Death Squads

   As the left made political gains or turned to guerrilla warfare, the right formed paramilitary groups. Among them were the Comando da Caça aos Comunistas (CCC, Anti-Communist Command) and the Movimento anti-Comunista (MAC, Anti-Communist Movement) in Brazil, Patria y Libertad (PL, Fatherland and Liberty) in Chile, and the Alianza Anticomunista Argentina (AAA, Argentine Anticommunist Alliance). During the left-leaning government of João Goulart (1961–1964), the CCC and the MAC harassed leftist student leaders. In Uruguay in the late 1960s, the administration of Jorge Pacheco Areco enlisted civilian and police organizations to help fight the Tupamaro guerrillas. During the socialist government of Salvador Allende Gossens (1970–1973), PL engaged in economic sabotage—vandalizing factories and blowing up electrical towers—in the hope of gaining mainstream support for a military coup. And from 1973 to 1976, the AAA targeted left-wing Peronists, assassinating them or forcing them into exile. When these countries fell to dictatorship, the military-service branches, especially their intelligence operations, often lead the fight against subversion, though in Brazil the Serviço Nacional de Informações (SNI, National Intelligence Service) coordinated the efforts of the military branches and the police. In Argentina, groups called patotas (gangs), ranging in size from six to two dozen and often traveling in Ford Falcons, made the arrests. Patotas were part of larger groups called grupos de tareas (GT, task forces). GT 1 was controlled by the federal police; GT 2, the army; GT 3, the navy; and GT 4, the air force. In Uruguay, arrests were made by teams ranging in number from three or four to more than 15, depending on the amount of resistance expected. The army, the other service branches, and the police all took part in making arrests. In Chile, the secret police, the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA, Directorate of National Intelligence), had both a national and an international component. The national component terrorized the regime’s internal enemies; its international component became active in the mid-1970s with the formation of Operation Condor, which allowed member countries to track down one another’s enemies.

   Cooperation among the countries was common. Brazilians, for example, taught Chileans how to torture more efficiently. A prisoner interrogated in Paraguay might hear accents from Brazil and Argentina. And during the regime of General Luis García Meza in Bolivia, one of the death squads, the Servicio Especial de Seguridad (SES, Special Security Service), was trained by Argentine military officers from the Escuela Mecánica de la Armada (ESMA, Navy Mechanics School).