aight bitches sit down, y'all about to be educated

let's talk about OPERATION CONDOR

before we begin: i will not hold back with any of this. any trigger warning you can think of can and will apply to what i'm about to tell you. so read at your own risk

WHAT WAS OPERATION CONDOR? it was a US-backed campaign of political repression and state terror by the right-wing dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America.

It lasted from the 1970's way into the 1980's, but before we get to the actual operation, we need a bit of context. so picture this: cold war. a bunch of latin american countries are swaying dangerously close to the USSR because people like to not starve

this was unacceptable. as you might've guessed. so the US sponsored a series of military coups: 1954 Paraguay, 1964 Brazil, 1971 Bolivia, 1973 Chile, 1976 Argentina.

while Stroessner, in Paraguay, had a ton of US support, it wasn't until Brazil that the US REALLY went all out. i mean ALL out. Operation Brother Sam, in 1964, sent the ENTIRE CARIBBEAN FLEET to the coast of brazil to ensure the military would succeed in their coup.

Brazil then was like a torture school for all of latin america. The US sent an official called Don Mitrione who tortured homeless people until they died so the military would be trained in torture techniques.

in fact, the brazilian military was so good at torture they sent agents all over latin america and africa to teach how to torture people. there are many reasons why not so many brazilians died (that we know, the count doesn't include the homeless) but BOI did we like to torture

we also liked to offer shelter to runaway nazis but anyways i digress

let's start with operation condor: in the 1970's all the military governments came together and were like hm, what if we took human rights violations but made it WORSE? we could help each other out and teach some neat torture tricks like brazil, teach us how to pau-de-arara

but then they were like well this is expensive and all of us are very broke. whatever should we do?

and the bald eagle of the united states broke down the wall like the kool-aid man and went WELL I CAN PAY FOR THAT

not only they paid but they sent MORE people to train MORE military officers into MORE torture and terror techniques. in fact they made a school for it and called it school of the americas

please remember that all the countries involved had severe censorship measures. like my favorite singers were imprisoned, some were tortured, most were exiled

what was the end result of this human-rights-violating covening party? 60k dead, 30k of these only in Argentina, the vast majority of these dead in torture. an estimate of 800k people were tortured and survived.

we in latam have VERY good reasons to be wary of the police. it is very common to know more people that have been tortured than you can count. in fact, Dilma Rouseff, ex-president of brazil (also outed by a us-backed coup lmao love that for myself) was also severely tortured

anyways the whole story is far more brutal and bloody than what any of you could ever imagine. i just want y'all to know that we latin americans carry this in our bones. i want you to sit with this for a while and know that this is what we've been FORCED to carry.

we know the names of our deads. we've seen the pictures of their bloated corpses. we've been told their stories. we've know repression, censorship and torture. we've known violence beyond measure. and we stand.

the LEAST y'all owe us is to stand with us.