danger to the country by labeling the political Left and the armed guerrilla groups the sole threat to national security.56 This occurred because of the military’s ability to occupy the state space of legitimacy and denied room in that space for their political opponents from any sector of the civilian social sphere.

The Argentine military as an institution transformed into the primary structural power in the country because of its occupation of the state space. From this position of power, the junta possessed enough legitimacy and authority on internal and external levels to exterminate or disappear those they believed could cause social upheaval through clandestine means. Obtaining government power did not originally appear to represent a major goal because the military began its Tucumán campaign under the governance of Isabel Perón. However, the total war against

55 Mark Purcell, “The State, Regulation, and Global Restructuring,” 293.

56 American Embassy in Buenos Aires, To: U.S. SecState, “Admiral Massera Sees Terrorism as Part of World War,” (BR010) [UNCLASSIFIED], May 15, 1977, 2, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Admiral+Massera+Sees+Terrorism+as+Part+of+World+War& beginDate=19750301&endDate=19821230&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=. Third Corps Commander General Menendez argues that the subversives will definitely infiltrate society and the military must be vigilant.

subversives influenced the military to occupy the state space alone without civilian oversight which could have hampered or delayed their overall goals. In a 1977 meeting with President

Videla, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Terence Todman reports on this ideological stance of the junta. Todman quotes Videla,

The Argentine junta takeover was not just another palace coup. It embodied the assumption of power by the military as an institution. They did so reluctantly, and their objective was exclusively to get the country back on the track. They had no sectarian or personal ambitions. They were committed to returning the country to a thoroughly representative democracy.57 Videla’s choice of the word ‘institution’ displays his attempts to dehumanize and reify the state space for the benefit of the armed forces’ occupation. Dehumanization comes from the reification of an institution like the state and/or the military instead of referring to the junta which symbolized the human beings in charge of the government. The illusion of state reification remains important because the state cannot do anything. However, the actors responsible for governing require various degrees of impunity which the imaginary space of the state, as well as the legitimacy/authority associated with it, provide in order to ‘separate’ from the social space, settle disputes amongst an ideologically fractured population, and maintain positions of power.

E. Tactical Violence

Legitimacy, authority, and power all played into the junta’s descision to transform the spectacle of violence into the spectacle of absence. The Dirty War’s status, as an unconventional urban warfare against an internal opponent, remains a primary theme to analyze. The Tucumán campaign remained conventional in the sense that it involved a military operation, under a

57 Ibid., “Asst Sec Todman’s Meeting with President Videla,” (J275) [UNCLASSIFIED], August 23, 1977, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Asst+Sec+Todman%E2%80%99s+Meeting+with+President+V idela&beginDate=19750301&endDate=19821230&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

democratically elected government, with the intent to defeat a rural, communist guerrilla campaign in a western province of the country. The junta defined urban guerrilla warfare as “the frank and open fight carried out by subversive elements against legal or occupying forces; it develops as combat in localities.”58 The right wing guerrilla groups, such as the AAA, remained associated with the junta, so leftist guerrilla groups represented the only subversives in the country. U.S. officials noted strong protest from their Argentine counterparts when human rights reports from groups such as Amnesty International reported on acts by the government and neglected abuses committed by the illegal forces of the armed Left.59 The junta labeled its own forces as legal, but ignored which groups are subversive. The definition of subversive remains quite vague. The document continues, “It is a set of actions that has a character of civil unrest and takes place in the area of a city. It is normally externalized as riot or as urban guerrilla attacks.”60 The reason for the vague definition of subversion reflects the junta’s active hostility towards anyone who challenged their absolute authority.

The junta’s opponents expanded outside of the realm of urban guerrillas and leftist terror groups. Argentine military targets went on to include various members of society which the global community easily and emphatically labelled non-combatants. Guerrillas could die in the streets if conditions permitted, but non-combatants specifically required the spectacle of absence.

An accurate portrayal of this method comes from a discussion of human rights abuses in

58 Ejercito Argentino, Operaciones contra la subversión urbana, [Reservado] (0293), 1969, 12, http://www.ruinasdigitales.com/revistas/dictadura/Dictadura%20-%20Manual%20Operaciones%20Urbanas.pdf.

59 American Embassy in Buenos Aires, To: U.S. SecState, “Amnesty International Report on Argentina,” (J122) [UNCLASSIFIED], May 5, 1977, 1, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Amnesty+International+Report+on+Argentina&beginDate=197 50301&endDate=19821230&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

60 Ejercito Argentino, Operaciones contra la subversión urbana, 11.

Argentina by officials at the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires and the Israeli embassy. The report claims that the Argentine security and military forces learned from the Pinochet regime’s employment and recognition of their own violent spectacles during its initial years in power and influenced the Argentine junta to choose a different route. Israeli officials argued that in the

Argentine method, “la basural,” the Argentine junta, “gave the green light to security forces to attack internal security problem with any methods considered appropriate, but always keeping

GOA in position of what amounts to ‘plausible denial’ of responsibility.”61 Therefore, if the spectacle of violence occurred, the Argentine junta could deny ordering something which would hurt its legitimacy at home and abroad. The Israelis did not believe the Argentine junta’s claims that rogue elements perpetrated public displays of violence. In 1976, President Videla promised that only legal and legitimate forces would have a monopoly on violence against subversion and terrorism.62 In fact, the Israelis argue, “At point where destruction of internal opposition no longer outweighed increasing domestic and international criticism, GOA would finally find itself able to bring abuses of ‘unauthorized security elements’ and ‘rightist extremists’ under control.”63 By 1976, the Israelis were no strangers to issues concerning violent spectacles and legitimacy, which permitted an honest and accurate portrayal of the tactics employed by the

Argentine junta.

61 American Embassy in Buenos Aires, To: U.S. SecState, “Israeli View Human Rights and Anti-Semitism in Argentina,” (DD020) [UNCLASSIFIED], June 23, 1976, 1-2, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Israeli+View+Human+Rights+and+Anti- +Semitism+in+Argentina&beginDate=19730101&endDate=19801230&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate= &caseNumber=. La Basural translates to “garbage disposal.”

62 Ibid., “Videla Reiterates Moderate Line on Political, Economic and Internal Security Policies,” (V038) [UNCLASSIFIED], June 30, 1976, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Videla+Reiterates+Moderate+Line+on+Political%2C+Economi c+and+Internal+Security+Policies&beginDate=19730101&endDate=19801230&publishedBeginDate=&publishedE ndDate=&caseNumber=.

63 Ibid., “Israeli View Human Rights and Anti-Semitism in Argentina,” 2.

I argue the occasional use of the spectacle of violence occurred under the assumption that the majority of operations operated through the tactic of the spectacle of absence. The spectacle of absence brought about the creation of a word for those individuals detained by the regime and often never seen again. The term to describe these individuals is desaparecido or disappeared. In

1980, U.S. government officials in Buenos Aires both identified this term in relation to a military technique and defined the term in relation to its status as both a verb and a noun. The embassy in

Buenos Aires claims, “Disappearance is a euphemism for the unacknowledged detention of an individual by security forces. Based on everything we know, we believe that detainees are usually tortured as part of interrogation and eventually executed without any semblance of due process.”64 A person can be disappeared and the tactic is to disappear them. Disappearances remained clandestine, but certain U.S. officials clearly knew of the tactic and continued attempts to support the Argentine regime. As the Israelis pointed out, establishment of deniability towards those who would oppose the junta represented the point of the tactic. Historian Martin Edwin

Andersen argues that this technique adapted from Adolf Hitler’s 1941 Nacht und Nebel campaign to ‘disappear’ enemies of the Reich without a trace.65 Given the fascist nacionalista origins of many of the junta’s hardliners, taking a page out of Hitler’s playbook does not seem strange at all. The method represents the same means to an end. Take individuals quickly and quietly to an unknown fate so that the outside world and anyone on the list to detain remain unaware of the regime’s intentions until the completion of the operation.

64 Ibid., “The Tactic of Disappearance,” (P123) [UNCLASSIFIED], September 25, 1980, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=The+Tactic+of+Disappearance&beginDate=19730101&endDat e=19801230&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

65 Martin Edwin Anderson, Dossier Secreto: Argentina’s Desaparecidos and the Myth of the “Dirty War”, (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1993), 205.

CONADEP’s Nunca Más Report argues that approximately 8,960 disappeared had not reappeared by the publication of the report and that over sixty percent of those people were abducted from home with another twenty five percent off the street.66 The numbers reflect the clandestine nature of the operation as over half of the disappeared vanished from society from the supposed security of their own home. The quarter of those abducted on the street served as communication to bystanders that the junta continued its battle against subversion. A New York

Bar Association report on the law in Argentina notes that the desaparecidos were often detained by “armed people in plain civilian clothes,” driving “unmarked automobiles” and they “often identify themselves as security officers.”67 Military and security officers wore plain clothes to disguise themselves on the urban battlefield, but identified themselves as security agents to maintain their authority to arrest the individual granting legitimacy to the act of disappearing someone. However, this technique risked the chance to cause a mass uprising and further damage the international integrity of Argentina if none of the disappeared reappeared. The Argentine junta’s tactical employment of the spectacle of absence had its own insurance policy. Reports of reappearances emerged on several occasions. One such instance occurred during November of

1978. Disappeared prisoners reappeared in the judicial system through transfers to normal prison facilities from clandestine camps and holding centers. Reappeared prisoners appeared beaten and hungry, but they were alive and officially on record.68 Hope represented one of the greatest

66 “Abduction,” in Nunca Más: Report of Conadep, 1984, http://web.archive.org/web/20030729224109/http://www.nuncamas.org/english/library/nevagain/nevagain_005.htm.

67 Association of the Bar of the City of New York, “Report of the Mission of Lawyers Argentina: April 1-7, 1979,” (Yo22e), May 22, 1979, Through the U.S. State Department, 27, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Report+of+the+Mission+of+Lawyers+Argentina%3A+April+1 -7%2C+1979&beginDate=19740101&endDate=19811230&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&case Number=.

68 American Embassy in Buenos Aires, To: U.S. SecState, “‘Reappearances Reported,” (M260) [UNCLASSIFIED], November 16, 1978,

weapons in the arsenal of the Argentine junta’s spectacle of absence policy. Reappearances provided the same, albeit stronger, hope as disappearances. The hope that a disappeared friend or loved one lived and the reappearance of a few individuals fostered that illusion. This tactic did not need to work on everyone, just enough to maintain authority over the general population.

Part of the tactical shift in the Dirty War was a direct result of the international concern towards activities under the junta. As the U.S. monitored the human rights situation in Argentina, its officials noticed an interesting trend in recent Argentine history. U.S. embassy officials in

Buenos Aires noted that the opposing revolutionary forces in Argentina had used the spectacle of violence and killed opponents publicly for years before the 1976 coup. The report continues to argue that the broad international concern for human rights in Argentina surged after the military occupied the state space in 1976.69 The rise of the junta did not represent the beginning of political violence in Argentina and this was not the first coup in Argentina. Legitimacy on the internal and international levels in relation to human rights concerns would provide an easy answer as to why the Argentine junta transformed the standard spectacle of violence into the spectacle of absence. However, another side of the coin exists and it lies on the other side of the

Andes Mountains.

F. The Lone Star of the South and the Sun of May

The Dirty War was obviously not an isolated incident and the Argentine junta’s closest ideological and chronological ‘relative’ came in the form of the creator of Operation Condor,

http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Reappearances+Reported&beginDate=19730101&endDate=19 801230&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

69 Ibid., “Human Rights Situation in Argentina,” (I116) [UNCLASSIFIED], August 27, 1976, 3, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Human+Rights+Situation+in+Argentina&beginDate=19730101 &endDate=19761230&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

Pinochet’s Chile. I argue that a comparative analysis of the violence performed in Argentina and

Chile yields the learning curve on which the Argentine junta operated. Augusto Pinochet’s regime preceded Argentina by nearly three years. During this span, the Argentinian military leaders observed the Chilean tactics of repression and authority. Political violence in Argentina occurred regularly before the coup, but the violence portrayed by the Chilean regime provided a paradigm shift within the reality of the Argentina during the twentieth century. The Argentines sought to avoid the political isolation faced by the Chilean junta after its brutal campaign of violence against opposition following the September 11, 1973 coup d’état. 70

The Chilean junta performed the spectacle of violence in very public forums during their initial years. Immediately following the coup, the U.S. Embassy in Santiago reported to the CIA that the Chilean military and police rounded up, “1) Popular Unity (U.P.) politicians; 2)

Extremists and Terrorists; 3) Pro-U.P. students; 4) Snipers; and 5) Suspects.”71 The document also argues that the Chilean armed forces performed summary exectutions legitimized, at least to the military, through a state of siege and martial law. The term ‘suspects’ is vague and implies that the regime detained and/or killed numerous individuals that posed no threat to the regime.

Pinochet’s Chile remained open towards its U.S. allies with respect to sharing information about the brutal campaign against communism and subversion. During a conversation with an unknown CIA affiliate, Chile’s Gustavo Leigh, Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force, proclaimed that the junta sought to “stamp out all vestiges of communism in Chile for good,” and that the Chilean military killed 300 students at the Technical University, “when they refused

70 Ibid.

71 American Embassy in Santiago, To: CIA, “Junta Follow-Up Activities to the Coup,” (504), September 15, 1976, 2, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=execution&beginDate=19730101&endDate=19751230&publis hedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

to surrender.”72 Leigh also revealed frustration and the junta’s willingness to perform violent public spectacles when he explained the junta, “is considering killing 50 leftists for every sniper who is still operating after about: 15 days.”73 In opposition to the tactics of the Argentine junta,

Pinochet’s regime employed a brute force assault against the supposed communist infiltration of its country. The Chileans used Allende’s political affiliations and practices to legitimize the spectacle of violence to the U.S. in the context of the Cold War.

Pinochet’s regime also justified violence through the threat of terrorist organizations.

However, Chilean leftist terrorism primarily existed in the form of the Movimiento de Izquierda

Revolucionaria (MIR).74 In 1974, a Chilean official reported to U.S. embassy personnel that the

MIR numbered around 4,500 with 2,000 in Santiago alone.75 The validity of the number of terrorists is beside the point because this source displays Pinochet’s government using threats posed by leftist/Marxists to legitimize its public performances of violence to the U.S. and its powerful network of capitalist allies. Despite U.S. support in the fight against communism, it is doubtful that this argument possessed much value in the minds of U.S. officials because the embassy in Santiago believed the MIR lacked offensive capabilities by December of 1974.76

72 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), To: Files, “Comments on Coup and Plans of Military Government,” [SECRET], September 21, 1973, 4, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=execution&beginDate=19730101&endDate=19751230&publis hedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

73 Ibid.

74 American Embassy in Santiago, To: U.S. SecState, “MIR on the Run,” [UNCLASSIFIED], December 4, 1974, 1, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=GOC+Intelligence+Officer+Comments+on+Campaign+Against +MIR&beginDate=19730901&endDate=19811230&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

75 Ibid., “GOC Intelligence Officer Comments on Campaign Against MIR,” [UNCLASSIFIED], December 30, 1974, ibid. link.

76 Ibid., “MIR on the Run,” 2.

Unlike Argentina, Chile lacked the history of extremist violence outside of the state space and, thus, lacked this verbal tactic for international legitimacy on the basis of Cold War comradery.

The implementation of Operation Condor, in 1975, enhanced the gradual transition of

Chile’s employment of the spectacle of absence. As shown above, Operation Condor existed within clandestine circles which employed the spectacle of absence in cases other than Phase 3 assassinations outside of the member countries. Chile remained the only country to perpetrate high-profile Phase 3 operations and did so on three separate occasions. The first Chilean operation killed former Army Commander, General Carlos Prats and his wife in Buenos Aires on

September 30, 1974. The official report claimed a powerful bomb destroyed Prats’s Fiat.77

Despite the operation occurring before 1975, John Dinges and J. Patrice McSherry argue that it embodied Operation Condor. The second Phase 3 operation was the aforementioned failed attempt to kill a former Chilean Vice President, Bernardo Leighton, in Rome on October 5, 1975.

The third, most high profile, operation killed former Chilean minister and diplomat, Orlando

Letelier, with a car bomb in Washington D.C. on September 21, 1976. After a detailed investigation by the U.S. government, this action enraged Chile’s strongest ally and caused

Pinochet to dismiss DINA and reshape the intelligence branch into the Central Nacional de

Informaciones (CNI).78 The majority of public performances of violence in the Condor group belong to Chile while Argentina remained outside of the international spotlight in relation to this

77 American Embassy in Buenos Aires, To: DIA, “Chilean Gen Carlos Prats Gonzalez Assassinated,” [UNCLASSIFIED], September 29, 1974, 2, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Chilean+Gen+Carlos+Prats+Gonzalez+Assassinated&beginDat e=19740901&endDate=19781230&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

78 Unknown, To: Files, “Oral Statement,” [UNCLASSIFIED], December 9, 1976, 4, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Oral+Statement&beginDate=19740901&endDate=19781230& publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=. Manuel Contreras lost his command of DINA and the primary player in all three assassinations, Michael Townley, was extradited to the U.S.

organization. Argentina maintained its descision to practice the spectacle of absence in hindsight of the internal and external reaction to Pinochet’s policies in both Chile and Operation Condor.

II – Inside the Argentine Inferno: Violent Spectacles as Communication

Performances of violence served as mediums of communication for both belligerent coalitions and non-combatants during the Dirty War and Operation Condor. At times, this mode of communication manifested as a dialogue between the Argentine military and guerrilla forces, but it also represented a monologue in cases between the security forces and non-violent, unaffiliated citizens. The predominant message associated with spectacles of violence and absence conveyed power relations between dominator and dominated. This chapter analyzes whose violent performances communicated with whom and how both sides understood the various meanings applied to this non-verbal transmission of ideologies. Meanings ascribed to violent spectacles by those who witnessed the Dirty War remain integral to understanding this period of violence because the initial meaning ascribed to the actions does not often translate to the recipient as intended. Once a conveyor transmits a message, all control over the meaning of violent non-verbal communication dissipates and the subjectivities of the recipients dictate the meanings.

I analyze the statements on violence of Dirty War participants as sources to analyze four key groups within the Argentine inferno of Cold War violence. First, the Argentine military generated the most violent performances and conveyed the most messages, as well as received violence from its guerrilla enemies. Second, the perceptions of non-combatants remain important because of their inability or unwillingness to communicate violently and their primary role as the receivers of the military’s aforementioned monologues. Third, the unique position of exiles in the Dirty War, as both communicators and recipients of violent spectacles from within and outside of Argentina, provide meanings ascribed to the violence performed through both the

Dirty War and Operation Condor. Finally, the leftist guerrillas embodied the opposing side of the

dialogue of violence with the military and very vocally defined what violent spectacles meant for them in relation to both transmitting their own communiques of violence and receptions of military performances. Through these four categories and the myriad of perspectives I examine the broader meanings of violence in the Dirty War and Operation Condor.

A. The Gang

While the initial scholars of political violence in Dirty War Argentina lacked military perspectives of their own violent performances, modern scholars have access to more military sources as the shroud of silence within military ranks lessens and more soldiers tell their side of the conflict. New access to published interviews allows me to analyze how the military understood the meanings they conveyed through their own actions, as well as how they interpreted oppositional violence. I include published interviews conducted by Anthropologist

Patricia Marchak and Argentine Journalist, and former Montonero, Horatio Verbitsky with five

Argentine Army personnel and one from the Navy. These unique sources display a broad and uneven understanding of violence as communication.

I do not agree with Verbitsky’s subjective and continuous use of the term gang in reference to the Argentine Navy during his interview with Lieutenant Commander Adolfo

Francisco Scilingo. He employs this term to discredit and insult the armed forces rather than enhance understandings of the Argentine military. I do not ascribe values to the subjects of this work and I utilize the term in relation to Scilingo’s description of how naval units rotated at the

Escuela Superior de Mecánica de la Armada (ESMA) in a fashion which made a majority of the

Navy complicit in human rights violations. In a similar manner to a gang creating unity through all its members committing a similar crime, the Argentine Navy rotated personnel to participate

in Flights, which featured Argentine Naval officers throwing the naked unconscious prisoners from airplanes into the South Atlantic.1 Scilingo argues that the rotation created, “a kind of communion.”2 This communion provides a gang mentality of total complicity and exclusivity in the spectacles of absence, as well as military unification against an unconventional enemy and the threat of future prosecution. Thus, the limited sources provided by military personnel remain suitable to examine a military voice in the Dirty War because of ‘communions’ employed to keep the armed forces united against threats of prosecution.

A military perspective on the spectacle of absence permits an analysis of both the tactic and violence as a means of communication. First, Army Colonel Lorenzo [no first name given] remembers the spectacle of absence beginning during the reign Isabel Perón in 1975.3 From this military perspective, the Argentine armed forces standardized the spectacle of absence, but did not order its initial emergence as a government sponsored method. On the subject of disappearances, Scilingo believes, “What happened to the prisoners was not made known, in order to withhold information from the enemy and create uncertainty.”4 Tactically, the guerrillas knew of their comrades’ absence, but remained unaware of their physical condition. The act of disappearance replaced the spectacle of violence for the military’s side of violent communication and conveyed the message that, dead or alive, the guerrillas would cease to exist in Argentina.

The threat of death transformed into the threat of non-existence or absence from life, record, and

1 “Prisoners Thrown into the Sea,” in Nunca Más: Report of Conadep, 1984, http://web.archive.org/web/20030820145601/http://www.nuncamas.org/english/library/nevagain/nevagain_161.htm.

2 Horatio Verbitsky, The Flight: Confessions of an Argentine Dirty Warrior, (New York: New Press, 1996), 23-4.

3 Patricia Marchak, “The Military Defense,” in God’s Assassins: State Terrorism in Argentina in the 1970s, idem, (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999), 268. This citation and all other citations from this work come from interviews between the author and former Dirty War military officers published within.

4 Verbitsky, The Flight, 20.

society. The evolution of violent performances also transformed the consequences of violence. In the final proclamation of the Argentine junta, the commanders claimed, “The strictest secrecy had to be imposed concerning the information covering military actions, their achievements, operations in development, and discoveries made.”5 Therefore, the junta maintained the tactical application of the spectacle of absence without divulging too much information about the practice of this performance.

The spectacle of absence also possessed a practical side of political insurance for the

Argentine junta as it hid the violence performed on the bodies of the victims of torture and murder. Each action of repression or warfare remained critically linked to corresponding actions.

Argentine Major Adolfo Villegas (Retired) argues that disappearances served a straightforward purpose in relation to abduction and torture. He claims, “This illegal methodology, even apart from the moral and legal problems, has the defect that when you use criminal procedures, normally you have to commit other crimes to cover up the first one.”6 In Villegas’s opinion, disappearances occurred in order to hide killings performed to cover up the practices of kidnapping and torturing both belligerents and non-combatants. Violent performances embody both communication and silencing functions. Dual functionality permits a show of force to the enemy through the absence of subversives/comrades and impunity through absence of evidence.

The military received violent messages from the guerrillas in the form of the spectacle of violence. Guerrilla forces fundamentally employed terrorist tactics because they possessed small forces against a large, united military force and desired to incite a level of fear in which their

5 “Documento Final de la Junta Militar Sobre la Guerra Contra la Subversión y el Terrorismo,” (AJ001), April 28, 1983, 3, http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB85/830428%200000B044.pdf.

6 Patricia Marchak, “Other Military Perspectives,” in God’s Assassins: State Terrorism in Argentina in the 1970s, idem, 295.

opponents surrendered. A military view of the guerrillas’ tactics comes from General Falcón [no first name given]. Falcón remembers, “Their methodology was very simple. They planted bombs and killed people. They kidnapped people, they robbed banks. Besides, they announced when they had done something.”7 He provides what at first appears as a simplified military perspective on the guerrillas and their tactics, but the guerrillas’ own claims of responsibility helped form

Argentine military views of their enemy. Major Villegas ties this perception into the militaries’ tactics in the Dirty War. He believes the guerrillas dictated the terms which guided the violence of the Dirty War and that if the Argentine junta had not conformed to the guerrillas’ methodology; the junta would have remained at a disadvantage.8 Legitimizations aside, the guerrillas’ descision to initiate urban combat forced the military to conduct some form unconventional warfare or surrender because the guerrillas did not dress in uniforms and confront the military head on. Scilingo argues, during the Dirty War, he and his comrades did not question the subversive status of their victims. He remembers, “The way we had internalized it, within the situation we were living through in this country, it would be a total lie if I told you that I wouldn’t do it again under the same conditions.”9 The violence performed between the belligerents hardened the competitors for national supremacy to the point where military members at the operational level mentally replaced human beings with subversives. The actions of the guerrillas legitimized military activities in the minds of many of its personnel.

Performances of violence as communication, just as the spectacle of absence, have limits on what constitutes as a transmission of a message with a meaning. On a grand scale, torture conveys no meaning to the broader enemy unless the recipient remains alive to tell his or her

7 Marchak, “The Military Defense,” in ibid., 286.

8 Marchak, “Other Military Perspectives,” in ibid., 295.

9 Verbitsky, The Flight, 23.

story. Communication occurs between the perpetrator and the tortured individual, but if the result is death then the message cannot disseminate. Not all torture victims perished at the hands of the military and several victims found their way into the CONADEP report, but the military perspective of torture warrants analysis at this juncture. Colonel Lorenzo views torture as a

“desperate method” to identify an enemy hidden amongst the general population.10 Lorenzo’s perspective seems cold, but it represents a strictly tactical viewpoint from an individual who remembers the Dirty War as an actual war rather than government repression of minority ideologies. In an interview with Argentine journalist Andrew Graham-Yooll, an army officer named Lucho remembers that all parties understood that torture was a game between opposing sides based on time. He argues that the torturer needs to extract a confession quickly because the work is unpleasant for most and to never look in the eyes of the subject, “even when you put the prods in the mouth.”11 For Lucho, torture remained a necessary, albeit psychologically difficult for the less ideologically extreme soldiers, part of the job to defeat subversion and rescue

Argentina from communist threats. The communication from torture rebounds on the performer.

When asked if the military tortured and killed innocent people, Lorenzo argues that there remains no way to determine the innocence of prisoners because guerrilla groups operated in independent cells and employed war names. He blames the guerrillas for sending individuals to war and views torture as an unfortunate, but necessary tactic to destroy a faceless enemy.12

While some soldiers who employed torture displayed regret in their contemporary lives, the military’s perception reflected a life at war. Memories of torture for the victims play a more

10 Patricia Marchak, “The Military Defense,” in ibid., 273.

11 Andrew Graham-Yooll, A State of Fear: Memories of Argentina’s Nightmare, (London: Eland Publishing Limited, 2009), 143.

12 Patricia Marchak, “The Military Defense,” 274.

important role for understanding performances of violence as communication in the following section of the chapter.

The Argentine junta set the tone for violent performances from the inception of the regime and loyalty to command figures remains prevalent throughout the interviews with military officers. In the first day of military rule, President Videla, Admiral Emilio Massera, and

General Ramón Agosti collectively stated, “We will continue fighting, without truce, the subversive delinquency, open or clandestine…”13 The phrase ‘without truce’ implies that the

Dirty War possessed an end game of either complete victory or defeat. In other words, one of the two parties would cease to exist at the end of the conflict. In this context of total war, Scilingo does not know why the military cannot tell what happened during the Dirty War. He believes,

“The whole navy was involved in the fight against the subversives… Because if it was an institutional fight against subversion, I don’t know what there is to hide.”14 Scilingo viewed the

Dirty War as a war and bases his observation off of the commands and messages delivered through his superiors. He remembers, “You know, I had blind faith in Admiral… in then-admiral

Massera. It was more than that, I had total and absolute admiration for Admiral Massera.”15 The command structure of the military and the prestige of its officers permitted the lower ranks to follow their commanders into battle against enemies of Argentina.

Argentine military perceptions of communism as a threat remained aligned with capitalist and pro-U.S. Cold War ideologies of war against communism and the Western anti-communist

13 Jorge Raphael Videla (General), Emilio Eduardo Massera (Admiral), and Orlando Ramón Agosti (General), “Proclama del 24 de Marzo de 1976,” March 24, 1976, http://www.elhistoriador.com.ar/documentos/dictadura/proclama_del_24_de_marzo_de_1976.php.

14 Verbitsky, The Flight, 27.

15 Ibid., 62.

fear exacerbated by the 1959 Cuban Revolution. The soldier ideology of the military embodying the defense of the country from communism engulfs the internal legitimizations for the use of the spectacle of absence. Violent performances also convey meaning to those who perform them.

Colonel Lorenzo remembers the guerrillas not only as threats to the country, but also the very fabric of the Argentine state and society.16 From a combative view of Marxism, the ideology threatened Argentina and its military because revolution involved overthrowing the government and global communism dissolves countries into one cohesive dictatorship of the proletariat.

Major Villegas contests that the war against subversion and communism differed from normal war protocols. He argues, “In the same air force that used this illegal methodology against subversion, when the same people were fighting in 1982 in the Malvinas War, they respected all the laws and all the international treaties.”17 From a military perspective, the unconventional war against subversion warranted the spectacle of absence, but the Malvinas/Falklands War generated the spectacle of violence. The conventional battle for the British controlled islands did not threaten the entirety of Argentina; only its pride.

I analyze two recipients of military anger and resentment in the interviews I selected for this section. The two groups are the subversives, during the Dirty War, and then the officers who delegated orders. Military officers’ present anger towards the guerrillas who they believe put them in the position to have to employ violence against their own people. Colonel Lorenzo remembers the majority of guerrillas and subversives as petulant children who act like soldiers with no concept of the realities of the war they participate in. He believes the guerrillas expected to win the war without retaliation from the armed forces because they believed the human rights

16 Patricia Marchak, “The Military Defense,” 276-7.

17 Ibid., “Other Military Perspectives,” 295.

organizations favored their cause. He argues, “It is a cheating game: I kill you, but when you react and hit me, I appeal to human rights and civilian laws. In this way it is difficult to lose.”18

The majority of professionals within the military undoubtedly resented the youthful uprisings within the guerrilla movements and interpreted each act of the spectacle of violence as a serious threat or the actions of an ignorant child. Generational aspects of violence receive attention from

Lorenzo, but remains absent from the other interviews. The reason for the absence of military memories of the age of the subversives reflects paternalism, seen in a perception of the military as the guardians of the nation, displayed by the armed forces and the inability to view youth as a serious threat to a modern army.

Military anger directed at the subversives flowed into anger towards their superiors who transformed the meanings of military violence after the fall of the Argentine junta and the trials for the crimes against humanity began. Orders from high-ranking officials changed into “errors” committed by overzealous soldiers protecting the country from subversive threats because of those same officials’ needs to protect themselves from prosecution during the period of re- democratization.19 Scilingo brings this betrayal to life when he describes his superiors’ acceptance of pardons, which accept the guilty verdicts and rendered their orders illegal. From this perspective, Scilingo believed he acted as a criminal and his naval superiors made him that way through his trained respect for the chain of command.20 The junta leaders constantly attributed acts of violence to excesses committed by underlings in the fog of war (featured in the following chapter). The design of spectacles of absence provides plausible deniability to those in

18 Ibid., “The Military Defense,” 282.

19 “Documento Final de la Junta Militar Sobre la Guerra Contra la Subversión y el Terrorismo,” (AJ001), April 28, 1983, 8, http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB85/830428%200000B044.pdf.

20 Verbitsky, The Flight, 28-9.

control of the violence and the placement of responsibility for abuses on the lower ranks embodies that philosophy. Plausible deniability permitted the upper echelons of the military to transform the meanings of violence within the military by denouncing orders they made which delegitimized the actions of individual soldiers who served at their discretion.

Finally, Argentine military personnel generated meanings for their own violent performances through the histories of Europe, the United States, and the Cold War. Colonel

Lorenzo believes the U.S. and Russia fomented the conflict in the region and abandoned both sides after the Cold War. He feels betrayed by the NATO bloc because the Argentines helped them fight communism and those same countries remain their staunchest critics.21 He remembers the civilian casualties of World War II from carpet bombing cities to the nuclear attacks on

Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as how the French educated the Argentine military based on their colonial counterrevolutionary wars in Algeria and Indochina.22 This historical context provides the basis for how numerous soldiers and police officials during the Argentine junta created meanings for their performances of violence. Every action did not need legitimization if the Dirty War in general remained legitimate in the minds of the armed forces.

The ideological context of the Cold War, Argentine politics after Peronism, the prestige of the military commanders, and the violence performed by guerrillas shaped the meanings of the spectacle of absence for the Argentine armed forces. Meanings changed over time, but the military reality during the Dirty War invoked a warfare mentality seeking the complete annihilation of the guerrilla forces of subversion. Military performances of violent communication transmitted messages to their surviving enemies, but also conveyed meanings to

21 Patricia Marchak, “The Military Defense,” 278-9.

22 Ibid., 280-1.

the soldiers committing the acts. The understanding of their own violent acts permitted the

Argentine junta to continue human rights violations for over seven years in the name of saving

Argentina and possibly the world from communist subversion. However, the armed forces represented the primary conveyors of violence and the recipients from other sectors of Argentine society, namely civilians, formed meanings of their own which ultimately characterized the spectacles of violence and absence.

B. Caught in the Middle

The meanings for violence created by Argentines affiliated with neither the military nor the guerrillas garner importance because of these individuals’ status as recipients of violent communication and their importance to the complaints against human rights abuses. It remains impossible to determine the ‘innocence’ or non-combative status of the names on the lists of disappeared. I utilize the specific memories provided by two Argentine journalists, Andrew

Graham-Yooll and Jacobo Timmerman, and Peronist Youth Alicia Partnoy to analyze daily violence in Dirty War Argentina and inside the secret military prisons. Despite the views of the

Argentine junta, I do not consider Alicia Partnoy’s political activism as representative of enrollment in a guerrilla organization like the Montoneros or the ERP and, therefore, she embodies the memory of a non-combatant. Graham-Yooll’s Buenos Aires Herald and Jacobo

Timmerman’s La Opinión represent two Argentine newspapers which did not promote extremist views of the political left or right during the Dirty War and embody excellent sources for non- aligned viewpoints of the violent performances of the security forces and guerrillas.

Normalization of violence certainly influenced the meanings of violence during the Dirty

War. Amongst the sources I selected for this chapter, Graham-Yooll provides the most detailed

account of life outside of politics and prison through his account of the Peronist Reformation

(1973-1976) and the Dirty War. He remembers the Peronist period as a free-for-all between guerrilla factions, police forces, and union gangs. The spectacle of violence reigned supreme in this period and mutilated corpses appeared at random as Graham-Yooll claims, “In the boot of the car, or in what had once been a back seat, there always were one, maybe two, charred remnants of human bodies.”23 His position as an investigative journalist continuously ushered him to the locations of the evidence left behind from the spectacle of violence and its communication through visible body counts. The body counts remained so prevalent that, even before the Dirty War, Graham-Yooll and his colleagues referred to their meticulously kept death records for all sides as the “scorecard.”24 Perhaps this reflects the jaded view of journalists, who only report on violence, but it also suggests a normalization of witnessing political violence on a daily basis in Argentina prior to the 1976 coup.

Perceptions of violence in daily life shift with the rise of the military junta and its occupation of the state space to conduct total war on leftist subversion. Graham-Yooll recalls that body guards became regular sights alongside those who could afford them, gun battles from raids rang out in the city, and reports of disappearances flooded newsrooms every day.25

Argentinians occupied a world in which unmarked Ford Falcons patrolled the streets and caused non-combatants to question aspects of their lives. Graham-Yooll remembers one night, lying awake in bed, when squealing brakes caused him to stir because of the association of that sound with violent government forces coming to disappear some unlucky soul. His wife’s desire to

23 Andrew Graham-Yooll, A State of Fear: Memories of Argentina’s Nightmare, (London: Eland Publishing Limited, 2009), 41.

24 Ibid., 67.

25 Ibid., 80 and 99-101.

change the door to a glass door, despite security concerns, captured his imagination and he came to the conclusion that no door could keep him safe. He recalls, “I hoped that the house would not be too badly damaged when they [security or AAA forces] came.”26 This memory illustrates the deep-seated fear induced by the spectacle of absence and the conclusion that certain activities, such as journalism, generated a condition in which an individual would disappear at some point or another. The Peronist era produced fear, but the Dirty War multiplied levels of uncertainty and crippled resistance through the impunity provided by the power associated with the state space.

Daily fear and violent performances required the generation of meanings by the non- combatants to make sense of the Dirty War, as well as their exposed position to punishment from any belligerent group. From his apolitical perspective, Graham-Yooll understands the spectacles of violence and absence as an endless cycle of revenge for any number of political reasons. Prior to the military coup, in the era dominated by burnt corpses and crime scenes, he remembers,

“Soon the explanations were quietly abandoned and none were demanded.”27 The spectacle of violence during the Dirty War manifested through raids on ‘subversive’ safe houses and gun battles during car chases in the street. If the subversives fired on security forces then the spectacle of violence maintained the ability to receive legitimization. During September of 1976,

Graham-Yooll witnessed a violent car chase from the back seat of a taxi in Buenos Aires. He recalls the gun battle left all but one of the subversives dead and killed a security officer. The women who remained alive in the bullet-riddled car called out that she was pregnant to avoid summary execution, but a security officer walked up to the car and fired two bullets into her. The officer explained that killing her spared her torture and claimed she would die anyways. Graham-

26 Ibid., 99.

27 Ibid., 41.

Yooll explains, “His excuse for murder as a release from torture sounded so human, so reasonable, so immensely merciful.”28 His memory illustrates knowledge of the spectacle of absence and a preference to die quickly when no other option, but death, existed. Despite his objections to the overall violence, he presents the daily legitimizations and questions of apolitical citizens of Argentina.

Jacobo Timerman approaches the meanings of violent performances from a more politicized background and provides a far different perspective than Graham-Yooll because of his intimate knowledge of the political ideologies within the junta. Timerman’s memory illustrates an initial desire for the coup of 1976 to bring order back to Argentine politics, “when the country is being besieged by fascism of the Left and of the Right.”29 He employs the term fascism to represent extremist political ideologies which support violence against opponents through ignorance and intolerance. Timerman views the violent spectacles through a generalized perspective of Argentine socio-political behavior. He recalls, “Semantics is the method employed in Argentina to avoid seeing problems in their total dimensions.”30 The term desaparecido embodies this method because the population understood that people do not simply disappear. The tortures and horrors employed against subversion represented both the desire for a return to law and order and the fear of joining the absent members of society. Semantics generate meanings for the spectacle of absence through apathy or terror. Acceptance of the term desaparecido by many of the population, but by no means all, represents the power of the spectacle of absence as tool of domination.

28 Ibid., 104.

29 Jacobo Timerman, Without a Name, Cell Without a Number, (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981), 18.

30 Ibid., 23.

Timerman creates meaning for excessive violence and terror through a perception of the junta divided into two camps of weak moderates and overbearing hardliners (descendants of the nacionalistas). When security forces disappeared him, he believed the moderates sought to save him and alter his status to acknowledged prisoner. However, he also recalls the hardliners embodied, “the heart of Nazi operations in Argentina.”31 Timmerman’s Zionism encourages his memory to filter the meanings of violence through the history of Nazism and anti-Semitism in

Argentina, as well as the anti-Semitic tirades and special punishments forced upon him in clandestine prisons. He does not understand violent spectacles of the Dirty War as a war against

Jews, but he believes Jews provided special prisoners for the hardliners of the junta. Timerman’s memory does not lack historical record, as the U.S. government investigated the plight of Jews in the Dirty War.32 However, Timerman’s willingness to analyze meanings of violence pertains more to this work than the anti-Semitism he experienced.

Timerman displayed his desire to understand performances of violence when he encouraged the moderates to employ the court system against the leftist terrorists to understand their ideology and methods, as well as generate legitimacy for the rule of law under the military junta. He remembers supporting the death penalty for subversives if they received a public trial.

Through this logic, he believes for the public and military to understand the legitimizing methods applied by leftist terrorists, the military had to question and cross-examine subversives in a court

31 Ibid., 30.

32 American Embassy in Buenos Aires, To: U.S. SecState, “Violence Against Argentine Jews,” (I038) [UNCLASSIFIED], May 19, 1976, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Violence+Against+Argentine+Jews&beginDate=19760501&en dDate=19760531&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=. See also, U.S. State Department, To: American Embassy in Buenos Aires, “Anti-Semitic Acts in Argentina,” (L273) [UNCLASSIFIED], June 4, 1978, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Anti- Semitic+Acts+in+Argentina&beginDate=19780601&endDate=19780630&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDat e=&caseNumber=. See bibliography for more.

of law. He recalls, “Applying legal methods of repression eliminates one of the major elements exploited by subversion: the illegal nature of repression. As for the outside world, only legality can be acceptable to them.”33 From a political-minded perception, Timerman creates meaning for the spectacle of absence. The clandestine performance of violence means delegitimization for military actions and produces avenues for individuals within Argentina to legitimize the spectacle of violence. Therefore, Timerman understands the continuance of the spectacle of violence as a reaction against the spectacle of absence. He claims that the spectacle of absence did not hide violence from the population, like Hitler’s Nacht und Nebel policy, but produced fear and silence. He argues, “What there was, from the start, was the great silence, which appears in every civilized country that passively accepts the inevitability of violence, and then the fear that suddenly befalls it. That silence which can transform any nation into an accomplice.”34 As I proposed in the introduction, the spectacle of absence hides the spectacle of violence within private spaces, but transforms the public face of violence into the disappearances.

Disappearances generate silence from popular opposition and transforms society into an accomplice of violence in the mind of Timerman. Thus, the spectacle of absence transforms violence, meanings of violence, and society as a whole.

Violent performances of the Argentine security forces transported the spectacle of violence from the public sphere into the highly private spaces of clandestine prisons throughout the country. The meanings of violence received by prisoners of these institutions remained mute for most, but emanated outward from a select few survivors permitted to both live and leave by their military captors. Jacobo Timerman represents one of the voices able to emerge from the

33 Timerman, Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number, 48.

34 Ibid., 51.

ranks of the disappeared and convey the meanings of the violence brought upon him within the secluded space of the prisons. Timerman remembers remaining blindfolded and secluded in silence for the majority of his stay, leading him to identify himself and any prisoner as the “blind architect.”35 The blind architect must constantly construct meanings for every insult, beating, and mental state. Torture represents the spectacle of violence within the clandestine structures, but the spectacle of absence penetrates the secluded walls. The absence continues to embody the absence of other people, but also the outside world. The disappeared remained a prisoner of the mind who resisted and welcomed both madness and thoughts of suicide. Guards and interrogation specialists do not have to stick prisoners with an electric prod or simulate drowning by dunking the prisoner in a vat of water to torture them. Leaving someone alone, devoid of human interaction and external stimuli, in great stages of discomfort performs the same duties as the hands of the torturer. Timerman remembers, “For it is here that you must survive, not in the outside world. And the chief enemy is not the electric shocks, but penetration from the outside world, with all its memories.”36 Violence transforms, delivering limited, but significant, external stimuli to provoke memories within those who had been deprived these everyday comforts and needed to avoid these realities to survive in their new world of captivity and the silence broken only by the screams of the tortured or the insults of the guards.

Alicia Partnoy represents another ‘blind architect’ with far less political acumen than either Timerman or Graham-Yooll when she disappeared in 1977 to the ‘Little School’ in Bahia

Blanca. Her account of her disappearance transmits from the past through the medium of poetry which displays her constant construction of meaning for the violence visited upon her friends and

35 Ibid., 85.

36 Ibid.

herself within the space of the prison. Torture remained part of Partnoy’s daily life, but denial of her identity and presenting death as inevitable constituted altered forms of violence. The guards began to call her Death and she remembers, “Maybe that is why every day, when I wake up, I say to myself that I, Alicia Partnoy, am still alive.”37 A tooth in a matchbox remained her only inedible possession to occupy her mind and she constantly feared the guard would deem it dangerous and take it from her.38 Within clandestine spaces, the spectacle of absence disappeared names, possessions, and any securities which the mind might reach for in order to spare the mental self from the bodies brutal reality. Thus, a tooth could transform into a subversive object which could stall the breaking point of the prisoner. However, violence cannot take intangible possessions of the mind without first breaking the will of the disappeared. Partnoy recalls the poem she told herself during torture sessions when she struggled with her sanity. She remembers,

“I’m not an animal… Don’t make me believe I’m an animal. But that’s not my scream; that’s an animal’s scream. Leave my body in peace… I’m a froggy so my child can play with me… Ribbit rib-bit little girl on the roof… Nobody, nobody…”39 Her method of transporting her mind away from the torture displays her knowledge that the meaning of the violence performed on her, with no information to give her tormentors, sought to destroy her humanity. Torture serves the purpose of both gaining information and ‘reprogramming’ a subversive mind to render the subject harmless to the security forces if released.

A vast majority of the Argentine population never killed, harmed, or tortured anyone during the Peronist Revival or the junta’s Dirty War. The fate of those caught between the

37 Alicia Partnoy, The Little School: Tales of Disappearance and Survival, (San Francisco: Midnight Editions, 1998), 43.

38 Ibid., 90.

39 Ibid., 94.

violent performances of security forces and guerrilla cells, as well as the meanings they ascribed to fear and violence, remains integral to the history of the Dirty War. They occupied a unique position in which they only received and never conveyed violence as communication. Whether they identified as conscientious objectors or passive to political or ideological violence, violent actions taken against these individuals, either in public or in the clandestine prisons, sparked the outrage of the Argentina’s allies and human rights groups around the world.

C. Enter the Exile

Equally unique, but representative of a much smaller portion of the population, exiles occupy a space in the Dirty War both as belligerents and non-combatants. Given this position on both sides of violent performance, their constructions of meanings for violence provide excellent grounds for analysis of the spectacles of violence and absence. Many exiles came from surrounding countries to escape from the violence and political turmoil of military coups only to end up as suspects of interest for the Argentine junta and Operation Condor. For this section, I analyze two sources written by two foreign nationals living in exile in Argentina during and after the Dirty War. First, former Uruguayan politician Wilson Ferreira Aldunate fled Argentina fearing his death at the hands of Condor teams which had already killed two fellow Uruguayan politicians in Argentina. Second, Chilean exile Carmen Aguirre suffered extreme terror during her stay in post-junta Argentina because of the memories of the Dirty War and Operation

Condor. Aguirre’s story goes beyond the period analyzed in this thesis, but her experience displays the mental state of many politicized exiles operating within Argentina during the period prior to her own.40

40 Aguirre does not directly state the date which she entered Argentina, but context clues suggest 1986.

Wilson Ferreira Aldunate provides his construction of violence and repression through his 1976 letter sent to President Videla before entering the embassy of a democratic country to seek political asylum.41 Ferreira claims that he and his comrades fled political violence in

Uruguay to seek refuge in Argentina and argues, “Since we placed our trust in the nation itself, it mattered little to us then or afterwards what government or political party was in power in your country.”42 He employs specific vocabulary to construct his intentions within Argentina, identify as an outsider at the mercy of the Argentine government, and promote the junta’s version of nationalism. He minimizes the intentions of the Uruguayan exiles and suggests their issue remained with the Uruguayan government, not Argentina, when he selects the term ‘your’ as the signifier of who controls Argentina and addresses the lack of interest in who governs. Having fled Uruguay in 1973, Ferreira could not have fully understood the Condor relationship between

Argentina and Uruguay. Vulnerability of exiles and a support of Argentine nationalism appeared from trusting the Argentine nation as a monolithic structure and imagined community, rather than any government occupying its state space.

Ferreira’s letter displays his construction of the responsible party behind the arrests of his colleagues. He argues that several Ford Falcons, similar to those driven by Argentine police, delivered a large contingent of non-uniformed, heavily armed men to the house of Hector

Gutierrez Ruiz. The arrest occurred very vocally and publically over the course of an hour and

41 American Embassy in Buenos Aires, To: U.S. SecState, “Ferreira Leaves Argentina for Paris,” (V010) [UNCLASSIFIED], June 1, 1976, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=ferreira+enters+austrian+embassy&beginDate=19730101&end Date=19811231&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=. Ferreira entered the Austrian embassy at the request of the Austrian ambassador to seek passage to Paris.

42 Ferreira Aldunate, Wilson, To: Don Jorge Raphael Videla, “Within a Few Hours, I Will Take Refuge in the Embassy of a Democratic Country,” (CU004) [UNCLASSIFIED], August 23, 1976, 1, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Within+a+Few+Hours%2C+I+Will+Take%09Refuge+in+the+ Embassy+of+a+Democratic+Country&beginDate=19760101&endDate=19780630&publishedBeginDate=&publish edEndDate=&caseNumber=. The U.S. embassy translated a copy of Ferreira’s letter.

Ferreira points out to Videla that no police in the area arrived at the scene, despite the spectacle presented to the neighborhood and the several international embassies within a short distance of the home.43 This discussion of the arrest represents Ferreira’s not so subtle way of informing

Videla that he believes the Argentine junta played a role in or controlled this operation. He implies that if the plain-clothes gang had not been official Argentine personnel or at least sanctioned by the junta, then some Argentine officials in uniform would have arrived on scene.

Ferreira constructed this aggressive action as a threat against his and his family’s safety because of the complicity displayed by the Argentine security forces. A similar situation occurred in the arrest of Ferreira’s other colleague, Zelmar Michelini, except Michelini’s abduction occurred directly in front of a military guard station and down the street from the U.S. embassy. At this point, Ferreira directly challenges Argentine officials’ claims that Uruguayan forces conducted these operations. He argues that the families of the abducted “noted the absence in the speech of the abductors of expressions and linguistic idiosyncrasies of Spanish spoken in Uruguay.”44

These contradictions deeply influence the ways in which Ferreira understands the violence against exiles and the threats toward him. He does not dismiss Uruguayan involvement with planning of or requesting the arrests, but he clearly implicates the Argentine junta in running the operations and places the blame on President Videla.

Finally, Ferreira addresses the two bodies of supposed guerrillas found with the bodies of his colleagues. He argues that these two individuals “were murdered only as a means of linking our two friends with that guerrilla organization. And I wonder if this is not the most disgusting aspect of the whole sordid affair: two human lives were taken for the sole purpose of dressing up

43 Ibid., 2. The fate of Gutierrez after his arrest receives more attention in relation to Operation Condor in the following chapter.

44 Ibid., 4.

a lie.”45 Ferreira displays his constructed knowledge of an evolutionary point in the spectacles of violence and absence. The purposeful discovery of the bodies reflects the spectacle of violence displayed through Operation Condor assassination operations against political figures. However, the cover up involved with the guerrilla bodies displays tendencies associated with the spectacle of absence. Chilean Condor operations involved car bombs and a lack of cover-up methods used to create guerrilla connections of the victims. Ferreira’s construction of these violent actions highlights a highly developed understanding of political violence in the Dirty War and the emergence of transnational violence in the region. Having lived in two violent countries during this period, he embodies the role of an exile who understood that the trend towards authoritarian regimes in the Southern Cone threatened his safety no matter how apolitical he appeared in whichever host country he resided.

Carmen Aguirre entered Argentina over three years after the fall of the military junta and the end of the Dirty War, but the memory of violent spectacles and the long shadow cast by

Operation Condor prevented her from feeling safe within Argentina. Her constant fear remained fueled by the fact that she operated against Augusto Pinochet’s Chile from within Argentina.

Aguirre spent the majority of her youth in exile from Chile and her revolutionary mother had kept her in the presence of danger by residing in Condor states such as Bolivia and Argentina.

Her mission took her to Neuquén, Argentina near the Chilean border. Her companion, Alejandro, surprisingly served in the Argentine military during the Malvinas/Falklands War and had been stationed at a military base surrounding the Little School where Alicia Partnoy resided while

45 Ibid., 8.

disappeared.46 Their combined experiences enabled the power of the memory of Operation

Condor to dictate their every move within Argentina. At a market in Neuquén, Aguirre recalls spotting a man she argues looked like a member of the Chilean secret police and confirmed within her own mind that Operation Condor remained operational on Argentine soil. After making brief eye contact with the man, she remembers, “The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. A queasy feeling seized my gut, and my knees almost buckled.”47 Aguirre lived in post-

Dirty War and post-Condor Argentina. Her lack of knowledge of how Condor operated amongst member countries and the stories of those who had suffered before her nearly broke her spirit because of the mere sight of a man who could have possibly been a Chilean agent.

Like verbal communication, violence as communication remains unbound from space and time through the medium of memory. Potential victims receive violent messages long after the communicators lose their ability to continue actively utilizing violence. Aguirre’s activism surely generated more fear in her case than many other apolitical exiles after the fall of the other military governments, but memory of violence permitted the violent performances of the past to pass seamlessly through time to influence her behavior. Aguirre represents a narrow and specific view of exile life because of her political activism and her active support of Chilean guerrilla or resistance movements from neighboring Argentina. However, her position as an exile from Chile displays how the chronologically staggered fall of military regimes and the legacy of the Condor network continued to limit or influence the agency of exiles within the Southern Cone. Aguirre and Alejandro permitted the memory of violence to play a role in their daily lives within

Argentina after three years of democratic rule.

46 Carmen Aguirre, Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter, (Vancouver: D&M Publisher’s Inc., 2011), 172.

47 Ibid., 222.

For exiles in the Southern Cone, meanings created for political violence during the Dirty

War and Condor eras enhanced the development of memories which continued to inspire terror.

Ferreira played the role of Timerman’s blind architect within the public sphere. The isolation of exiles as foreigners within the political and public spaces of Argentina forged constructions of meanings for violent performances of not only the Argentine junta, but also Operation Condor.

Ferreira’s unique position as an educated former politician influenced him to see Condor in a realistic light which permitted him to understand violence against other exiles as a threat to himself. Condor assassinations communicated to all exiles through employing the spectacle of violence to dispose of prominent exiles in very public fashions. Aguirre represents the exile beyond the period of active violence within a specific space. For her, memory of violent spectacles replaced the active spectacles as the conveyor of military power and repression.

D. Those Who Killed the Least

Unlike those caught in the middle or the majority of exiles, leftist guerrillas remained the secondary communicators of violence and represented the groups directly intended to receive the violent messages of the military forces in Argentina. Leftist guerrillas’ violent performances remain nearly absent in the Nunca Más, but those who killed the least provide the other half of a violent dialogue between the two primary belligerents of the Dirty War. Guerrillas favored the spectacle of violence in the form of terrorism for the specific purpose of violent communication.

Terrorism, for the purpose of my work, represents a smaller combat force publicly killing or wounding members of the larger military force in order to psychologically subdue and defeat their opponents through displays of death and destruction. Guerrilla organizations lacked the ability or the need to employ the spectacle of absence because the military needed to know who

committed the act and see what damage their enemy could inflict, as well as recognize the ideological commitment of each guerrilla organization.

In this section, I analyze performances of violence through guerilla journals published before and during the Dirty War. Given the disunity amongst the groups, I examine texts from the two primary performers of violence within the sphere of leftist politics; the Montoneros and the ERP. Through the pages of the Montoneros’ Causa Peronista and Evita Montonera, as well as the ERP’s Estrella Roja, the guerrillas employ their own voices to discuss violence from their own hands and from the military. Guerrillas remain vocal about the meanings of violence from all parties involved in Argentine political violence and take great pride in legitimizing their own performances.

Published voices of the guerrillas view the revolutionary activities before and after the

1976 coup as part of a total war with no room for the undecided or apolitical. From 1974, the

ERP argues, “It is time for definitions. There is no third position between exploiters and exploited. There is no third position between the oppressor army and the guerrilla.”48 The ERP understood violence in terms of a polarization of the conflict. Killing civilians possessed the ability for justification because they had not joined the Marxist struggle. Graham-Yooll remembers hearing Mario Firmenich, leader of the Montoneros, state at a press conference, “To those who want to stay in the middle, we suggest that they step aside when the war starts.”49

Both groups clearly define sides of the conflict and did not tolerate indifference, fear, or apathy.

This stance towards combativeness reflects the atmosphere of terror for those caught in the middle, as analyzed above.

48 Estrella Roja, No. 29, 28 de Enero de 1974, 3, http://www.ruinasdigitales.com/revistas/EstrellaRoja%2029.pdf.

49 Graham-Yooll, A State of Fear, 69.

In the thirteenth volume of Evita Montonera, the Montonero authors elaborate the purpose of their violence as the vanguard of a worker’s or people’s revolution. They argue, “Our combat will offer to the workers and the people the example that the Resistance is possible and that the enemy armed forces are not invulnerable.”50 The choice of the phrase “enemy armed forces” displays the way in which the Montoneros view their own combat elements. The guerrillas view their own military groups as armed forces, rather than guerrilla units. Application of this terminology seeks to gain legitimacy for the guerrillas’ cause and their ability to strike a united military in complete control of the state space. One small section discusses the relevance of an assassination performed by the Montoneros. According to the author, the Montoneros left a note on the body of torturer/informant who worked for SIDE. A warning on the note urged the people not to believe the junta when government propaganda claimed he worked as a

Gendarmerie.51 The author uses this point to support the spectacle of violence in an attempt to win a war of propaganda to generate legitimacy. For the Montoneros, the battle will not end when the final oligarch or general dies, but victory will come from a victory in propaganda supporting their violence. The author argues, “What is it worth that in combat we have produced more than 80 casualties for them if the masses are ignorant of that?”52 This question promotes the spectacle of violence. Guerrilla organizations needed the masses to know which performances belonged to them and the military junta did not. Therefore, the guerrillas left corpses in the street and proclaimed their culpability to the world. Violence represented a tool of credibility to the guerrillas because of their occupation of a political space outside of the state

50 Evita Montonera: Revista Oficial de Montoneros, Año 2, No. 13, Abril-Mayo 1976, 17, http://www.ruinasdigitales.com/revistas/Evita%20Montonera%2013.pdf.

51 Ibid., 18.

52 Ibid., 19.

and also embodied the propaganda with which the guerrillas hoped to win the Dirty War. As a source of communication, the Montoneros believed they conveyed support, rather than fear, through their public attacks against military and security personnel.

Guerrilla organizations transformed the meanings of the military’s violent performances as a means of challenging the legitimacy of their enemy and garnering their own. An image in the fourteenth edition of Evita Montonera depicts shadow-laden soldier holding a rifle and standing over a body covered in light. The caption reads, “To our people: The assassin army invents clashes by shooting political prisoners.”53 Guerrilla forces often labelled themselves as guerrillas or soldiers, but the choice of ‘political prisoners’ displays their knowledge of the term’s political weight in the local global communities. The use of ‘political prisoners’ encourages a more popular response than using the term revolutionaries or guerrilla prisoners.

Violent clashes between security forces and guerrillas represent the majority of instances in which the Argentine military or police employ the spectacle of violence. If a gun battle occurred, the junta could generate legitimacy for continuing the Dirty War through proving that guerillas continued to fight. To create these incidents proves self-serving for the military. There remains no way to tell which gun battles actually occurred instead of staged massacres. However, the guerrillas’ utilization of this image transforms the meaning behind military violence. These messages undoubtedly serve the interests of the guerrillas, but this cannot remove the fact that documentation exists in favor of the guerrillas’ perspectives of these events.54 Responses to

53 Ibid., Año 2, No. 14, Octubre 1976, 7, http://www.ruinasdigitales.com/revistas/Evita%20Montonera%2014.pdf.

54 “Deaths in ‘armed confrontations,’” in Nunca Más: Report of Conadep, 1984, http://www.desaparecidos.org/nuncamas/web/english/library/nevagain/nevagain_158.htm. The report cites three occasions for which post-junta justice officials ruled that these confrontations with security forces had been staged given the evidence provided by former records and democratic-era investigations.

violent spectacles which display self-serving attributes do not always possess a completely tactical influence.

Employment of one violent spectacle transforms meanings for the other because of the duality of public methods and functions. Just as Timerman argues above, guerrillas utilized the military’s application of the spectacle of absence to legitimize and recreate meanings for their own use of the spectacle of violence. Despite employing the same tactics before and after the military coup, the guerrillas took advantage of military tactics. Authors of Evita Peronista argue,

“The enemy is unjust and inhuman; Fighting is just and human.”55 The Montoneros avoided the use of legal and illegal because their violence undoubtedly remained illegal during a military junta or a democratic regime. However, the juxtaposition of the junta’s occupation of the state space and the paternalism ascribed to that construct with the terror they brought upon the population permitted space for the guerrillas to attempt to legitimize their own violence. The violence of the junta could not guarantee legitimization of guerrilla tactics, but the guerrillas did not occupy the protector position of the state space. Guerrillas acted as both leftist revolutionaries and guardians of the people, but propaganda warfare dictated that representing both roles garnered the least support. This process of disguising the less appealing revolutionary aspects of guerrilla movements remained less difficult for the Montoneros than the ERP because the Montoneros represented Peronism and the ERP represented Marxism.

Authors of the ERP viewed the Dirty War as a long war in which the military displayed its true violent form in their first year of rule. Popular press outlets for the ERP vanished during

55 Evita Montonera: Revista Oficial de Montoneros, Año 2, No. 14, Octubre 1976, 9, http://www.ruinasdigitales.com/revistas/Evita%20Montonera%2014.pdf.

1976, but their authors argue that the plans to “exterminate” the guerrillas failed.56 ERP authors displayed the struggle in strictly revolutionary terms. They employ the term guerrillas and identify their enemies as the “counterrevolutionary military.”57 From this linguistic choice, I argue the ERP understood violence in the same revolutionary/counterrevolutionary terms. The authors identify violence as communication through the utilization of the term “armed propaganda.”58 Armed propaganda intended to promote bonding amongst the guerrillas and the people through the everyday violence of the military enacted on both combatants and non- combatants. Thus, potential means of garnering support and revolutionary zeal represents one of the meanings of the ERP’s utilization of persistent and continuous violence.

ERP propagandists understood the military’s violent performances as natural reactions of the guardians of the bourgeoisie within the class struggle and repression of the relationship between the state space and the popular sphere.59 This understanding reflects the Marxist ideology of the ERP. The authors argue the military served “Yankee imperialism” and did not hesitate to torture and exterminate “the thousands and thousands of political prisoners crowded in the prisons and concentration camps.”60 Once imprisoned, the vocabulary transforms guerrilla revolutionaries into political prisoners. The label of ‘concentration camps’ generates memories of Nazism and fascism as the ideological opposite of Marxism, as well as destroys legitimacy for the military’s internment and/or disappearance of ‘subversives’. ERP propagandists understood

56 Estrella Roja, No. 93, Lunes 28 de Febrero de 1977, 2, http://www.ruinasdigitales.com/revistas/EstrellaRoja%2093.pdf.

57 Ibid.

58 Ibid.

59 Ibid., 5.

60 Ibid.

the value of memory for the promotion of meaning in relation to violence performed by the security forces of the Argentine junta.

ERP authors argue that each military attack results in the evolution of guerrilla “actions,” in order to intertwine the “content of the struggle and the aspirations of the masses.”61 ERP tactics transformed with each performance of military violence and displayed malleability in relation to their strict Marxist revolutionary ideology. Use of the word ‘action’ to describe guerrilla violence and operations displays intentional crafting of meaning behind the ERP’s performances of the spectacle of violence. Action, as a term, presents a less charged vocabulary and lacks the memories associated with military violence and ideology than terms such as operations or attacks. ERP propagandists utilized verbal language to provide meanings to their violent actions for the general public by removing violent overtones from the title of the very act which it describes.

Guerrilla organizations also understood violence against the people of Argentina as beneficial to their causes. Horacio Mendizábal, the Military Secretary of the Montonero Party, argues, “The more often shots are fired, the more they [the military] increase the repression, the more the people turn against them, the more the resistance grows.”62 From this perspective, the

Montonero guerrillas attacked the military knowing that the military would increase violence against the people with whom the guerrillas hoped to a forge an alliance or garner support from.

After repression increased and numerous individuals disappeared and died, the violence would lead the oppressed peoples of Argentina into the arms of the guerrillas who so desperately wanted to obtain the title of protectors of the people and liberators of Argentina. Mendizábal’s

61 Ibid., 2.

62 Evita Montonera: Revista Oficial de Montoneros, Año de la Resistencia Popular, No. 16, Marzo 1977, 4, http://www.ruinasdigitales.com/revistas/Evita%20Montonera%2016.pdf.

theory ignores the sacrifice of the very people he hoped would join the Montoneros in rebellion.

The language of this theory indicates that Montoneros represented the primary audience of Evita

Montonero in 1977.

Mendizábal legitimizes his theory through another article in the same journal by an unknown author. The author argues, “Violence from the hands of the people is justice.”63

Montoneros existed outside of the state space and represented Peronist populism. The

Montoneros identified with the people and, thus, their own violent performances represent justice in their perspective. The author claims victory will come through political struggle, “but this struggle must be accompanied by popular violence to be effective, to compel the enemy to yield, to get what we want.”64 Montonero propaganda embodies the ideological theme of the guerrillas as a vanguard. Legitimized guerrilla violence endangers the general population to illegitimate military violence which instigates popular violence to bleed the military from all sectors of the popular sphere. Meanings of violence rebounded towards the guerrillas just as it had the military.

However, the guerrillas’ intended meaning for their own violent performances represented a catalyst to induce a popular revolution against the Argentine junta.

Leftist guerrilla organizations generated meanings for both conveyed and received forms of violent communication. Through the lens of revolutionary ideologies, class struggles, and political geography, the guerrillas legitimized their violent performances and their perceived role as the vanguard of popular revolution. Montonero and ERP officials viewed the Dirty War as a polarizing force with no middle ground. Sacrifice of the people they viewed as allies represented necessities of war to generate ever greater opposition to the junta through analysis of their

63 Ibid., 5.

64 Ibid.

vanguard propaganda. For the guerrillas, violence provided the means to a political end and violent communication served as the primary tool of opposition against military authoritarianism during the Dirty War.

III - The Red, White, and Blue Elephant in the Room

Through my analysis of U.S. relations with the Argentine junta during the Dirty War, I employ three crucial themes. First, the Argentine junta manifested without external interference and despite the U.S. position of power in the region, the global superpower constantly required negotiations with Argentine officials to attempt to manage the violence of the Dirty War.

Negotiations aimed to both maintain legitimacy for the junta and to continue to support a regional alliance within the Cold War. U.S. officials on the ground in Argentina generated internal U.S. government perceptions of the spectacles of violence and absence. These officials identified with the struggle against terrorist activities because of threats against their own interests and safety. The theme of human rights, in relation to the Argentine junta’s violent performances, provided an issue of contention in U.S.-Argentine relations. Second, the spectacle of absence hid dead bodies and evidence of violence from U.S. officials, but also represented a point of resistance for opponents of the regime through undocumented or missing prisoners. The third theme represents communication networks. Who reports violence, who legitimizes violence, and who negotiates violent performances and spectacles embodied important details of how the Dirty War entered the political imaginary of Argentine-U.S. relations. Geography and comparative relations represent the final theme analyzed in this chapter. Relationship between

Operation Condor and the Dirty War, as well as the separate negotiations with Argentina and

Chile provides insight into legitimizations of Cold War violence on a national and regional basis.

A. Do You Have a Receipt?

A agree with and approach the limited or negotiated authority of the U.S. government in

Argentine affairs from a similar angle to Political Scientist Ariel Armony. In “Transnationalizing

the Dirty War,” Armony clearly displays that Argentine officials kept the U.S. government in mind when creating domestic and foreign policy, but the junta’s will took precedence in each case.1 Argentine military agency prevailed in this Cold War coup and the role of the U.S. remained limited, despite its position as the primary structural power in the hemisphere and its willingness to seek regime changes beneficial to its foreign policy. The U.S. possessed the ability to finance coups, economically support or hinder regimes in the region, directly intervene militarily, and/or provide arms to regimes which allied with the capitalist camp of the Cold War.

However, Peronist leaders avoided communist support throughout its various occupations of the state space and did not pose the ideological threat that Salvador Allende’s democratically elected regime posed from across the Andes. As seen in the first chapter, Isabel Perón sanctioned the initial military campaign against leftist guerrillas in the Tucumán Province in 1975. The U.S. had no vested interest in deposing a regime which combatted the communist ERP.

Declassified documents released by the U.S. government have no fixed meaning, but the current available documents do not display a desire to influence a regime change in Argentina.

However, numerous documents concerning the overthrow of Allende’s government in Chile came to light from the Freedom of Information Act. The absence of discussions to depose Isabel

Perón’s government, in relation to the plethora of information concerning the will to support a coup against Allende, remains crucial because both came to fruition and resulted in violent regimes which repeatedly abused the human rights of Southern Cone citizens. U.S. officials did, however, monitor the political stability of Argentina between the end of the prior military junta in 1973 and the Dirty War junta of 1976.

1 Ariel C. Armony, “Transnationalizing the Dirty War: Argentina in Central America,” in In From the Cold: Latin America’s New Encounter with the Cold War, Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniela Spenser (eds.), (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2008), 134-5 and 137-41. Armony argues that Argentine foreign policy was capable of placing the junta at odds with the U.S. government, but both nations could find ways to operate against communism in Central America without hindering the agenda of either government.

The U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires perceived President Isabel Perón as a political non- entity on her way out a year before the military seized control of the state space. On the subject of President Perón, a U.S. Embassy cable from Buenos Aires argues, “…real political power no longer resides with the President. At this point, whether or not she remains as President is a question of almost academic interest.”2 This document displays the lack of U.S. interest in promoting the downfall of President Perón and continues to argue that several options existed to replace her. The two strongest candidates to replace the President were the military and the labor wing. However, the U.S. Embassy viewed the labor wing’s leadership as too fractured and weak to make a strong play for power.3 This clearly illustrates the U.S. perception that the military would become the country’s structural power, even if a figurehead civilian claimed the presidency. In early 1976, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (ARA)

William D. Rogers explained to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that the Argentine military would assume power as potential allies of the U.S. government. Rogers also argues that the

Argentine military would legitimize its occupation of the state space by combatting terrorism and corruption, as well as claiming to rebuild a floundering economy.4 The analysis of U.S. interests in the political fate of the region attributes ownership of the 1976 Argentine coup to the

Argentine military alone. No reasonable evidence or argument to assert that the U.S. encouraged or facilitated regime change in Argentina on the eve of the Dirty War exists.

2 American Embassy in Buenos Aires, To: U.S. SecState, “Analysis of Political Situation Wake of Military Crisis,” (BF023) [UNCLASSIFIED], September 9, 1975, 1, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Isabel+Peron&beginDate=19730101&endDate=19761231&pu blishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

3 Ibid., 2.

4 Rogers, William D. (ARA), To: The Secretary, “Re: Possible Coup in Argentina,” [UNCLASSIFIED], February 12, 1976, 2, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=possible+coup+in+Argentina&beginDate=19730101&endDate =19761231&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

September 11, 1973 in Chile embodies the opposite end of this analytical spectrum.

However, the Chilean coup did not represent U.S. agency overpowering Chilean agency.

Preceding the 1970 electoral victory of Salvador Allende, the (presumably CIA) Chief of Station

Santiago alluded to the fact the he believed the Chileans were foolish to elect Allende and that the new Unidad Popular (UP) government would make 1970 the “last free election.”5 He continues to call for immediate actions against Allende and states, “We are making, through a variety of propaganda instrumentalities, a major effort to shake the Chilean people out of their complacency.”6 Allende posed a threat to U.S. interests in the region and world before he ever took office. On November 6, 1970, during a National Security Council meeting concerning the election of Allende, U.S. Defense Secretary Melvin Laird argued, “We have to do everything we can to hurt him and bring and bring him down, but we must retain an outward posture that is correct. We must take hard action but not publicize them. We must increase our military contacts. We must put pressure on him economically.”7 U.S. documentation on its military connections with Chile remains scarce, but this meeting, attended by U.S. President Nixon and his Security Council, entails the beginning of a campaign to destroy the UP government through political/military influence and economic pressure.

Debates over whether the U.S. knew Augusto Pinochet would lead a coup against

Allende when he did are insolvable because evidence is possibly lost to history. However,

5 Chief of Station Santiago, To: Chief Western Hemisphere Division, “The Finality of an Allende Victory,” (1181) [DISPATCH] [Secret], March 9, 1970, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=covert+operations+in+Chile&beginDate=19700101&endDate= 19761231&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

6 Ibid.

7 Unknown, “NSC Meeting – Chile NSSM 97,” November 5, 1970, 2, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=NSC+Chile&beginDate=19701101&endDate=19701231&publi shedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=. The words “bring him down” and “downfall” appear on four occasions.

historian Tanya Harmer convincingly argues that the U.S. cannot receive full credit for the 1973 coup. She does claim that the U.S. aimed to support the emerging military regime and this information is clear within the historical record.8 Unlike Argentina, regime change in Chile took priority in the international policy of the U.S because of Socialist President Salvador Allende’s pro-communist and anti-imperial stances.

U.S. government officials actively sought regime change in Chile, but like Argentina,

Chilean military agency took precedence over the wills or power of the U.S. government.

Minutes from a Washington Special Actions Group on the day after the Chilean coup present a pleased U.S. delegation quickly adapting the events in Chile in order to benefit from this change in the status quo. The group claims all U.S. parties involved need to be on the same page when asked about the Chilean coup.9 This meeting included non-congressional officials from Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and a CIA delegation to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the National

Security Council. It is safe to assume that the security of this meeting provided enough secrecy for these individuals to speak honestly. A key portion of this meeting pertains to a discussion between State Department official Jack Kubisch and Secretary Kissinger. Mr. Kubisch states,

“Our policy on Allende worked very well.” Secretary Kissinger responds, “We’ll get the credit for this anyway.”10 What is telling about these two remarks is that Mr. Kubisch confirms the

U.S., as the structural power in the region, manipulated the reality within Chile to inspire or internally legitimize a coup from the Chilean perspective. Secretary Kissinger’s remark reflects

8 Tanya Harmer, Allende’s Chile & the Inter-American Cold War, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 253.

9 Davis, Jeanne W. To: Henry Kissinger. “Minutes of WSAG Meeting of September 12, 1973.” September 13, 1973, 2, http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB437/docs/Doc%206%20-%20Sep%2013%201973%20- %20WSAG%20of%20Sep%2012%20-%20DNSA%20Chile%2000795%20.pdf.

10 Ibid., 10.

the idea that the Chilean military took the initiative without U.S. orders and that in the end; it was Chilean military agency that destroyed the UP regime with the moral and economic support of or acceptance from certain sectors of the U.S. government. Therefore, U.S. ownership of

Southern Cone regimes represents a fallacy in the history of Cold War foreign relations in Latin

America, especially in the case of Argentina.

Lack of U.S. ownership or responsibility for the coup in Argentina also limits the U.S. role in the spectacles of violence and absence in the Argentine Dirty War and the international efforts of Operation Condor. Argentine agency represents a major theme in this history of violence in spite of U.S. pressures and persuasions. U.S. policy or threats could influence the

Argentine choice to evolve the performance of violence, but not dictate the final outcome. Just as the mask of the state hides the human role behind the apparatus, the history of the Cold War disguises Argentines behind the juggernaut of U.S. foreign policy. I do not intend to displace the actions of the U.S., but rather I highlight the agency of the Argentines which participated in the violence of the Dirty War.

The Dirty War represents an Argentine operation and the U.S. role remained limited at most. It remains nearly impossible to tell which U.S. officials favored violence against perceived leftists in Argentina or which U.S. officials were privy to President Ford’s or Secretary

Kissinger’s agendas. A telling communication from the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires addresses the political murder of leftist Uruguayan refugees Zelmar Michelini and Héctor Gutiérrez Ruiz, in Buenos Aires. The author from the U.S. Embassy believes the AAA committed these acts. The author also reflects concern that President Videla remained either unwilling or unable to stop

violent right-wing militants from committing political assassinations.11 As previously mentioned in the first chapter, if the AAA committed the murders, then they occurred at the behest of the

Argentine military regime whether through the request of Condor allies or not.

Historian J. Patrice McSherry attributes these political murders to Operation Condor and its Phase 3 assassination capabilities.12 Following the political murders of the two Uruguayan refugees, Argentine police discovered the body of former leftist Bolivian President General Juan

Jose Torres in the Buenos Aires Province. The U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires believed, in the wake of the Michelini and Gutiérrez murders, that popular opinion suggested the Argentine junta or the AAA participated in or executed this murder.13 Whether or not the CIA or higher U.S. officials acknowledged or promoted this incident, the opinion of the highest U.S. official on the ground represents the documented opinion of the U.S. government. These two incidents embody the spectacle of violence because bodies were found and did not ‘disappear’. The documented evidence of the spectacle of violence displays that U.S. officials in Argentina did not hold the

Argentine junta accountable for political murders, but rather displaced responsibility to the AAA or internal politics of leftist guerrilla and exile groups.

The spectacle of absence and the disappearances that accompanied it pertain to a different story in Argentine-U.S. relations. The spectacle of absence came into existence both as a result

11 American Embassy in Buenos Aires, To: U.S. SecState, “Abduction and Murder of Uruguayan Refugees Michelini and Gutierrez; Status of Ferreira,” (I052) [UNCLASSIFIED], May 24, 1976, 1, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Abduction+and+Murder+of+Uruguayan+Refugees+Michelini+ and+Gutierrez%3B+Status+of+Ferreira&beginDate=19750101&endDate=19801231&publishedBeginDate=&publis hedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

12 J. Patrice McSherry, Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America, (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2005), 141-3.

13 American Embassy in Buenos Aires, To: U.S. SecState, “Body of Ex-Bolivian President Torres Found,” (V014) [UNCLASSIFIED], June 2, 1976, 2, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Body+of+Ex- Bolivian+President+Torres+Found&beginDate=19760101&endDate=19771231&publishedBeginDate=&published EndDate=&caseNumber=.

of U.S. pressure and to appease that same pressure. Therefore, the U.S. cannot own or outweigh the agency of the Argentine military junta. From the current sources on the subject of disappearances, U.S. officials gradually gained awareness of the spectacle of absence over the course of the first three years of the Argentine junta. The U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires begins to understand the nature of clandestine imprisonment and disappearance in 1979 under the human rights promoting administration of U.S. President Jimmy Carter. In June of 1979, the U.S.

Embassy reported that Argentine General Roberto Eduardo Viola denied the existence of clandestine prisons while U.S. officials continued to gather data on the process and reportedly received training to investigate these matters.14 This embassy report possesses a matter-of-fact or dry tone and places no moral value on the subject matter discussed. The manner in which this report reads provides an insight into an individual whose information pertains to the development of foreign relations between the U.S. and the Argentine junta. The author believes that the Argentine junta disappeared many prisoners and exterminated various individuals, but argues that many reports on this subject are exaggerations from human rights groups and the press. The author makes it clear that only concrete evidence could sway the opinion of the embassy.15 From this evidence-oriented perspective, the employment of the spectacle of absence permitted a continuation of relatively positive relations with portions of the U.S. government.

A well-documented U.S. practice of estimating the strength of terrorist/subversive groups in Argentina influenced the U.S. Executive and State Department legitimization of junta violence. In a 1977 letter to the U.S. Ambassador in Buenos Aires, Regional Security Officer RJ

Kelly argues that the Montoneros were devastated and the ERP remained nearly non-existent.

14 Ibid., “Clandestine Prisoners: A Special Assessment,” (N224PB1) [UNCLASSIFIED], April 17, 1979, 2, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Clandestine+Prisons&beginDate=19760101&endDate=197912 31&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

15 Ibid., 4. What makes evidence ‘concrete’ remains undefined.

However, Kelly believes that the Montoneros remained capable of sporadic and deadly attacks against Argentine and U.S, officials. Kelly argues that the Montoneros represented the training and political desires of Cuba and U.S. officials needed to remain alert until Argentine military forces defeated the group.16 The information gathered by an officer trusted with the security of

U.S. economic and political interests in the region presents the Ambassador with the opinion that the terrorist threat dwindled, but required an Argentine military victory to ensure safety for U.S. interests in the region. In a follow-up document from June of 1977, an unknown author concludes that the subversive groups’ military capabilities feigned, but believes that the political front embodied the Montoneros’ greatest threat posed toward the Argentine junta.17 The author does not include the term ‘threat’, but the document uses derogatory language to label the groups

‘subversives’ and, thus, identifies the non-combative arm of the Montoneros as a threat. As I argued in the first chapter, language in official documents generated perceptions that influenced

U.S. reports and policies in the region, as well as produced legitimacy for the Argentine junta’s actions in the eyes of certain U.S. officials.

Trust displayed from U.S. officials on the ground in Argentina tended to favor the military junta’s perception of the Dirty War. However, just as human rights lobbyists and organizations began turning international opinion against the Argentine junta, so too did the ever changing political climate of the U.S. alter the course of U.S.-Argentine discourse and legitimization. The U.S. government, under President Gerald Ford, legitimized Argentine

16 Kelly, RJ (Regional Security Officer [RSO]), To: The Ambassador, “Estimate of Terrorist Activities/Elements – Argentina,” (BN030) [UNCLASSIFIED], March 8, 1977, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Estimate+of+Terrorist%09Activities%2FElements+%E2%80% 93+Argentina&beginDate=19760101&endDate=19801230&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNum ber=.

17 Unknown, “Report on Subversive Situation,” (BW001) [UNCLASSIFIED], June 2, 1977, 3, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Report+on+Subversive+Situation&beginDate=19760101&end Date=19801230&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

violence as a war on terrorism, but the Argentine armed forces’ continuous human rights abuses came into a new, less understanding or negotiable, light after the 1977 election of U.S. President

Jimmy Carter.

B. A Meeting with HR

Human rights discourse and legistlation provide the most contentious subject within the

U.S. perception of the spectacles of violence and absence in Argentina. As I previously discussed, the Argentine junta sought a positive relationship with the U.S. because of similar

Cold War ideologies and the resources which the U.S. could either provide or deny. The continuance of the Dirty War signified the unwillingness to cease campaigns of violence and the transition to the spectacle of absence represents the evolutionary capacity of the Argentine junta to adjust to the structural power of the U.S. for the sake of positive relations. The negotiations with U.S. officials often included debates over human rights abuses. U.S. officials frequently employed a softer tone when discussing human rights to maintain Argentina as an ally and as an attempt to control the proceedings in the Dirty War because of the U.S. government’s self- identification as a champion of human rights and the leader of the capitalist front in the Cold

War. However, U.S. control remained an illusion and its structural power only limited the options of the Argentine junta, rather than dictating the course of action.

U.S. officials perceived the Southern Cone military regimes as both predictable and controllable. A State Department memo, from October 1977, discussing the relations between the U.S. and Southern Cone countries claims, “The authoritarian military-dominated regimes will gradually make concessions to internal and external pressures to liberalize the political

process.”18 This quote promotes the idea that the Southern Cone regimes easily bent to political pressures and that the desire to maintain control did not outweigh human rights issues and Cold

War politics of Capitalist democratization. The document continues to argue that Argentina, like

Brazil, would continue to develop beyond dependency for U.S. arms and that the country would require to be brought into a higher league of U.S. allies after Brazil.19 The document reflects the

U.S. government’s low opinion of Argentina, as well as how the U.S. accepted a hierarchy of

Cold War relations in which Europe clearly ranked higher than the Latin American countries.

Implications of this hierarchy suggest that certain sectors of the U.S. government believed they could manage human rights violations during the Dirty War because of Argentine dependency on their favor.

Negotiations over human rights abuses appeared as issues in U.S.-Argentine relations from the initial month of the 1976 coup. A letter from U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to the U.S. NATO Mission, from March 1976, argues that human rights abuses represent an ongoing issue and that the thousands of subversives held under the 1974 state of siege would grow exponentially once the junta escalated its war on terrorism.20 Secretary Kissinger also noted that the core of the junta displayed great favor towards the U.S. and he saved his human rights argument for the end of the document. The manner in which he crafts the document suggests that the human rights abuses could harm relations with the U.S., but the junta’s favorable disposition

18 U.S. State Department, “US Policy Toward Brazil/Southern Cone,” (M-15A) [UNCLASSIFIED], October 27, 1977, 2, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=US+Policy+Toward+Brazil%2FSouthern+Cone&beginDate=1 9760101&endDate=19801230&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

19 Ibid., 4.

20 U.S. State Department, To: U.S. Mission NATO, “Argentine Junta Faces Troubled Future, Please Deliver to Summ Opening of Business,” (AN: D760111-0939) [UNCLASSIFIED], March 23, 1976, 3, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Argentine+Junta+Faces+Troubled+Future%2C+Please+Deliver +to+Summ+Opening+of+Business&beginDate=19760101&endDate=19801230&publishedBeginDate=&published EndDate=&caseNumber=.

meant that the U.S. could control the situation through diplomatic channels and permit the

Argentines to save face.

Human rights abuses, which plagued the U.S. foreign policy towards Argentina, threatened more U.S. interests than a political alliance for the Cold War. A U.S. document from

1977, written by an unknown author, addresses the multiple implications from a possible fractured relationship with the Argentine junta because of a cut off of military aid by the U.S.

Congress. The document argues that any separation in military relations between the U.S. and

Argentina over human rights abuses threatened both the loss of a suitable country for a U.S.

“logistical base” for Antarctic installations and to “impede our ability to influence the Argentine atomic energy program, Latin America’s most advanced.”21 The author views human rights abuses as secondary to U.S. interests in the region without placing a moral value on the subject.

In this context, U.S. influence and manipulative power hinged on its supply of military aid and a hope that Argentina could not obtain this aid elsewhere. From this context, the source of U.S. structural power in the region depended upon the whims of the U.S. Congress and their control over spending policies for foreign aid. Finally, the author portrays human rights abuses as inconveniences to political matters and suggests that careful negotiations could appease the complaints formed in the U.S. Congress. The author acknowledges that the Argentine junta possessed control of the right wing’s violent forces in the Dirty War and that responsibility lay

21 Unknown, “U.S.-Argentina Military Relations Jeopardized,” (BN038A) [UNCLASSIFIED], May 3, 1977, 1, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=U.S.- Argentina+Military+Relations+Jeopardized&beginDate=19760101&endDate=19801230&publishedBeginDate=&p ublishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

with the junta to restrain their troops and reinstate judicial order to improve relations with the

U.S. government.22

The Argentine junta’s control over the spectacles of absence and violence remained a theme throughout the Dirty War. The possibility that the junta lacked control over excessive forces revealed paths for maintaining the legitimacy of the junta in relation to human rights abuses. In 1977, Richard Feinberg, a Latin American specialist for the U.S. State Department, sent a letter describing an alternate perspective of Argentine President Videla. Feinberg argues that despite the perception of President Videla as a moderate, willing to improve human rights conditions, he sought a “cautious consensus” amongst military leaders in order to keep the junta united.23 Feinberg views the junta as a tedious relationship and human rights abuses continued because President Videla weakly sought the approval of the hardliners who identified with the violent nacionalista ideology.

By 1980, a political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires, Townsend B. Friedman, promoted the speculative notion that the Argentine intelligence services, specifically Battalion

601, held the junta hostage.24 Friedman sees no reason why the junta permitted 601 to commit actions which resulted in spectacle of violence and embarrassed the Videla-led government. He argues that Battalion 601 possessed more political power than appeared because, in his version of common sense, no logical reason existed for the special services to continue unnecessary acts

22 Ibid., 2.

23 Feinberg, Richard, To: The Secretary, “President Videla: An Alternative View,” [DECLASSIFIED], November 17, 1977, 1-2, https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/394539-19771119-president-videla-an-alternative- view.html.

24 Townsend Friedman, “Hypothesis – The GOA as Prisoner of Army Intelligence,” (BO009) [UNCLASSIFIED], August 17, 1980, 1-2, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Hypothesis+%E2%80%93+The+GOA+as+Prisoner+of+Army +Intelligence&beginDate=19760101&endDate=19801230&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumb er=.

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of political violence which harmed the international and regional image of Argentina. Friedman intended for his hypothesis to receive attention at the U.S. Embassy and foster a debate of these concerns. However, his ideas display notions that the U.S. government had no control over the junta and did not understand where the country’s structural power resided or why human rights abuses continued to occur after the U.S. Embassy officials deemed them logistically unnecessary. This point comes back to the paternalistic stance of the U.S. government and its officials on the ground in Argentina in relation to the subject of performances of violence. U.S. officials needed to know why Argentine officials did not comply with human rights legistlation.

Debates over both who controlled the violence and why U.S. influence remained unheeded enabled the creation of reports and theories such as those of Feinberg and Friedman.

Friedman founded his arguments in a 1979 interview with an unnamed, high-ranking

Argentine military intelligence source who possessed awareness of both ground operations and the opinions of high-ranking military officials. Friedman claims his source believed terrorism posed no threat by 1979. His argument in this memo foreshadowed his aforementioned hypothesis the following year. Friedman argues that his source believed violence continued because security forces primarily employed violence to extract information, the judicial rule of law ceased to exist, and the junta perceived any resistance to the government as manifestations of

Marxism.25 His source provides a jaded view of the junta from inside its security forces and displays the information U.S. officials received concerning human rights relations during the tail end of the apex of violence in Argentina. The source continues to argue that the junta waited for the Inter American Human Rights Court officials to leave Argentina to resume mass human

25 Ibid., “Human Rights – A Military Vie,” (AZ111) [UNCLASSIFIED], September 10, 1979, 2, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Human+Rights+%E2%80%93+A+Military+View&beginDate= 19760101&endDate=19801230&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

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rights abuses.26 The spectacle of absence dominated the Dirty War period, but these clandestine activities paused or lessened during international observers’ inspections to maintain the illusion of compliance with international human rights legistlation. The validity of Friedman’s source remains questionable, but his memo displays U.S. officials’ evolving perception of human rights abuses which influenced the reports received by the U.S. State Department and other high- ranking officials to develop foreign policy towards the Argentine junta. Friedman’s source concludes that Argentine officials fear U.S. human rights policies and the threat of repercussions maintains the secretive stance of the junta on the subject of human rights. The source argues that human rights abuses could subside with the U.S. government’s assurance of understanding the difficulties the Argentine military faced on the ground. The source essentially argues that fear of international repercussions promoted the continuance of the spectacle of absence and the human rights abuses associated with it.27 Therefore, the source believes that a policy of amnesty possessed the ability to both sway Argentine Security Forces from liquidating their captives and usher in a restoration of human rights compliance and a return to democracy.

High U.S. government officials, such as Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, conveyed messages which promoted conflicting meanings to their Argentine counterparts. Officials from the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires noted the confusion which occurred. After Kissinger’s visit to

Buenos Aires in 1978, the U.S. Embassy expressed concern that Kissinger conveyed mixed messages to the Argentine junta. The document’s author argues that Kissinger’s support of the

Argentine fight against terrorism and praise of Argentina’s goverment possessed the potential to backfire. The author claims, “Despite his disclaimers that the methods used in fighting terrorism

26 Ibid. 27 Ibid., 3.

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must not be perpetuated, there is some danger that Argentines may use Kissinger’s laudatory statements as justification for hardening their human rights stance.”28 This statement conveys the themes of legitimacy, spectacles of violence and absence, and U.S.-Argentine relations. Support of any fashion by the U.S. Secretary of State embodies the Argentine junta’s desire for legitimacy, whether the compliment has a contingency or not. Implementations of the spectacle of absence represent the Argentine junta’s willingness to negotiate their power with the U.S. government over how Argentine internal affairs transpired through the evolution of violent performances to create an appearance of compliance with the U.S. government’s goal of supporting human rights.

The U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires constantly reported the state of human rights in

Argentina through monthly reports to the U.S. State Department which undoubtedly influenced the federal government’s perspective of violence in Argentina and how to proceed in U.S.-

Argentine relations. The evolution of U.S., on the ground, information in Argentina becomes apparent during a five year period from 1975 to 1980. In 1975, a year before the coup, the U.S. generated human rights report argues that the Argentine government committed human rights violations, despite a lack of documentation or evidence. The author explains, “Given Argentina’s recent history, the fact that human rights violations have taken place is not surprising. Other governments have reacted with much more systematic and widespread actions trampling the human rights of their constituents.”29 The author believes the Argentine public and Peronist

28 American Embassy in Buenos Aires, To: U.S. SecState, “Henry Kissinger Visit to Argentina,” (BL008) [UNCLASSIFIED], June 26, 1978, 4, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Henry+Kissinger+Visit+to+Argentina&beginDate=19760101& endDate=19801230&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=. 29 Ibid., “Human Rights Violations in Argentina,” (BF001) [UNCLASSIFIED], February 11, 1975, 1, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Human+Rights+Violations+in+Argentina&beginDate=197501 01&endDate=19801230&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

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government permitted the abuses to expedite the destruction of terrorist forces. The document presents the spectacle of absence as neither the standard practice nor a rare occurrence.

By 1978, the height of junta violence and the year of the Argentine World Cup, U.S. government analysts argued that a reduction in human rights abuses remained an option for the near future, but the Argentine junta proceeded with the status quo of violence.30 Bureau of

Intelligence and Research (INR) analyst Harold Saunders perceives the Argentine junta as unwilling to stop violence, but, “Implementation of well-timed human rights ‘concessions’ has been a consistent Argentine tactic over the past two years.”31 The Argentine junta performed the spectacle of absence to hide human rights abuses and when international observers evolved to notice this pattern, the junta appeased them with the fewest concessions possible. Saunders believes the decimation of terrorist threats and the small improvements in human rights represented signs that President Videla and his moderate cohorts would soon overtake the junta’s hardliners to usher in an era of compliance with U.S. strategies for legitimacy in the form of protection of human rights compliance. Saunders argues that the defeat of subversion remained the primary Argentine priority, but President Videla would continue to repair relations with the

U.S. as long as it did not hamper his internal legitimacy. Once again, the structural power of the

U.S. limited the choices of the Argentine junta, but Argentine agency favored internal struggles and legitimacy.

30 Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), Saunders, Harold H., To: The Secretary, “Trends in Human Rights in Argentina,” (AR122) [UNCLASSIFIED], June 22, 1978, 1, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Trends+in+Human+Rights+in+Argentina&beginDate=1975010 1&endDate=19801230&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=. The INR gathers and analyzes intelligence for the U.S. State Department for the benefit of diplomatic affairs.

31 Ibid.

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Finally, in 1980, numerous weekly human rights reports appeared from the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires which reflected the evolution of U.S. attention toward human rights violations and the decreased success of the spectacle of absence’s ability to limit culpability. An October

1980 U.S. Embassy report on human rights provides a jaded statement on a few recent abductions, such as a report of a stolen car. The largest topic of discussion addresses the state of the press in Argentina because a world press group listed Argentina with Vietnam and the Soviet

Union for “the three worst countries for writers and newsmen.”32 The inclusion of the subject displays fewer disappearances and the decline of mass violence. The final portion of the document addresses the fate of two Chilean spies and the descision to try them in civilian courts.

Unlike the disappeared, the public trials of the Chileans reflect the two countries’ dispute over the Beagle Islands in 1979, as well as the choice to avoid tactical disappearance in favor of an espionage trial to garner internal legitimacy through the tool of nationalism.

Human rights abuses, such as mass disappearances accompanied by denials for habeas corpus, hampered the relationship between the U.S. and Argentina during the Dirty War. The

U.S. Congress represented the most predisposed group to bypass Cold War relations to ensure human rights compliance. This concept remained important because the U.S. structural power to influence the choices available to the Argentine junta, such as the transfer of monetary credits and military subsidies, lay in the hands of the U.S. Congress. Human rights debates in this chapter display the attempts of the U.S. State Department to buffer the relationship between their

Congress and the Argentine junta by developing the on the ground perception of Argentine performances of violence. My analysis of the above texts displays the U.S. State Department’s

32 American Embassy in Buenos Aires, To: U.S. SecState, “Human Rights Summary: September 27 – October 3, 1980,” (P129) [UNCLASSIFIED], October 2, 1980, 2, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Human+Rights+Summary+May+10+to+16%2C+1980&begin Date=19750101&endDate=19801230&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

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use of a lack of evidence, related to the spectacle of absence, to sway U.S. government opinion and protect U.S. interests in the region.

C. Look Who’s Talking to Whom

A myriad of selective individuals crafted the official, on the ground, perception of

Argentina’s spectacles of violence and absence. The official channels of the U.S. government included members of the Argentine government and security forces conversing with members of the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires and State Department. I focus on the official channels because the U.S. government deploys embassy and intelligence officials on the ground in foreign lands to shape both U.S. opinion of the region and U.S. policy for the region. Argentina’s Dirty War and the spectacle of absence violated human rights which the U.S. government supported. Attempts to legitimize these processes, from both sides of the relationship, provide a deeper sense of Cold

War political relations and ethical contradictions performed under the auspices of a total war against communism and the simultaneous promotion of human rights.

I begin with the surface contacts, within the most official channels, pertaining to meetings with and communications from the highest ranking authorities of the Argentine junta.

The U.S. and Argentine governments influenced the actions of the other; especially in the case of

U.S. official meetings with the heads of the Argentine junta. In September of 1976, two communiques from Robert Hill, the U.S. Ambassador to Argentina, to the U.S. State Department provide the details of a meeting between Hill and Argentine President Videla. Hill broaches the subject of the spectacle of violence though his explanation of the negative relationship between

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U.S. military and economic aid to Argentina and human rights abuses.33 He sets the ground rules for President Videla’s path to continue receiving positive votes in the Inter-American

Development Bank (IDB) which produced aid for the Argentine junta. The U.S. message in this discussion promotes an understanding of the junta’s struggle against leftist subversion and terrorism, but exterminating priests and openly committing mass murder endangered the

Argentine junta in relation to the structural power of aid votes in the U.S. Congress.34 This discussion promotes the employment of certain methods of killing over others under this specific set of circumstances. Whether President Videla did or did not take these words as a legitimization of the evolution of the spectacle of violence into the spectacle of absence remains unknown. However, the ability of these words to manifest legitimizations for taking the public spectacles out of political violence remains clear. The tone of the discussion remains suggestive, rather than declarative. Ambassador Hill’s manner of crafting his argument displays his willingness to separate himself from the U.S. policy. He never employs the terms ‘we’ or ‘our’ in his discussion with President Videla.35 This implies that he tactically stands apart from his employment with U.S. government in order to remain friendly with the Argentines and suggest that President Videla’s actions conveyed the intent of the junta to remain allied to the U.S. far better than assurances to a U.S. Ambassador. Ambassador Hill clearly maintains the subject of

U.S. aid as his bargaining chip, but he makes every attempt to encourage the junta to quickly finish its anti-communist war rather than oppose their use political violence.

33 American Embassy in Buenos Aires, To: U.S. SecState, “Ambassador Discusses US-Argentine Relations with President Videla,” (I164) [UNCLASSIFIED], September 24, 1976, 1, http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB125/condor11.pdf.

34 Ibid.

35 Ibid., 1-3.

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The original document relating to this meeting promotes the idea that the U.S. focused on the well-being of a select few individuals who the Argentine junta imprisoned or disappeared.

The information included in the initial version of the conversation gains importance by displaying the summary of events which included the details that could not wait until the U.S.

Embassy in Buenos Aires produced a more detailed account of the meeting. Ambassador Hill lists the human rights discussion first, but only notes that he brought the subject up to Videla without problems.36 Concern displayed for the welfare of two individual prisoners of the

Argentine junta represents two sections of the document which merit further analysis.

Ambassador Hill’s depiction of this conversation entails a calm discussion over the whereabouts of the prisoners and their status within the judicial system. President Videla claimed the first prisoner, a pregnant woman named Gwenda Mae Loken, would receive a quick journey through the judicial system and exile. He argued that the location and well-being of the second prisoner of interest, Patricia Erb, remained unknown to the Argentine government, but he would keep in touch with Ambassador Hill until she reappeared.37 The discussion of only two specific prisoners reveals a path to generate possible Argentine perceptions of the U.S. government displaying limited concern for a much larger group of imprisoned, disappeared, or dead individuals during the Dirty War. The fact that a U.S. government official questioned President Videla about the well-being of only two people, both women, possesses the ability to promote Argentine leaders’ doubtfulness of the validity of U.S. policies for human rights. Following this train of thought, the

Argentines could maintain the status quo as long as certain individuals remained untouched or could reappear at the request of foreign countries whose opinion the Argentine junta valued.

36 Ibid., “My Call on President Videla,” (BC019) [UNCLASSIFIED], September 21, 1976, 1, http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB125/condor10.pdf.

37 Ibid., 2.

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An important conversation between high-level officials of both the U.S. and Argentine governments in 1976 reveals the importance of language and tone during negotiations and meetings between the regional allies in relation to the continuation of political violence and the employment of the spectacle of absence. U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Argentine

Foreign Minister Admiral César Augusto Guzzetti represent the primary actors in this dialogue.

To begin, Kissinger repeatedly uses the terms ‘we’ and ‘our’ while referring to the U.S. and its policies.38 His language implies that he embodied the voice of the U.S. government in Argentina and the Argentines took note of this stance in their requests made to him. Humor flows throughout the document suggesting a less tense mood in the discussions and the friendship, rather than vassal/master relationship, between the U.S. and Argentine governments. Like many other U.S. officials, Kissinger relayed a common interest in the destruction of leftist terrorism.

He told Foreign Minister Guzzetti, “We are aware you are in a difficult period. It is a curious time, when political, criminal, and terrorist activities tend to merge without any clear separation.

We understand you must establish authority.”39 Despite the U.S. interest in ceasing human rights abuses in Argentina, Kissinger displays notions of comradery and understanding the political reality in Argentina.

Kissinger also jokes that the foreign press continued their criticisms of Argentina because of the fall of any leftist government. Kissinger’s harsh jokes pervade the document. In a discussion about foreign countries unwilling to take in foreign undesirables and possible terrorists from Argentina, Kissinger states, “Have you tried the PLO [Palestinian Liberation

38 U.S. State Department, “Memorandum of Conversation,” (X3) [UNCLASSIFIED], June 6, 1976, http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB133/19760610%20Memorandum%20of%20Conversation%20c lean.pdf.

39 Ibid., 3.

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Organization]? They need more terrorists. Seriously, we cannot tell you how to handle these people.”40 Not only does his approach display an uncaring attitude towards the fate of exiles, but it also displays Kissinger, a voice of the U.S. government, arguing that the Argentines needed to handle their own affairs without the compliance of the U.S. government and its Cold War agenda he promoted in Argentina. Kissinger offers mixed messages in which he advises the Argentine junta to avoid human rights abuses that led to the isolation of Chile, but he also promotes political violence against subversion. Kissinger proclaims, “If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly. But you must get back quickly to normal procedures.”41

Recommendations from the U.S. government to the Argentine junta remained unclear through most of the Dirty War. Mixed messages from the highest officials, such as Kissinger, supported

Argentine notions that the U.S. supported their fight, but had to maintain the appearance of their international human rights standing. Therefore, the spectacle of absence resumed the Argentine fight against subversion while the appearance or suggestion of human rights compliance continued in an illusionary capacity.

Confusion over messages and motives grew when U.S. officials met with Argentine junta members lower down the chain of command. A document from my first chapter in which

Political Councilor William Hallman and RSO James Blystone, from the U.S. Embassy in

Buenos Aires, met with an unknown Argentine Intelligence agent, under the assumed name

Jorge Contreras, to discuss Argentine security practices merits a second round of analysis.

Contreras remained cautious with his wording throughout the interview and continuously noted that several statements reflected his own opinion. However, the author’s curiosity concerning the

40 Ibid., 6.

41 Ibid., 9.

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motives of Contreras represents the most striking portion of this document in regards to U.S.-

Argentine relations. Contreras claims to have approval to speak on this issue from his immediate commanders, but the author believes that Contreras unknowingly came to the U.S. Embassy on orders from Argentine Army Commander Roberto Eduardo Viola.42 The author continues to argue, “Contreras’s presentations can be put in the category of “authorized information” designed perhaps to reassure the Embassy and/or, perhaps, “learn” through questions that

Contreras receives from Embassy officers what members of the Embassy have learned about repressive apparatus.”43 The fact that high-ranking Argentine officials actively sent intelligence officers to meet U.S. officials denotes a certain level of trust towards the U.S. government, but required unofficial channels to both maintain international legitimacy and keep the U.S. government relatively informed of the battle against communism. The opposite side of this analysis portrays a certain level of mistrust from the U.S. perspective. The author leaves a large section at the end of this message to the U.S. State Department in order to examine why

Contreras divulged this information. The consensus at the end of the document argues that

Contreras’s use of his own opinions not only generated a risk to his own safety or freedom, but also portrays this same personal risk as an attempt to promote legitimacy amongst U.S. Embassy personnel in relation to the actions of the Argentine security and intelligence forces.

Conversations between U.S. and Argentine officials developed and evolved U.S.-

Argentine relations during the Dirty War. The spectacle of absence evolved through the information transferred during these meetings as both sides conveyed their goals and each side’s desired responses to political violence. U.S. State Department and Embassy officials often

42 Contreras, Jorge, “Nuts and Bolts of the Government’s Repression of Terrorism – Subversion,” (AZ086) [UNCLASSIFIED], August 6, 1979, 9.

43 Ibid., 10.

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understood, in some capacity, the realities of violence and human rights abuses inside of

Argentina, but the suggestion that the Argentines needed to hurry and destroy opposition while upholding human rights standards prevailed from the highest-ranking U.S. voices in the country.

Despite their alliance in the Cold War, officials on both sides displayed moments of mistrust, such as the case of Jorge Contreras, and tested the reception of the spectacle of absence through political dialogues along official and unofficial channels. One of the primary goals behind U.S. engagements with the Argentine junta embodied the U.S. desire to avoid having another

Southern Cone ally lose international legitimacy and enter political isolation because of human rights abuses, such as those committed in Pinochet’s Chile.

D. Burning Like Dry Ice

U.S. analyses of and reaction to the Dirty War and Operation Condor reflect the ability to tolerate the spectacle of absence over the spectacle of violence in a Cold War that burned with political violence and warfare. A definite separation of the two political violence apparatuses occurs during analysis of U.S. documents. Operation Condor stands apart from the Dirty War because of the Phase 3 assassination operations which both employed the spectacle of violence and bore primarily Chilean origins. The public assassination of former Chilean Minister under

Allende, Orlando Letelier, and his assistant Ronni Moffitt represents the Phase 3 operation which provoked the anger of the U.S. government. On September 21, 1976, DINA detonated a car bomb in Washington D.C. that killed Letelier with Moffitt as collateral damage.44 This act of pure hubris, displays the Chileans’ willingness to employ the spectacle of violence at home and

44 U.S. State Department, To: Secretary, “Action Memorandum: Death of Orlando Letelier,” (R234) [UNLASSIFIED], September 21, 1976, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=letelier&beginDate=19750101&endDate=19811231&published BeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

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abroad in stark contrast to the Argentine regime. U.S. government officials did not permit this difference in tactical preference to go unnoticed.

One of the first documents produced by the U.S. State Department on this event speculates who orchestrated the attack. After labeling the assassination as a terrorist attack of several possible origins, the author displays concern that the Chilean government would receive credit for the crime.45 However, this initial concern quickly dissipated. By November of 1976, a

U.S. Political Officer in Chile, Felix Vargas, gained “some disturbing bits of information implicating the DINA in the murder of Orlando Letelier.”46 Vargas interviewed several sources within Chile that had connections to DINA agents and the story began to resemble a Condor mission.

By 1978, the U.S. government realized DINA’s involvement and the relationship between the U.S. and Chile changed for the remainder of the dictatorship. A document produced by the CIA for the FBI analyzes General Pinochet’s strategies to rescue his government from the blatant employment of the spectacle of violence. Chile surrendered Michael Townley, the chief

DINA agent for the Letelier mission, to the U.S. in spring of 1978 and he promptly placed the blame on DINA.47 From this point, Pinochet went on the defensive because the State

Department, whether they supported the operation or not, could no longer hide his guilt from the

45 Ibid., 3.

46 Vargas, Felix C. (Political Officer), “DINA Involvement in Orlando Letelier’s Death,” (F59) [UNCLASSIFIED], November 8, 1976, 1, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=DINA+Involvement+in+Orlando+Letelier%E2%80%99s+Deat h&beginDate=19750101&endDate=19811231&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

47 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), To: FBI, “Strategy of Chilean Government with Respect to Letelier Case, and Impact on Case on Stability of President Pinochet,” (624) [SECRET], June 22, 1978, 2, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Strategy+of+Chilean+Government+with+Respect+to+Letelier+ Case%2C+and+Impact+on+Case+on+Stability+of+President+Pinochet&beginDate=19750101&endDate=19811231 &publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

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remainder of the U.S. government. The CIA’s analysis argues that Pinochet initiated anti-U.S. nationalism to combat U.S. extradition charges against Chilean officers and to project international pressures on disappearances as, “a carefully orchestrated plot by the Carter administration to topple Pinochet.”48 The report concludes that Pinochet’s government depended on the lack of a U.S. assault on Chilean interests and that the U.S. Ambassador to Santiago agrees with the assessment. The document reflects a need to avoid the spectacle of violence and to avoid angering the U.S. at all costs. Argentine officials observed this relationship from the first year of the junta which coincided with the Letelier assassination, and kept its operations both within Latin America and with a focus on the spectacle of absence. The U.S. avoided harsh relations with the political violence of Argentina because of the junta’s avoidance of the examples Pinochet’s Chile provided.

The Chilean military’s performances of political violence resulted in an action that the

Argentine junta never faced. As a result of provoking the anger of its most powerful ally, the

Chilean junta forced a revamping of DINA and the retirement of its head intelligence officer,

Jorge Manuel Contreras. Contreras stepped down to appease the structural power of the U.S., but

Pinochet stood his ground against U.S. officials’ demands to extradite Contreras to the U.S. court system.49 Pinochet overhauled DINA to take the form of the Central Nacional de Informaciones

(CNI). U.S. officials remained skeptical of the transformation as nothing more than a change in name alone.50 A document from the U.S. Embassy in Santiago argues that Chilean officials

48 Ibid., 3.

49 Ibid., 1-2.

50 American Embassy in Santiago, To: U.S. SecState, “The DINA/SNI Transformation,” (E3934) [UNCLASSIFIED], August 18, 1977, 4, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=CNI+DINA&beginDate=19750101&endDate=19811231&publ ishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

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understood the need for its allies to believe in the change to the CNI, as well as the face saving effort of claims that DINA had “completed the delicate mission set before it.”51 A follow-up document on the transformation to the CNI, also from the U.S. Embassy in Santiago, argues that the Chileans believed the name change and the replacement of Contreras served the purpose of appeasing the U.S. government and Chile’s other allies. The author claims that the shift in policy remained hollow until General Odlanier Mena Salinas replaced Contreras and that the Chileans hoped the change in leadership reflected a departure from past operations.52 This political gesture from the Chileans represents negotiations with global and regional powers, as well as the same willingness to continue violent performance with the fewest concessions possible. The Argentine junta never faced the outright anger of the U.S. government because of its preference of the spectacle of absence and the lack of evidence which coincides with the tactic.

As Chile-U.S. relations worsened after the Letelier assassination, members of the Chilean government proved more vocal about their distaste towards U.S. human rights policies towards

Chile. In June of 1977, the U.S. State Department took notice of Chilean Foreign Minister

Patricio Carvajal’s insults hurled towards the U.S. government. The author argues that Carvajal believed that the U.S. détente with the Soviet Union opened a door for Soviet influence in the

Southern Cone. In relation to Pinochet’s war against communist subversion, Carvajal claims,

“This the U.S. cannot or will not see, preferring to punish its long-standing friends for combating

51 Ibid.

52 Ibid., “Changes in CNI,” (SI5), November 2, 1977, 2, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=CNI+DINA&beginDate=19750101&endDate=19811231&publ ishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

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this USSR-Instigated terrorism. ‘In essence, the US put itself on Russia’s side.’”53 As seen above, the Argentine junta preferred to publically claim the U.S. as an ally, but Chile’s use of the spectacle of violence in such a public embarrassment to the U.S. government forced Pinochet’s regime into a position where the U.S. appeared to side with the enemy. The author of the document views the statements as normal rhetoric for Carvajal, but the public nature of his declaration took the author by surprise as he notes, “there is an unusual note of bitterness in his comments.”54 Again, the notion of public versus private coincides with political violence as much as words. These comments not only reflect U.S.-Chilean relations of the time, but also the longer period Pinochet’s regime held under the more understanding presidencies of Richard

Nixon and Gerald Ford compared to Argentina’s single year with President Ford.

I utilize distinct variations between Operation Condor and the internal struggles of the

Southern Cone to analyze the role of violent performances and display dissimilarities in U.S.-

Chile and U.S.-Argentine relations. U.S. negotiations over human rights abuses, based on internal violence, took a similar route in both countries. Just as in Argentina, high ranking

Chilean officers met and negotiated with the most influential and powerful U.S. officials over the subject of human rights violations. In September of 1977, General Pinochet discussed internal human rights issues with U.S. President Jimmy Carter at the White House. Pinochet legitimized

53 Ibid., “Foreign Minister Criticizes U.S. Human Rights Policy,” (E3876) [UNCLASSIFIED], June 9, 1977, 1, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Foreign+Minister+Criticizes+U.S.+Human+Rights+Policy&be ginDate=19750101&endDate=19811231&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

54 Ibid., 2.

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the performance of violence with the transformation of DINA into the CNI and the Chilean perception of how many international subversives and terrorists operated within Chile.55

President Carter’s tone remains suggestive and non-declarative throughout the meeting and displays the lack of U.S. control over its Southern Cone allies, as well as its willingness to manipulate and pressure the military leaders to gain control and maintain alliances in the region.

President Carter’s suggestion for U.N. investigators to monitor the violence in Chile signals manipulative tactics.56 Two non-publicized observers that had to confirm findings with the junta represented the only concession Pinochet permitted. Although appearing superficial and ineffective, the process displays President Carter negotiating with a smaller power in order to permit the U.S. government to maintain legitimacy on the world stage as a firm supporter of human rights, while promoting solidarity with the Pinochet regime. President Carter’s tactics imply that Chile needed to prove its compliance to the global community and that if Pinochet’s commitment to human rights improvement remained true, then the observers would find no improprieties and Chile could emerge from isolation. U.S. perception of violent spectacles in the

Southern Cone built off of negotiations with the group as separate entities. However, the greatest concern displayed in U.S. documents comes from situations connected to Operation Condor and

Southern Cone military-intelligence cooperation outside of official U.S. monitoring.

Individual relations with Southern Cone military regimes permitted the U.S. officials to believe they possessed more control both over regional relations and promoting restraint in the field of the spectacles of violence and absence. In the aforementioned meeting featuring U.S.

55 Carter, Jimmy (President), To: Augusto Pinochet (President), “President Carter President Pinochet Bilateral,” (Case # NLC 76-13), September 5, 1977, 4, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=President+Carter+President%09Pinochet+Bilateral.&beginDate =19750101&endDate=19811231&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=.

56 Ibid., 5.

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Secretary of State Kissinger and Argentine Foreign Minister Guzzetti, a brief mention of regional cooperation generated the one reference by the document’s author on Kissinger’s tone. When

Minister Guzzetti offers a veiled suggestion of the existence of Operation Condor, the author labels Kissinger’s response as sharp and displays his concern that the international response to terrorism relied solely on military responses (which it did) and less on economic solutions.57

Kissinger’s reaction only dissipates when Guzzetti tells him what he wanted to hear and knowledge of Operation Condor points to this as a tactical response to Kissinger’s attitude.

An INR document from the following year, 1977, provides the U.S. perspective of the possible political side of the Condor union in a negative light for U.S. interests. The author argues, “The bloc is or will be anti-US in nature, i.e., a reaction to US policy on human rights.”58

This argument points to a fear that the U.S. government could lose the façade of control in the region if the military governments banded together in the face of U.S. pressures to handle their wars against subversion without political violence. Human rights abuses and international images varying between individual countries promoted U.S. suspicion that an open political bloc formation lacked credibility, but secretive Condor Operations remained a distinct possibility. The author notes, “While Argentina’s human rights record over the past 18 months has been quantitatively worse than Chile’s, President Videla, recognizing that Chile has a worse international image, has determinedly avoided the appearance of close political cooperation with

Chile.”59 U.S. officials relied on international legitimacy concerns to divide and conquer a

57 U.S. State Department, “Memorandum of Conversation,” (X3) [UNCLASSIFIED], June 6, 1976, 8-9, http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB133/19760610%20Memorandum%20of%20Conversation%20c lean.pdf.

58 Unknown, “South Americas Southern Cone Bloc in Formation,” (AB005) [DECAPTIONED], October 5, 1977, 1, http://foia.state.gov/Search/results.aspx?searchText=Operation+Condor&beginDate=19750101&endDate=1981123 1&publishedBeginDate=&publishedEndDate=&caseNumber=. 59 Ibid., 7.

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Southern Cone bloc and permit the U.S. to influence and negotiate with Southern Cone governments over human rights abuses on an individual basis. U.S. government analysis reflects the success of the spectacle of absence over the spectacle of violence in maintaining international legitimacy and how the example of Pinochet’s Chile permitted the Argentine junta to have a less hampered relationship with the U.S. during the Dirty War. The spectacle of absence permitted the Argentine junta to have a better international image which opened more avenues for non-U.S. relationships. Thus, Argentina possessed more leverage in negotiations with the structural power of the U.S. than Pinochet’s Chile and the political isolation fostered by its numerous performances of the spectacle of violence.

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Conclusion

The Argentine junta’s adoption of the spectacle of absence represents a revolutionary shift in the performance of violence during Latin America’s Cold War. Violent spectacles served all manners of regimes throughout history as a means of communication amongst common enemies, dominator and dominated, and personal/political rivals. However, the Argentine junta’s employment of the spectacle of absence reflected the unique geopolitical position and historical trends of the country during the 1970s in both a global and internal context. To view the violent tactics of the Argentine junta as a reaction against the subversive liberations enacted under the

Peronist Reformation government of Héctor Cámpora and the guerrilla activities of the early

1970s would oversimplify the complexities of the military’s choice of violent spectacle.

Argentine military officials negotiated with the structural power of the U.S. government and the global perceptions of political violence in relation to human rights abuses, as well as the limitations of internal legitimacy production when the majority of the population remained both in a state of fear and excluded from political processes. The junta’s refusal to spare the guerrilla organizations and those same organizations’ refusal to cease revolutionary violence constructed a total war in which both camps employed violent spectacles they believed served their own political purposes. However, the guerrilla forces maintained the spectacle of violence while the junta transformed the status quo and evolved political violence in response to the post-human rights legistlation world with which the junta hoped to align.

Operation Condor embodied the duality of violent spectacles and the temporary unity of the military juntas and dictatorships of the Southern Cone. As shown above, the Chileans performed the most public acts of violence through their Condor Operations. While a few

Argentine operations appear in the documented history of the organization, they display the

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spectacle of absence and occurred quietly and covertly so as to only appear in declassified documents, rather than news reports and public conversation. Operation Condor displays the uniqueness of the Argentine junta’s employment of the spectacle of absence through the tactical preferences of their neighbors’ operations. The clandestine nature of this organization reflects the shift in global and regional politics which forced political violence, from the national government level, underground in countries who identified themselves with the pro-human rights factions of the Cold War.

Repression and resistance flowed outward from the Argentine military’s institutional occupation of the state space. The military junta represented exclusionary politics which detached the popular sphere from an influential relationship with the state space. The junta’s exclusionary governance placed the military in a position of opposition against the humanity of the country, despite its nationalistic propaganda and self-identification as the protector of the

Argentine people. Nationalist ideology created a desire for internal legitimacy which remained unachievable through the use of the spectacle of violence. The secrecy and opaqueness of the spectacle of absence provided a means to attempt to disguise or obscure the violent war which occurred throughout the country at all levels of society. Military occupation of the state space also removed traditional margins for error because of a lack of subordination to a civilian government. A military junta as the national government placed all blame for failures and risks of internal and international consequences on the traditional guardians of the country and its citizens. Militaries embody national tools with which to bring violence upon enemies. From an occupational perspective, politicians employ words to achieve goals and soldiers utilize action.

The spectacle of absence embodies a hybridization of politics and violence. Citizens receive violence, but the tactical implementation of absence and disappearance generate avenues for

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debate over whether the violence occurred at all. Despite the dismissal of politicians and the forced separation of the state and popular spaces, the evolution of violent spectacles displays the politics and negotiations of violence from an institution whose sole purpose remained connected to the use of violence to defeat or control opposition.

Political theorist Hannah Arendt once argued, “Violence can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it.”1 Portions of her hypothesis are convincing, but others lack substance. In

1976 Argentina, political violence and economics destroyed the legitimacy of Isabel Perón’s government and rendered it powerless. However, while military violence harmed the legitimacy of the military, guerrilla violence outweighed the legitimacy downfalls of institutionalized powers and permitted the Argentine junta a relatively receptive populace to its seizure of power.

Legitimacy commonly grants power or shifts power from one person or group to another and violence harms legitimacy. Therefore, violence possesses the ability to remove and replace power in certain circumstances. However, O’Donnell’s argument from my introduction asserts that governments such as the Argentine junta employed coercion in the absence of traditional legitimacy garnering activities to create different forms of legitimacy through apathy and silence.

The Argentine junta displayed its willingness to increase violence in order to solidify its power.

Then, the junta’s security forces utilized the spectacle of absence in order to maintain a certain level of international legitimacy which could permit economic woes to remain above their internal legitimacy concerns. Arendt had a point, but violence can garner and maintain power as long as other factors, such as international support and economic performance remain above a level which could lead to massive resistance and a complete loss of legitimacy which, in turn,

1 Hannah Arendt, On Violence, (Boston: Mariner Books, 1970), 56.

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removes power from the leading group and deposits it elsewhere. At its core, violence embodies active power because violence has the ability to influence individual agency.

Spectacles of violence and absence embody modes of conveying messages at the most primal levels of non-verbal communication. Violent performances of the Dirty War and

Operation Condor rendered the old phrase, ‘meaningless violence,’ meaningless. Violence generated a plethora of meanings for both those who committed the acts and those who received them. Wars cease without some form of meaning for both sides because of the necessity for legitimization for the performance of violence to armed combatants. Argentine military instructors, guerrilla ideologues, news authors, parents, and communal conversations developed legitimacy for certain performances and delegitimized others in order to repress or resist ideological ‘others’. Between combatants, the Dirty War represented a dialogue of power and resistance through the medium of violent spectacles. For those caught in the middle, without violent voices of their own, the junta and guerrillas delivered violent monologues. Dirty War violence displayed organizational and structural power to all members of Argentine society. A society of fear is the frequent result of this violent discussion from the memory of those who witnessed it. Fear fueled the Dirty War through fears of communist intrusion, authoritarian repression, and of raising a voice of condemnation against either aggressor to cease the terror.

An integral feature of the Argentine junta’s employment of the spectacle of absence corresponds with their desire to identify with the anti-communist crusade of the U.S. government and the necessity of maintaining international legitimacy to protect and foster sources of support and investment. Both non-verbal and verbal communication came to the forefront in the negotiations between the Argentine and the U.S. governments. Argentine military officials utilized the spectacle of absence to hide evidence of political violence from foreign observers. In

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the absence of evidence, the junta used a smokescreen of denial and semantics to maintain positive relationships with international allies. This verbal defense used the history of guerrilla violence from all sides of the political spectrum, prior to military rule, to disguise and reinterpret disappearances and political murders within Argentina. Argentine Condor missions which lacked the spectacle of violence, as opposed to Chile, continued to promote some U.S. officials to believe that the Argentina junta’s performances of violence remained much tamer than human rights organizations and victims of repression claimed. U.S. officials did not represent the entire international audience for the spectacle of absence and the junta’s decision to play to a broader audience permitted the Argentine junta to seek aid away from the U.S. government in the event of political turmoil in that relationship.

Finally, the spectacle of absence truly represents a sleight of hand performance. Sleight of hand is a method of illusion and manipulation, but not magic. Argentine military and security officials used the spectacle of absence to disappear human beings and distracted the intended audiences with a war against subversion/communism and a mirage of denial and manipulative rhetoric. In the end, the trick received no applause and the vast majority of the vanished individuals never returned to the ‘stage’ of life. The illusion did not represent the disappearance.

Hopes for friends and loved ones to reappear was the illusion. Institutionalization of the spectacle of absence provides a watershed moment in the history of violence in the Southern

Cone during the shifting political and human rights landscape of the 1970s. Despite the ultimate failure of this tactical shift to convince the internal and external populations of compliance with international law, it displayed the new ways in which the Argentine military sought to reorganize the country. It represented the junta’s attempt to better the lives of the Argentine people while

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refusing to abandon the military’s structural purpose of violence and domination, as well as its war against ideologies incompatible with its worldview.

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Evita Montonera: Revista Oficial de Montoneros. Año 1, No. 4. Abril 1975. http://www.ruinasdigitales.com/revistas/Evita%20Montonera%2004.pdf. Accessed October 6, 2014. --. Año 1, No. 7. Septiembre 1975. http://www.ruinasdigitales.com/revistas/Evita%20Montonera%2007.pdf. Accessed October 6, 2014. --. Año 1, No. 8. Octubre 1975. http://www.ruinasdigitales.com/revistas/Evita%20Montonera%2008.pdf. Accessed October 6, 2014. --. Año 2. No. 13. Abril-Mayo 1976. http://www.ruinasdigitales.com/revistas/Evita%20Montonera%2013.pdf. Accessed October 6, 2014. --. Año 2. No. 14. Octubre 1976. http://www.ruinasdigitales.com/revistas/Evita%20Montonera%2014.pdf. Accessed October 6, 2014. --. Año de la Resistencia Popular. No. 16. Marzo 1977. http://www.ruinasdigitales.com/revistas/Evita%20Montonera%2016.pdf. Accessed October 6, 2014. --. Año de la Resistencia Popular. No. 18. Octubre 1977. http://www.ruinasdigitales.com/revistas/Evita%20Montonera%2019.pdf. Accessed October 6, 2014. Graham-Yooll, Andrew. A State of Fear: Memories of Argentina’s Nightmare. (London: Eland Publishing Limited, 2009). Low, Stephen. To: General Scowcroft. “Disarray in Chile Policy.” [Action]. July 1, 1975. Partnoy, Alicia. The Little School: Tales of Disappearance and Survival. (San Francisco: Midnight Editions, 1998). Schlaudeman, Harry W. (ARA). To: The Secretary. “Operation Condor.” (E1) [UNCLASSIFIED]. August 30, 1976. http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB199/19760830.pdf. Accessed October 5, 2014. --. “Operation Condor.” (E3) [UNCLASSIFIED]. October 8, 1976. http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB199/19761008.pdf. Accessed October 5, 2014. --.“The ‘Third World War’ and South America.” (AO003A) [UNCLASSIFIED]. August 3, 1976. http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB416/docs/0000A02E.pdf. Accessed October 5, 2014.

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Timerman, Jacobo. Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number. (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981). Unknown. “‘Condor One’ Cable to Paraguay.” July 17, 1976. [Obtained by John Dinges]. http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB125/condor13.pdf. Accessed October 5, 2014. --. “Documento Final de la Junta Militar Sobre la Guerra Contra la Subversión y el Terrorismo.” (AJ001). April 28, 1983. http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB85/830428%200000B044.pdf. Accessed October 5, 2014. --. “El Ejército de Hoy.” 17 de Agosto de 1976. http://www.ruinasdigitales.com/revistas/dictadura/Dictadura%20 %20El%20Ejercito%20Hoy.pdf. Accessed January 28, 2015. U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). “Directorate of National Intelligence (DINA) Expands Operations and Facilities.” April 15, 1975. http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/docs/doc25.pdf. Accessed October 6, 2014. --. “U.S. Milgroup, Situation Report #2.” (APPENDIX 1). October 1, 1973. http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/docs/doc21.pdf. Accessed October 6, 2014. U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). “Direccion de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA).” January 21, 1982. http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/docs/doc02.pdf. Accessed October 6, 2014. --. “Operation Condor Cable.” (CHILBOM). September 28, 1976. http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/nsaebb8.htm. Accessed October 6, 2014. U.S. State Department. “Argentina: Six Months of Military Government.” (AB004) [UNCLASSIFIED]. September 30, 1976. http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB104/Doc3%20760930.pdf. Accessed October 5, 2014. --. “ARA-CIA Weekly Meeting – 30 July, 1976: ‘Operation Condor.’” (WI0365) [UNCLASSIFIED]. August 3, 1976. http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB125/condor04.pdf. Accessed October 5, 2014. --. “ARA-CIA Weekly Meeting – 27 August, 1976: ‘Operation Condor.’” (WI37) [UNCLASSIFIED]. August 30, 1976. http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB125/condor08.pdf. Accessed October 5, 2014.

129

--. “Interview of Gwenda Loken Lopez.” (CU132) [UNCLASSIFIED]. October 4, 1976. http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB104/Doc4%20761004.pdf. Accessed October 5, 2014. --. “Memorandum of Conversation.” (X3) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 6, 1976. http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB133/19760610%20Memorandum% 20of%20Conversation%20clean.pdf. Accessed October 5, 2014. --. “Secretary’s Meeting with Argentine Foreign Minister Guzzetti.” (X3) [UNCLASSIFIED]. October 7, 1976. http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB104/Doc6%20761007.pdf. Accessed October 5, 2014. --. To: The Ambassador. “Conversation with Argentine Intelligence Source.” (BO005) [UNCLASSIFIED]. April 7, 1980. http://http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB416/docs/800407dos.pdf. Accessed October 5, 2014. --. To: American Embassy in Buenos Aires. “Possible International Implications Deaths of Political Figures Abroad.” (DD015) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 4, 1976. http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB125/condor01.pdf. Accessed October 5, 2014. --. “Operation Condor.” (EE1) [UNCLASSIFIED]. August 23, 1976. http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB312/5_19760823_Operation_Cond or.PDF. Accessed October 5, 2014. --. To: American Embassy in Santiago. “Operation Condor.” (WI13) [UNCLASSIFIED]. October 4, 1976. http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB125/condor12.pdf. Accessed October 5, 2014. Verbitsky, Horatio. The Flight: Confessions of an Argentine Dirty War. (New York: New Press, 1996). Videla, Jorge Raphael (General). “Mensaje pronuciado el día 24 de septiembre de 1976 por el Excelentísimo Señor Presidente de la Nación, teniente general Jorge Rafael Videla, arengando a las tropas formadas en la Plaza «General Belgrano», en la Ciudad de San Miguel de Tucumán, durante la realización del Acto Central de Homenaje a los miembros del Ejército Argentino muertos o heridos en la lucha contra la subversión, así como a aquellos integrantes de la Fuerza que se destacaron por su heroicidad en actos de combate.” In Mensajes Presidenciales: Proceso de Reoranizacion Nacional. Tomo 1. Republica Argentina. 24 de Marzo de 1976. Pg. 89-91. http://www.ruinasdigitales.com/revistas/dictadura/Dictadura%20- %20Discursos%20de%20Videla%20-%201976.pdf. Accessed February 4, 2015. Videla, Jorge Raphael (General), Emilio Eduardo Massera (Admiral), and Orlando Ramón Agosti (General). “Proclama del 24 de Marzo de 1976.” March 24, 1976. http://www.elhistoriador.com.ar/documentos/dictadura/proclama_del_24_de_marzo_de_ 1976.php. Accessed October 6, 2014.

130

The following may be found at: http://foia.state.gov/Search/Search.aspx. American Consulate General Guayaquil. To: U.S. Secretary of State (SecState). “Disappearance of Chilean Citizens in Argentina.” (X062) [UNCLASSIFIED]. December 4, 1978. American Embassy in Brasilia. To: U.S. SecState. “Argentina Allegedly Extradites Brazilian Leftist to Chile.” (DD011) [UNCLASSIFIED]. May 31, 1976. --. “Argentine Refugees Arrested in Sao Paulo.” (CU185) [UNCLASSIFIED]. July 7, 1977. American Embassy in Buenos Aires. To: American Embassy in Madrid. “Navy Mechanical School Interrogation Center.” (M286) [UNCLASSIFIED]. December 14, 1978. --. To: DIA. “Chilean Gen Carlos Prats Gonzalez Assassinated.” [UNCLASSIFIED]. September 29, 1974. --. To: U.S. SecState. “AAA Issues New List.” (H070) [UNCLASSIFIED]. May 12, 1975. --. “AAA Warning to PepsiCo Executive.” (H009) [UNCLASSIFIED]. February 11, 1975. --. “Abducted Human Rights Activists, Timerman and Other Cases.” (D032) [UNCLASSIFIED]. December 15, 1977. --. “Abduction and Murder of Uruayan Refugees Michelini ad Gutierrez; Status of Ferreira.[sic]” (I051) [UNCLASSIFIED]. May 24, 1976. --. “Admiral Massera Again Talks of Divisions Within Armed Forces.” (D011) [UNCLASSIFIED]. January 27, 1977. --. “Admiral Massera Meets Foreign Correspondents.” (E31) [UNCLASSIFIED]. September 30, 1976. --. “Admiral Massera Sees Terrorism as Part of World War.” (BR010) [UNCLASSIFIED]. May 15, 1977. --. “Admiral Massera Sends Letter to Argentine Jewish Leader.” (J210) [UNCLASSIFIED]. July 14, 1977. --. “Admiral Massera Speaks of Divisions in Armed Forces.” (DOC_NUMBER: 76BUENOS08000) [UNCLASSIFIED]. December 8, 1976. --. “Alleged Combined Terrorist Activities.” (H021) [UNCLASSIFIED]. February 26, 1975. --. “Alleged GOA Plans to Deport Chileans.” (CU015) [UNCLASSIFIED]. May 10, 1976. --. “Ambassador and Gen. Viola Discuss Human Rights Cases.” (L296) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 15, 1978. --. “Ambassador Meets with SecGeneral of Argentine Air Force.” (D049) [UNCLASSIFIED]. February 7, 1979.

131

--. “Ambassador’s Conversation with Admiral Massera.” (ACOO3) [UNCLASSIFIED]. March 15, 1976. --. “Ambassador’s Meeting with Junta Member General Viola.” (AT071) [UNCLASSIFIED]. January 16, 1979. --. “American Businessman’s Home Raided by Apparent Para-Military or Police Group.” (I102) [UNCLASSIFIED]. August 10, 1976. --. “Amnesty International Report on Argentina.” (J122) [UNCLASSIFIED]. May 5, 1977. --. “Analysis of Christmas Release List.” (L026) [UNCLASSIFIED]. January 12, 1978. --. “Analysis of Political Situation Wake of Military Crisis.” (BF023) [UNCLASSIFIED]. September 9, 1975. --. “Anti-Semitism in Argentina.” (P141) [UNCLASSIFIED]. October 29, 1980. --. “Argentine Guarantees for Threatened Peruvian Students.” (I146) [UNCLASSIFIED]. September 13, 1976. --. “Argentine Involvement in Lima Kidnapping.” (PO84) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 18, 1980. --. “Argentine Refugees in Brazil.” (CU175) [UNCLASSIFIED]. April 26, 1977. --. “Argentines Question GOA Accounts of Terrorist Confrontations and Release Lists.” (J022) [UNCLASSIFIED]. January 25, 1977. --. “Army Commences Anti-Guerrilla Campaign in Tucumán.” (H008) [UNCLASSIFIED]. February 12, 1975. --. “Army Outlines New Anti-Subversive Procedures.” (M199) [UNCLASSIFIED]. September 25, 1978. --. “Army Views on Changing Argentina’s Pattern of Leadership.” (DOC_NUMBER: 77BUENOS09571) [UNCLASSIFIED]. December 14, 1977. --. “Arrested Israelis Freed.” (I087) [UNCLASSIFIED]. August 3, 1976. --. “Assassination, Armando Canziani.” (H003) [UNCLASSIFIED]. January 27, 1975. --. “Asst Sec Todman’s Meeting with President Videla.” (J275) [UNCLASSIFIED]. August 23, 1977. --. “Attempted Assassination President of Argentina.” (I176) [UNCLASSIFIED]. October 3, 1976. --. “Balbin Turns His Back on Disappeared.” (P062) [UNCLASSIFIED]. May 6, 1980. --. “Body of Ex-Bolivian President Torres Found.” (V014) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 2, 1976.

132

--. “Bombing Headquarters Police Intelligence, Federal Police Argentina.” (V040) [UNCLASSIFIED]. July 1, 1976. --. “Bombing of Navy Chief of Staff’s Residence.” (M070) [UNCLASSIFIED]. August 1, 1978. --. “British Businessman Charles Lockwood Rescued After Second Kidnapping.” (H088) [UNCLASSIFIED]. September 3, 1975. --. “Chilean Refugees in Argentina.” (H082) [UNCLASSIFIED]. August 6, 1975. --. “Chilean Refugees in Argentina.” (I032) [UNCLASSIFIED]. May 13, 1976. --. “Church and State: Catholic Church Relationship with GOA One Year After Coup.” (BN034) [UNCLASSIFIED]. April 14, 1977. --. “Church and State: The Catholic Bishops Steer Middle Course.” (June 9, 1976) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 9, 1976. --. “Clandestine Prisoners: A Special Assessment.” (N224PB1) [UNCLASSIFIED]. April 17, 1979. --. “Clandestine Prisons.” (O076) [UNCLASSIFIED]. September 6, 1979. --. “Continuing Terrorism Problem.” (H095) [UNCLASSIFIED]. October 28, 1975. --. “Conversation with Jacobo Timerman.” (I174) [UNCLASSIFIED]. September 28, 1976. --. “Conversation with President Videla on Nuns Death.” (L187) [UNCLASSIFIED]. April 9, 1978. --. “Country Laws on Terrorism: Update.” (AE014) [UNCLASSIFIED]. April 5, 1979. --. “Coup in Argentina: SITREP No. 1.” (E121) [UNCLASSIFIED]. March 23, 1976. --. “Coup in Argentina: SITREP No. 2.” (E122) [UNCLASSIFIED]. March 23, 1976. --. “Coup in Argentina: SITREP No. 3.” (E123) [UNCLASSIFIED]. March 23, 1976. --. “Coup in Argentina: SITREP No. 4.” (E124) [UNCLASSIFIED]. March 23, 1976. --. “Coup in Argentina: SITREP No. 5.” (E125) [UNCLASSIFIED]. March 23, 1976. --. “Coup in Argentina: SITREP No. 8.” (E128) [UNCLASSIFIED]. March 23, 1976. --. “Coup in Argentina: SITREP No. 9.” (E130) [UNCLASSIFIED]. March 23, 1976. --. “Creation of Planning Secretariat and Military Command Changes.” (E29) [UNCLASSIFIED]. August 11, 1976. --. “Data on Host Country Law and Policy Concerning International Terrorism.” (BF008) [UNCLASSIFIED]. October 27, 1975.

133

--. “Deaths and Disappearances of Chilean Extremists.” (BV003) [UNCLASSIFIED]. August 7, 1975. --. “Declining Montonero Terrorism.” (P070) [UNCLASSIFIED]. May 22, 1980. --. “Directed Assassinations by Tupamaros.” (I090) [UNCLASSIFIED]. August 5, 1976. --. “Disappearance of Ceramics Workers in 1977.” (A056) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 13, 1978. --. “Disappearance of Mothers Group’s Supporters: Latest Developments.” (K272) [UNCLASSIFIED]. December 19, 1977. --. “Disappearance of Released Prisoners.” (BB070) [UNCASSIFIED]. April 5, 1978. --. “Embassy’s Request to GOA for Investigation Into Action Taken Against Jehovah’s Witnesses.” (M254) [UNCLASSIFIED]. November 13, 1978. --. “ERP Commandeers TV Station, Broadcasts Statement.” (I209) [UNCLASSIFIED]. November 4, 1976. --. “ERP Plan to kidnap Agricultural Attaché Dr. Chase (APHIS).” (H064) [UNCLASSIFIED]. May 1, 1975. --. “ERP Ultimatum.” (H007) [UNCLASSIFIED]. February 3, 1975. --. “Expanding Military Role in Anti Subversive Fight.” (H101) [UNCLASSIFIED]. November 20, 1975. --. “Exploitation of Human Rights Issues by Montoneros.” (I191) [UNCLASSIFIED]. October 18, 1976. --. “Explosion in Precinct Station - Resurgence of Terrorism.” (L186) [UNCLASSIFIED]. April 9, 1978. --. “Ex-President Torres of Bolivia Reportedly Kidnapped.” (V012) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 1, 1976. --. “Ferreira Leaves Argentina for Paris.” (V010) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 1, 1976. --. “Flower Bombs, Package Bombs.” (I114) [UNCLASSIFIED]. August 26, 1976. --. “Foreign Embassies Reaction to Missing Nationals, Refugees, Asylees.” (I105) [UNCLASSIFIED]. August 11, 1976. --. “Former Triple A Member Talking to Congressional Committee.” (I007) [UNCLASSIFIED]. February 5, 1976. --. “Further Analysis of Argentine Turmoil.” (E5o) [UNCLASSIFIED]. December 17, 1975. --. “Gems from General Videla.” (BN006) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 9, 1976.

134

--. “General Videla Begins to Control Right-Wing Terrorism?” (I019) [UNCLASSIFIED]. April 25, 1976. --. “GOA Bans Anti-Semitic Publications.” (I149) [UNCLASSIFIED]. September 14, 1976. --. “GOA Issues Statement on Michelini, Et Al, Murders.” (V008) [UNCLASSIFIED]. October 27, 1976. --. “GOA Official Proposes U.S.-Argentine Dialogue on Human Rights.” (DD164) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 1, 1977. --. “GOA Silent on Uruguay Revelation of Terrorist Plot.” (I201) [UNCLASSIFIED]. November 1, 1976. --. “Gravier/Timerman Investigation and Related.” (AF003) [UNCLASSIFIED]. April 24, 1977. --. “Grenade Launchers Found in Front of Sheraton Hotel.” (I178) [UNCLASSIFIED]. October 5, 1976. --. “Harassment of Mothers Group.” (L314) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 22, 1978. --. “Henry Kissinger Visit to Argentina.” (BL008) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 26, 1978. --. “Human Rights, Beagle Affair, Presidency, Etc. Discussed by General Viola.” (P068) [UNCLASSIFIED]. May 15, 1979. --. “Human Rights Roundup Through June 16, 1978.” (L305) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 18, 1978. --. “Human Rights Situation in Argentina.” (I116) [UNCLASSIFIED]. August 27, 1976. --. “Human Rights Summary: September 27 – October 3, 1980.” (P129) [UNCLASSIFIED]. October 2, 1980. --. “Human Rights Violations in Argentina.” (BF001) [UNCLASSIFIED]. February 11, 1975. --. “Industrial-Economic Subversives.” (H0100) [UNCLASSIFIED]. November 16, 1975. --. “Industrial Terrorism: Guerrilla Warfare on the Factory Floor.” (AE002) [UNCLASSIFIED]. December 1, 1975. --. “Israeli View Human Rights and Anti- Semitism in Argentina.” (DD020) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 23, 1976. --. “Junta Elaborating Security Policy.” (E134) [UNCLASSIFIED]. March 25, 1976. --. “Kidnapped Children Returned Safely.” (V011) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 1, 1976. --. “Kidnapping Argentine Air Force Officer.” (I028) [UNCLASSIFIED]. May 6, 1976. --. “Kidnapping British Businessman and Wife.” (V029) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 20, 1976. --. “Kidnapping of US Official.” (H006). January 31, 1975.

135

--. “Killing of Catholic Priests and Nuns Alleged to be Action of GOA Security Forces.” (I055) [UNCLASSIFIED]. July 6, 1976. --. “Kissinger Conversation with Argentine Jewish Leader.” (BL007) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 25, 1978. --. “Maggio Letter on Argentine Navy Mechanics School.” (Y001) [UNCLASSIFIED]. January 9, 1979. --. “Massera Publicly Answers Videla on the ‘Fourth Man’ Issue.” (DOC_NUMBER: 77BUENOS09779) [UNCLASSIFIED]. December 21, 1977. --. “Military Take Over Fight Against Subversion.” (H091) [UNCLASSIFIED]. October 9, 1975. --. “Military Takes Up Positions.” (E116) [UNCLASSIFIED]. March 22, 1976. --. “Military vs Subversion vs Damasco.” (BF022) [UNCLASSIFIED]. September 9, 1975. --. “Montoneros Attack Against Military.” (H089) [UNCLASSIFIED]. October 5, 1975. --. “Montoneros Disclaim Moro Kidnapping Involvement.” (L207) [UNCLASSIFIED]. April 16, 1978. --. “Montoneros Kill 16 in Police Bus Bombing.” (I147) [UNCLASSIFIED]. September 13, 1976. --. “Montoneros Threaten Ford Executives.” (I134) [UNCLASSIFIED]. September 2, 1976. --. “More Priests Abducted, Found Murdered.” (I065) [UNCLASSIFIED]. July 21, 1976. --. “Mothers Group Disappearances: ‘Montonero’ Document Becoming Inoperative.” (K279) [UNCLASSIFIED]. December 21, 1977. --. “Mrs. Peron Versus the Military.” (E70) [UNCLASSIFIED]. January 13, 1976. --. “Navy Human Rights Initiatives and Massera Visit to Washington.” (BH109) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 26, 1978. --. “New Right-Wing Terrorist Group Emerges.” (H085) [UNCLASSIFIED]. August 18, 1975. --. “New Threat to Freedom of the Press.” (H096) [UNCLASSIFIED]. October 30, 1975. --. “Newspaper Bombing.” (H002) [UNCLASSIFIED]. January 27, 1975. --. “Overview of Terrorist Situation in Argentina.” (H004) [UNCLASSIFIED]. January 29, 1975. --. “Payments by American Companies to Guerrilla Organizations.” (BN036) [UNCLASSIFIED]. April 21, 1977. --. “Plan to Kidnap Ambassador Hill.” (BF002) [UNCLASSIFIED]. March 8, 1975. --. “Political Violence and Terrorist Activities.” (K135) [UNCLASSIFIED]. November 3, 1977.

136

--. “Political Violence in Argentina.” (BF004) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 15, 1975. --. “Possession of SAM-7 Missiles by ERP an Attempted Sabotage GOA Aircraft.” (I042) [UNCLASSIFIED]. May 20, 1976. --. “Purge of ‘Marxist Infiltration’ at Provincial University.” (I089) [UNCLASSIFIED]. August 5, 1976. --. “Railway Strike and Mounting Terrorist Violence in Buenos Aires.” (K118) [UNCLASSIFIED]. October 26, 1977. --. “Reappearances Reported.” (M260) [UNCLASSIFIED]. November 16, 1978. --. “‘Red Brigade’, Terrorist Organization, Argentina.” (I046) [UNCLASSIFIED]. May 23, 1976. --. “Refugee Offices Ransacked; UNHCR Reports 4 Refugee.” (CU173) [UNCLASSIFIED]. March 14, 1977. --. “Refugee Records Stolen in Armed Break-In.” (V022) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 9, 1976. --. “Report of Nuns Death.” (L157) [UNCLASSIFIED]. March 29, 1978. --. “Reported Arrest of Chilean Citizen in Argentina.” (I023) [UNCLASIFIED]. May 2, 1976. --. “Return of Montoneros to Argentina.” (0146) [UNCLASSIFIED]. November 14, 1979. --. “Right-Wing Terrorism Since Lopez Rega.” (BF012) [UNCLASSIFIED]. December 8, 1975. --. “Rocket Attack of Government Building.” (L313) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 22, 1978. --. “Situation for Refugees Worsens.” (I062) [UNCLASSIFIED]. July 19, 1976. --. “South America: Southern Cone Security Practices.” (I068) [UNCLASSIFIED]. July 22, 1976. --. “Success Claimed for Army in Tucumán.” (H075) [UNCLASSIFIED]. May 26, 1975. --. “Summary of Basic Elements Involved in Gravier Scandal.” (J089) [UNCLASSIFIED]. April 17, 1977. --. “Summary of Terrorist Activities.” (J115) [UNCLASSIFIED]. May 3, 1977. --. “Summary of Terrorist and Related Activities.” (K280) [UNCLASSIFIED]. December 21, 1977. --. “Summary of Terrorist and Related Activities – Month of December, 1978.” (N025) [UNCLASSIFIED]. January 14, 1979. --. “Summary of Terrorist and Related Activity – Month of September, 1978.” (M235) [UNCLASSIFIED]. October 10, 1978.

137

--. “Sunday Afternoon with the Triple A.” (I104) [UNCLASSIFIED]. August 11, 1976. --. “Supreme Court and GOA Agee on Limit of Military Justice Jurisdiction.” (I184) [UNCLASSIFIED]. October 7, 1976. --. “Terrorism Roundup.” (H079) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 16, 1975. --. “Terrorist Activities in Buenos Aires.” (I018) [UNCLASSIFIED]. April 19, 1976. --. “Terrorist Attacks in Cordoba.” (H087) [UNCLASSIFIED]. August 28, 1975. --. “Terrorist Bomb in Defense Ministry Office Kills.” (I242) [UNCLASSIFIED]. December 15, 1976. --. “Terrorist Threat U.S. Business Firms Argentina.” (I091) [UNCLASSIFIED]. August 5, 1976. --. “Terrorists Assassinate Lanusse’s Daughter-In-Law; Make Attempt on General Vilas’s Life.” (I008) [UNCLASSIFIED]. February 10, 1976. --. “The Military Government After Four Months in Power.” (I070) [UNCLASSIFIED]. August 23, 1976. --. “The Problem of Those Who Disappeared.” (L139) [UNCLASSIFIED]. March 27, 1978. --. “The Tactic of Disappearance.” (P123) [UNCLASSIFIED]. September 25, 1980. --. “The Tarnowski Story Regarding ‘The List of 7500.’” (K283) [UNCLASSIFIED]. December 22, 1977. --. “Troubles in the Junta.” (K049) [UNCLASSIFIED]. September 21, 1977. --. “U.S. Shift Toward Massera?” (BB052) [UNCLASSIFIED]. February 14, 1978. --. “Uruguayans Reported Arrested.” (I037) [UNCLASSIFIED]. May 19, 1976. --. “Vatican Concerns on Human Rights.” (AT063) [UNCLASSIFIED]. January 3, 1979. --. “Videla Anticipates Junta Changes, a New ‘Fourth Man’ and His Political Proposal…” (DOC_NUMBER: 77BUENOS09753) [UNCLASSIFIED]. December 20, 1977. --. “Videla Interview with American Journalists.” (AY012) [UNCLASSIFIED]. December 13, 1976. --. “Videla Reiterates Moderate Line on Political, Economic and Internal Security Policies.” (V038) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 30, 1976. --. “Violence Against Argentine Jews.” (I038) [UNCLASSIFIED]. May 19, 1976. --. “Visit to Washington by Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo.” (M241) [UNCLASSIFIED] October 26, 1978. --. “Wave of Kidnapping in Cordoba.” (I002) [UNCLASSIFIED]. January 8, 1976.

138

--. “Wave of Right-Wing Murders.” (BF009) [UNCLASSIFIED]. December 2, 1975. --. “World Cup Security.” (BL005) [UNCLASSIFIED]. April 25, 1978. --. “W/W Abduction, Mistreatment and Release from Detention of AMCIT.” (CU022) [UNCLASSIFIED]. May 18, 1976. --. “19 Jehovah’s Witnesses Freed Without Charge Provinces Expel Jehovah’s Witnesses Children by Decree.” (L133) [UNCLASSIFIED]. March 21, 1977. [Actual document date March 22, 1978]. --. “25 Political Murders in 48 hours.” (H053) [UNCLASSIFIED]. March 23, 1975. --. “40 Jehovah’s Witnesses Detained in Police Raid in Mar del Plata.” (L130) [UNCLASSIFIED]. March 20, 1978. American Embassy in Caracas. To: U.S. SecState. “Orlando Bosch Interviewed by Blake Fleetwood.” (Nco49i) [UNCLASSIFIED]. March 30, 1977. American Embassy in La Paz. To: U.S. SecState. “Concern Over Bolivian ‘Desaparecidos’ in Argentina and Chile.” (A140) [UNCLASSIFIED]. October 17, 1979. American Embassy in Lima. To: American Embassy in Buenos Aires. “Talk of Possible Coup in Argentina.” (E6) [UNCLASSIFIED]. October 5, 1975. American Embassy in Madrid. To: U.S. SecState. “Resolution from the 15th Post War Congress of the Socialist International.” (Appendix No. 6). October 31, 1980. American Embassy in Montevideo. To: U.S. SecState. “Extradition of Terrorists.” (CU051) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 9, 1975. --. “GOU Provides More Info on Captured Terrorists and Their Plans.” (CU143) [UNCLASSIFIED]. October 29, 1976. --. “Jewish Community Target of Bombs.” (I148) [UNCLASSIFIED]. September 13, 1976. --. “Joint Forces Announce Results of Anti Tupamaro Operations.” (BV001) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 25, 1975. --. “Possible Meeting of Southern Cone Countries.” (K20A) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 2, 1977. American Embassy in Paris. To: U.S. SecState. “Revolutionary Coordinating Junta (JCR) Statement.” (I033) [UNCLASSIFIED]. May 16, 1976. American Embassy in Rome. To: U.S. SecState. “Request for U.S. Assistance in Finding Missing Parliamentarian.” (BH042) [UNCLASSIFIED]. January 11, 1978. American Embassy in Santiago. To: CIA. “Junta Follow-Up Activities to the Coup.” (504). September 15, 1976.

139

--. To: DIA. “Military Coup Planning for Morning of 11 Sep Confirmed.” [UNCLASSIFIED]. September 12, 1973. --. To: U.S. SecState. “Assassination of General Prats.” (E780) [UNCLASSIFIED]. October 23, 1974. --. “Changes in CNI.” (SI5). November 2, 1977. --. “Chile/El Salvador.” (IC042) [UNCLASSIFIED]. February 26, 1981. --. “Chilean Minister of Interior Addresses Nation.” (E4594) [UNCLASSIFIED]. October 19, 1978. --. “Chilean Security Agencies: Improved Practices, But Still Nasty.” (illegible marker no.) [UNCLASSIFIED]. April 27, 1977. --. “Death of an Army Intelligence Officer in Talca (South-Central Chile).” (E1096) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 16, 1975. --. “Deaths and Disappearances of Chilean Extremists.” (E1177) [UNCLASSIFIED]. July 24, 1975. --. “Deaths and Disappearances of Chilean Extremists: Argentine Involvement.” (E1247) [UNCLASSIFIED]. September 2, 1975. --. “DINA Operations.” (E943) [UNCLASSIFIED]. January 29, 1975. --. “Disappearance Among Chilean Extremists: Pressure on the Government.” (K283) [UNCLASSIFIED]. September 8, 1975. --. “Disappearance of Top Leader of Chilean MIR.” (E2805) [UNCLASSIFIED]. May 18, 1976. --. “Foreign Minister Criticizes U.S. Human Rights Policy.” (E3876) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 9, 1977. --. “GOC Intelligence Officer Comments on Campaign Against MIR.” [UNCLASSIFIED]. December 30, 1974. --. “Human Rights: Visit of Argentine Parliamentarians.” (E605) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 25, 1974. --. “Internal Security and Legal Developments.” (IB131) [Confidential]. June 18, 1980. --. “Internal Security: GOC Credits MIR with Bombing Argentine Airlines Officials.” (I071) [UNCLASSIFIED]. July 22, 1976. --. “Letelier/Moffitt Assassination Investigation.” (E21487) [UNCLASSIFIED]. August 20, 1978. --. “Letelier/Moffitt Case: Developments March 7.” (E4175) [DECONTROL]. March 7, 1978.

140

--. “Letelier/Moffitt Case: Embassy File on Michael Vernon Townley.” (E2347) [UNCLASSIFIED]. March 7, 1978. --. “Letelier/Moffitt Case: Meeting with Foreign Minister.” (IA213) [UNCLASSIFIED]. April 25, 1979. --. “Letelier/Moffitt – Part 1 of Etcheberry Translation of GOC Note.” (E4419) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 27, 1978. --. “Manuel Contreras Reported to Have Proposed Survival Strategy to Pinochet.” (E4436) [UNCLASSIFIED]. July 13, 1978. --. “MIR on the Run.” [UNCLASSIFIED]. December 4, 1974. --. “Nerve Gas and the Letelier/Moffitt Assassinations.” (NC068b) [UNCLASSIFIED]. December 28, 1976. --. “Overview of Human Rights Observance in Chile March 76 March 77.” (E3812) [UNCLASSIFIED]. March 30, 1977. --. “Possible International Implications of Violent Deaths of Political Figures Abroad.” (E2930) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 6, 1976. --. “Security Assistance Legislation of Chile and Argentina.” (IC060) [UNCLASSIFIED]. March 19, 1981. --. “Shooting Incident at Argentine Embassy.” (E302) [Unclassified]. January 3, 1974. --. “Subversive Red Boomerang Plot is Broken.” (E1434) [UNCLASSIFIED]. November 11, 1975. --. “The DINA/SNI Transformation.” (E3934) [UNCLASSIFIED]. August 18, 1977. --. “Two Mysterious Kidnappings.” (E221) [UNCLASSIFIED]. November 11, 1973. --. “Visa Eligibility MIR Members: MIR Profile.” (Illegible Code in Top Right, Beginning E2…) [UNCLASSIFIED]. March 10, 1976. American Embassy in Stockholm. To: U.S. SecState. “Mystery of Swedish National’s Disappearance Causes Further Deterioration in Swedish-Argentine Relations.” (J056) [UNCLASSIFIED]. March 13, 1977. --. “Montoneros Leaders Visits Sweden.” (K080) [UNCLASSIFIED]. October 4, 1977. American Embassy in Tel Aviv. To: U.S. SecState. “Israelis Arrested in Argentina.” (DD024) [UNCLASSIFIED]. July 28, 1976. Argentine Information Service Center (AISC). “Children ‘Disappeared’ in Argentina.” (AR081). May 11, 1978.

141

Amnesty International. “Abridged Version of Taped Testimony of Washington Perez (Sweden, August 1976).” (CV009B). July 31, 1976. --. “Amnesty International Doctors Find Lasting Efforts of Torture in Argentine Victims Copenhagen.” (AT203D). September 30, 1980. --. “List of Politically Motivated Deaths in Argentina Between 3 January and 3 June 1976.” (CU123B). July 1, 1976. Association of the Bar of the City of New York. “Report of the Mission of Lawyers Argentina: April 1-7, 1979.” (Yo22e). May 22, 1979. Through the U.S. State Department. Baucus, Max. To: Patricia Derian. “Secret Detention Camps Torture and Murder in Argentina.” (Z016A). April 14, 1980. Beal, Williams. To: The Ambassador. “Chrysler Marketing Manager Murdered.” (BN002) [UNCLASSIFIED]. April 13, 1976. Blystone, James J. To: The Ambassador. “Meeting with Argentine Intelligence Services.” (BO008) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 18, 1980. --. “Meeting with Argentine Intelligence Source.” (BO005) [UNCLASSIFIED]. April 6, 1980. --. “Monthly Status Report for December, 1978.” (BW002) [UNCLASSIFIED]. January 9, 1979. --. To: The Files. “Organizational Chart of 601.” (BO003A) [UNCLASSIFIED]. February 6, 1980. --. “Reorganization of 601.” (B003) [UNCLASSIFIED]. February 6, 1980. Buchanan, JE (INR/RAR). “Argentina: Bodies Washed Ashore.” (AA002) [UNCLASSIFIED]. January 23, 1979. --. “Argentina: The Flow of Violence.” (AR106E) [UNCLASSIFIED]. May 17, 1978. --. “Videla Presidency Troubled.” (RA004) [UNCLASSIFIED]. January 18, 1979. Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR). Saunders, Harold H. To: The Secretary. “Argentina: Division and Crisis.” (RA003) [UNCLASSIFIED]. February 9, 1976. --. “Trends in Human Rights in Argentina.” (AR122) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 22, 1978. Bushnell, John A. (ARA). To: Deputy Secretary. “Is the Argentine Navy on the Side of the Angels?” (AS005) [UNCLASSIFIED]. January 26, 1978. Campaign for the Abolition of Torture. “Argentina: Five Uruguayans Disappear.” (BT005) [URGENT ACTION]. April 22, 1976. Campbell, Ann C. To: Robert Packwood. “Concern Over Deaths of 119 Chilean Political Prisoners in Argentina.” (X1152). September 3, 1975.

142

Carter, Jimmy (President). To: Augusto Pinochet (President). “President Carter President Pinochet Bilateral.” (Case # NLC 76-13). September 5, 1977. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). “Briefing of Mil Leaders on Status of Detainees and Internal Political and Subversive Sit.” [SECRET]. December 18, 1974. --. “Chile: Revival of MIR Terrorism.” [SECRET]. August 7, 1980. --. “Disappearance of MIR Leader in Argentina on Way to Assume Leadership of MIR in Chile.” [SECRET]. April 29, 1976. --. “Latin American Trends Counterterrorism in South America.” [SECRET]. June 22, 1976. --. “Latin American Trends Southern Cone Counterterrorism Plans.” (54) [SECRET]. August 10, 1978. --. “Links Between PCCh and MIR and Concern They May Attract Government Repression.” [SECRET]. November 3, 1975. --. “Memorandum: Terrorism in South America.” [CONFIDENTIAL]. August 8, 1976. --. “Possible Attempt to Assassinate Chileans in Argentina.” [SECRET]. January 16, 1974. --. “Possible Plans of Chilean Army of National Liberation (ELN) to Kidnap Government Officials Abroad.” [SECRET]. January 26, 1975. --. “Weekly Summary – South America Cooperation Among Military Regimes.” [SECRET]. October 7, 1976. --. To: FBI. “Strategy of Chilean Government with Respect to Letelier Case, and Impact on Case on Stability of President Pinochet.” (624) [SECRET]. June 22, 1978. --. To: Files. “Comments on Coup and Plans of Military Government.” [SECRET]. September 21, 1973. Chaplin, Maxwell. “Estimate of Current Montonero Strength and National and International Activity.” (BN065) [UNCLASSIFIED]. September 26, 1977. Chief of Station Santiago. To: Chief Western Hemisphere Division. “The Finality of an Allende Victory.” (1181) [DISPATCH] [Secret]. March 9, 1970. Comisario Margaride. To: Ambassador Robert C. Hill. “Meeting with Comisario Margaride, Chief of Argentine Federal Police: Memorandum of Conversation.” (BC021) [UNCLASSIFIED]. March 3, 1975. Contreras, Jorge. “Nuts and Bolts of the Government’s Repression of Terrorism – Subversion.” (AZ086) [UNCLASSIFIED]. August 6, 1979. Corr, John. “Army Infighting Martinez de Hoz and His Team.” (AK054) [UNCLASSIFIED]. March 1, 1979.

143

--. “Conflict Within Army Hierarchy.” (AK139) [UNCLASSIFIED]. May 22, 1979. --. To: Francisco Basaldua. “Timerman, Army Views on Human Rights Violations by Security Forces, and Bernardo Neustadt.” (BM006) [UNCLASSIFIED]. May 8, 1978. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). “Chile – Terrorism Renewed.” (SECRET). June 17, 1975. --. To: Secretary. “Canal Zone Military Schools.” [UNCLASSIFIED]. November 10, 1977. --. “Chile: Air Force Leadership Protests Leigh’s Ouster.” [UNCLASSIFIED]. July 25, 1978. Derian, Patricia M. To: Frank Church. “Argentine ‘Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo.’” (AR155). July 25, 1978. Fascetto, Jorge. To: Raul Kraiselburd. “Disbanding of Provincial Police Anti-Terrorists Units.” (AS069) [UNCLASSIFIED]. February 25, 1979. Ferreira Aldunate, Wilson. To: Don Jorge Raphael Videla. “Within a Few Hours, I Will Take Refuge in the Embassy of a Democratic Country.” (CU004) [UNCLASSIFIED]. August 23, 1976. Freeman, AG (POL.). To: Nina Lindley. “Torture Report.” (AG019) [UNCLSSIFIED]. April 26, 1977. Friedman, Townsend. “Human Rights.” (BO011) [UNCLASSIFIED]. August 20, 1980. --. “Human Rights – A Military View.” (AZ111) [UNCLASSIFIED]. September 10, 1979. --. “Hypothesis – The GOA as Prisoner of Army Intelligence.” (BO009) [UNCLASSIFIED]. August 17, 1980. Grant, Stephanie. To: Jim Bumpus. “Disappearance and Torture.” (AL184). November 1, 1977. Habib, Philip. To: U.S. SecState. “Operation Condor.” (X1519) [UNCLASSIFIED]. August 17, 1976. Hallman, William. “Clandestine Detention Centers.” (AZ085) [UNCLASSIFIED]. August 5, 1979. Harris, F. Allen, (POL.). “Clandestine Detention of Political Prisoners.” (AK072) [UNCLASSIFIED]. February 20, 1979. --. “Disappearance Numbers and Habeas Corpus.” (DD231) [UNCLASSIFIED]. October 18, 1977. --. To: Alvarez Rojas. “Unofficial Detention Centers.” (AS026) [UNCLASSIFIED]. April 3, 1978. --. To: Emilio Mignone. “Admiral Massera’s Attitude Towards GOA.” (AL201B) [UNCLASSIFIED]. November 10, 1977.

144

--. To: Kevin Mullen. “Anti-Subversive Operation Against Catholic Youth Organization.” (AX031) [UNCLASSIFIED]. February 7, 1979. --. To: Oscar Cardozo. “Military Politics and Human Rights.” (AZ029) [UNCLASSIFIED]. January 25, 1979. --. To: WH Hallman. “The Detained and Disappeared – Status and Rules of Evidence.” (AX043) [UNCLASSIFIED]. March 22, 1979. Huey, George (Consul General). To: Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM), Maxwell Chaplin. “Argentine Police/Military Authorities and Human Rights.” (DD008) [UNCLASSIFIED]. May 19, 1976. Inbar, Herzl. “Anti-Semitic Threats, Alleged PLO Activities in Argentina, Buenos Aires Herald Editor Robert Cox.” (AK351) [UNCLASSIFIED]. December 5, 1979. Inter-American Affairs. “Terrorists Murder US Consular Agent in Argentina.” (BF017) (EGAN) [UNCLASSIFIED]. February 28, 1975. International Commission of Jurists. “Defense Lawyers Unable to Practice in Argentina.” (CU006A). June 1, 1975. Jenkins, Brian, David Ronfeldt, and Ralph Strauch. “Dealing with Political Kidnapping (U).” For U.S. State Department. (CM001) [UNCLASSIFIED]. August 31, 1976. Jenkins, Kempton B. To: John Sparkman. “Torture and Foreign Governments.” (H091) [UNCLASSIFIED]. November 30, 1976. Kelly, RJ (Regional Security Officer [RSO]). To: The Ambassador. “Estimate of Terrorist Activities/Elements – Argentina.” (BN030) [UNCLASSIFIED]. March 8, 1977. Kubisch, Jack B. To: U.S. SecState. “Chilean Executions.” (7321744). November 15, 1973. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). “Chile Status Report on Implementation of NSDM 93.” [SECRET/SENSITIVE]. November 6, 1975. Rogers, William D. (ARA). To: The Secretary. “Re: Possible Coup in Argentina.” [UNCLASSIFIED]. February 12, 1976. Saunders, Harold H. (INR). To: U.S. SecState. “Murders in Argentina – No Intergovernmental Conspiracy.” (V015) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 3, 1976. --. “The OAS in Perspective: What Kind of Inter-American Organization.” (Y89) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 12, 1976. Scherrer, Robert. To: The Ambassador, Buenos Aires. “Attack Against Cuban Embassy Personnel.” (CONFIDENTIAL]. August 17, 1975. --. “Orlando Bosch Avila – Fugitive.” (105-1211-19) [CONFIDENTIAL]. January 11, 1976.

145

Schillizzi Acuna, Victorio Manuel. “Anti-Subversive Campaign in Bahia Blanca.” (AR169) [UNCLASSIFIED]. August 7, 1978. Special Agent in Charge (SAC) Miami. To: Director, FBI. “Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations.” [SECRET]. August 15, 1978. Stebbing, David H. To: Arnold Isaacs. “Pass on Highlights of a Conversation with Townley, Whom I Visited in Miami.” (R002) [UNCLASSIFIED]. October 16, 1973. Stedman, William P. (ARA). To: Deputy Secretary. “Meeting with Argentine Deputy Foreign Minister, Navy Captain Gualter Allara.” (AL189) [UNCLASSIFIED]. November 2, 1977. Steven, RS. (Pol.). To: The Ambassador. “Alleged Killings of Prisoners by Security Forces.” (DD086) [MEMORANDUM]. January 24, 1977. Thayer, Yvonne. To: Fred Rondon. “Amnesty Intl’s List of Persons Killed in Argentina in 1975 and 1976.” (CU157) [UNCLASSIFIED]. November 15, 1976. --. To: The Ambassador. “Reported Death of Disappeared Persons.” (AZ069) [UNCLASSIFIED]. May 25, 1979. Todman, Terence A. (ARA). To: The Deputy Secretary. “Another Argentine Newspaper Director Arrested.” (W004) [0/FADRC]. April 21, 1977. --. To: The Secretary. “A Time to Support Argentina’s Videla.” (BR001) [UNCLASSIFIED]. September 26, 1977. Unknown. “A War on Children.” EA020A”. October 7, 1979. --. “Academics Detained in Argentina.” (CV009A) [UNCLASSIFIED]. September 5, 1976. --. “Additional Information on the Situation of Argentine Scientists and University Professors.” (CAS REPORT SUPPLEMENT 1). April 6, 1978. --. “Argentine Human Rights Chronology.” (AX015C) [UNCLASSIFIED]. December 7, 1977. --. “Argentine Political Prisoners Situation.” (DD231F). August 10, 1977. --. “Declaration of the U.P.A.R.F.” (DD124). March 29, 1977. --. “Drawing of Mechanical School.” (AG022C). May 14, 1978. --. “Letter Signed by Argentine Mothers (The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo) Addressed to Undersecretary Newsom.” (BH105). June 20, 1978. --. “List Uruguayans Who Have Died as a Result of Physical Assault.” (CP001) [UNCLASSIFIED]. May 31, 1976. --. “NSC Meeting – Chile NSSM 97.” November 5, 1970. --. “Report on Subversive Situation.” (BW001) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 2, 1977.

146

--. “South America: Southern Cone Security Practices.” (AB003) [UNCLASSIFIED]. July 18, 1976. --. “South Americas Southern Cone Bloc in Formation.” (AB005) [DECAPTIONED]. October 5, 1977. --. “Steps GOA Take to Improve the Human Rights Situation in Argentina.” (DD074A) [UNCLASSIFIED]. December 26, 1976. --. “Terrorism and Human Rights.” (BL004A) [UNCLASSIFIED]. February 28, 1978. --. “Terrorist Activities in Argentina.” (BN022). February 15, 1977. --. “The Government of the United States has Formally Petitioned the Government of Chile for the Extradition of Juan Manuel Contreras Sepulveda…” (NA005) [UNCLASSIFIED]. May 12, 1979. --. To: Ambassador Landau. “Classified Reading Material Re Condor for Ambassador Landau and Mr. Propper.” (636). August 21, 1978. --. To: American Representative. “Guidance on Southern Cone Initiatives Bloc.” [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 7, 1977. --. To: Files. “Oral Statement.” [UNCLASSIFIED]. December 9, 1976. --. To: Frank V. Ortiz Jr. “I Am Writing in Concern for the Fate of Refugees, Particularly From Chile.” (DD009) [UNCLASSIFIED]. May 19, 1976. --. To: Yvonne Thayer. “Prisons in Argentina.” (DD231E). August 10, 1977. --. “U.S.-Argentina Military Relations Jeopardized.” (BN038A) [UNCLASSIFIED]. May 3, 1977. --. “100 Uruguayans Have Been Detained in Argentina.” (CX002). November 30, 1977. U.S. Defense Attaché Office (DAO) in La Paz. To: Commander in Chief, United States Southern Command (USCINCSO). “Communist Coordinating Movement.” [UNCLASSIFIED]. September 11, 1975. U.S. Defense Attaché Office (DAO) in Santiago. To: Commander in Chief, United States Southern Command (USCINCSO). “Correspondent Writes Accusation of DIA?Santiago Attachés of as Author of Military Coup of September 1973.” [UNCLASSIFIED]. January 16, 1975. U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). “Ex-MIR Leaders Hold Press Conference.” [CONFIDENTIAL] [UNCLASSIFIED]. March 3, 1975. --. “MIR Reportedly Eliminates Their Own War Companies.” [UNCLASSIFIED]. July 27, 1975. --. “Special Operations Forces.” (1613) [UNCLASSIFIED]. September 30, 1976.

147

U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). “Accion Cubana.” (File No. SJ 105-16193). January 22, 1976. --. “FBI Investigation – Interviews.” March 27, 1978. --. “Threat to Assassinate Gabriel Valdez, Chief of United Nations Development and Former Foreign Minister of Chile.” (No File No.). December 1, 1975. --.. “Visit of Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger to Argentina.” (File No. 105-22715). January 30, 1975. U.S. Legal Attaché (Legat) in Buenos Aires. To: Director, FBI. “Argentine Terrorist Activities.” [SECRET]. September 18, 1973. --. “Argentine Terrorist Activities.” [SECRET]. September 29, 1974. --. “Foreign Political Matters – Argentina.” (109-12 207). September 27, 1973. U.S. State Department. “Argentina: Renewed Terrorist Violence.” (RA002) [UNCLASSIFIED]. April 15, 1975. --. “Argentina: Six Months of Military Government.” (AB004) [UNCLASSIFIED]. September 30, 1976. --. “Major Considerations Affecting Arms Sales to Chile.” (L12C) [UNCLASSIFIED]. March 20, 1974. --. “Statement Re Chile and Political MIR.” (W167A) [UNCLASSIFIED]. October 22, 1974. --. “Terrorist Acts Committed by the Subversive Left During 1975.” (AL034A) [UNCLASSIFIED]. December 19, 1975. --. “US Policy Toward Brazil/Southern Cone.” (M-15A) [UNCLASSIFIED]. October 27, 1977. --. To: All Posts. “Uruguay: Human Rights Report The Following Press Guidance was Prepared for the Department Spokesman…” (A6) [UNCLASSIFIED]. February 9, 1978. --. To: American Embassy in Brasilia. “Argentine Refugees Arrested in Sao Paulo.” (J195) [UNCLASSIFIED]. July 1, 1977. --. To: American Embassy in Buenos Aires. “Alleged GOA Plans to Deport Chileans.” (CU014) [UNCLASSIFIED]. May 8, 1976. --. “Anti-Semitic Acts in Argentina.” (L273) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 4, 1978. --. “Anti-Semitism in Argentina.” (I129) [UNCLASSIFIED]. August 31, 1976. --. “Arrest of Jacobo Tieffenberg.” (V018) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 6, 1976. --. “Atrocity Warning.” (I085) [UNCLASSIFIED]. July 30, 1976. --. “Chilean Refugees in Argentina.” (H081) [UNCLASSIFIED]. July 20, 1975.

148

--. “Extortion Demand/Threat Against US Business.” (H061) [UNCLASSIFIED]. April 9, 1975. --. “French Pressures on Argentina to Improve Human Rights.” (BB1040) [UNCLASSIFIED]. July 18, 1978. --. “Montonero Warning to US Firms.” (BN001) [UNCLASSIFIED]. March 15, 1976. --. “Montoneros Activities.” (K113) [UNCLASSIFIED]. October 22, 1977. --. “Operation Condor.” (WI19) [UNCLASSIFIED]. August 22, 1976. --. “Report of Nuns Death.” (L182) [UNCLASSIFIED]. April 6, 1978. --. “Reported Detention of Israeli Citizens in Argentina.” (N086) [UNCLASSIFIED]. February 11, 1979. --. “Reports of Torture in Argentina.” (L217) [UNCLASSIFIED]. April 21, 1978. --. To: American Embassy in Panama. “Terrorism – Argentina.” (H059) [UNCLASSIFIED]. April 7, 1975. --. To: Secretary. “Action Memorandum: Death of Orlando Letelier.” (R234) [UNLASSIFIED]. September 21, 1976. --. To: U.S. Delegation Secretary. “Brief Implication of Political Murders in Argentina.” (V021) [UNCLASSIFIED]. June 9, 1976. --. To: U.S. Mission NATO. “Argentine Junta Faces Troubled Future, Please Deliver to Summ Opening of Business.” (AN: D760111-0939) [UNCLASSIFIED]. March 23, 1976. Vargas, Felix C. (Political Officer). “DINA Involvement in Orlando Letelier’s Death.” (F59) [UNCLASSIFIED]. November 8, 1976. Vignes, Alberto. To: Henry Kissinger. “Memorandum of Conversation.” (E14) [UNCLASSIFIED]. November 4, 1974. Washington Office on Latin America. “Uruguay and Argentina Held Responsible for Kidnapping.” (CX006A). February 5, 1979. Wood, WB. To: John Youle. “Uruguayans Disappeared in Argentina.” (CX020) [UNCLASSIFIED]. September 28, 1978. Zorinsky, Edward. To: President Jorge Raphael Videla. “Disappearance of Thousands of People in Argentina.” (Y006A). January 28, 1979.

149

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