Book launch: “The Condor Trials: Transnational Repression and Human Rights in South America”

By Francesca Lessa
Through the voices of survivors, human rights activists, judicial actors, and experts, The Condor Trials unravels the secrets of transnational repression masterminded by South American dictators between 1969 and 1981. Under Operation Condor, the regimes of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay closely monitored hundreds of exiles and kidnapped, tortured, murdered, or forcibly returned them to their countries of origin. This cross-border network designed to silence opposition in exile transformed South America into a borderless zone of terror and impunity. Francesca Lessa shows how, gradually, transnational networks of activists materialized and effectively transcended national borders to achieve justice for the victims of these horrors. Based on extensive fieldwork, archival research, trial ethnography, and over 100 interviews, The Condor Trials explores South America’s past and present and sheds light on ongoing struggles for justice as its societies come to terms with the unparalleled atrocities of their not-so-distant pasts.
Speakers:
Professor Jocelyn Alexander Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford)
Ezequiel Gonzalez Ocantos (Nuffield College, University of Oxford)
Dr Francesca Lessa (Oxford Department of International Development and Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, University of Oxford)
Dr Par Engstrom (Institute of the Americas, University College London)