On rare occasions, our present and historical realities entangle to make a story that is better than fiction. One such occasion came in late March 2014 when Uruguayan President Jose “Pepe” Mujica agreed to allow at least five Guantanamo Bay prisoners to “make their nests in Uruguay.” This gesture is quite significant, partly because Mujica himself is a victim of 12 years of U.S.-sponsored torture. He was also among the “key prisoners” that U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers recommended to be murdered early in 1970. By offering his country to Guantanamo Bay prisoners—which are likely also victims of U.S. torture—Mujica has illuminated a history which has been consistently ignored in public discourse. Although Mujica has recently become popular for supporting the legalization of gay marriage and marijuana, the history from which he grew and the role of the United States government has been often overlooked.
While Mujica’s offer gained short-lived publicity in the western media, it has not sparked a wider conversation on the hundreds of Uruguayan victims of U.S.-sponsored assassination and torture. These ranks include the current President and First Lady, as well as the world-famous literary figure Mauricio Rosencof. Unlike other Latin American nations plagued with histories of dictatorships that have made great strides in seeking justice for the victims of dictatorial repression (Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, etc), Uruguay struggles to deal with the crimes of their dictatorship (1973-1985). Although the pursuit of justice continues today, it was unfortunately dealt a huge setback in February 2013 when the Uruguayan Supreme Court reinstated an amnesty for those who carried out the brutality. The eerie silence in the western media in the wake of Mujica’s offer to Guantanamo Bay prisoners reveals a missed opportunity for the construction of an honest and informed collective memory about U.S-Uruguay relations.
Another missed opportunity came with the AP report on USAID’s “Cuban Twitter” program. Many were surprised that USAID, a supposedly humanitarian institution, would be involved in subverting a foreign government. Perhaps this surprise—if it was in fact genuine—is simply another effect of information monopoly or maybe a sign of the narrow scope of collective memory. In any case, the historical record reveals that USAID has a rich legacy of subverting foreign governments and, in fact, training and equipping brutal and torturous police forces. Thus, the apparent surprise of USAID’s Cuban Twitter program itself seems a bit surprising.
By examining newly released U.S. government documents—many obtained through the valiant efforts of the National Security Archive’s Southern Cone Documentation Project—I will trace the involvement of the United States government, through USAID, in the manifestation of the Uruguayan dictatorship.
Cold War For Those Who Wage It, Hot War For Those Who Suffer It
In the early 1960s, Uruguay was one of the most stable and thriving democracies in the western hemisphere. The country was known internationally as the “Switzerland of the Americas” due to its vibrant social welfare state that dated back to the early 20th century. At the end of World War II, Uruguay was home to the lowest infant mortality and illiteracy rates in South America and in contrast to other Latin American nations, the police and military were nearly insignificant institutions in the political life of the country.
Despite this context of flourishing democracy, by the mid-1970s a reign of terror was sweeping through Uruguay. Parliament was closed and the country was being ruled by a brutal military dictatorship which held the most political prisoners per capita in the world. Jails were filled with dissidents and a regular flow of exiles poured through the borders.
The roots of this devolution reach back to the post-war decline in wool and meat exports—Uruguay’s largest source of foreign currency—which plunged the economy into stagnation. On a 1958 visit to Montevideo, Vice President Nixon urged the Uruguayan government to adopt a host of neoliberal economic reforms in order to both deal with the economic crisis as well as sweep Uruguay into a Cold War alliance. Soon thereafter, a $30 million loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) poured into Uruguay—the first of many—and the country became dependent on foreign debt repayment. As a result, harsh austerity measures, “worked out with the help of the International Monetary Fund,” were implemented and Uruguayans saw their vibrant social welfare state rapidly dismantled.
Not surprisingly, a militant leftist movement grew from the ashes of the neoliberal austerity. From April 1964 to June 1965, the membership of the Uruguayan Communist Party (PCU) grew from 10,000 to 15,000 and regular strikes and protests brought the capital to a standstill. In February 1965, a crowd of over 1,000 protestors smashed the windows of the U.S. Embassy and in October, over 60,000 workers went on strike in response to the currency devaluation and wage ceilings emanating from the offices of the IMF. This prompted the government to adopt emergency powers and suspend civil rights—for the first of many times—resulting in hundreds of arrests and numerous publications being forcefully shut down.
It was in this context, in January 1965, that the Office of Public Safety (OPS) of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) established offices in Montevideo police headquarters. Under the leadership of Adolph Saenz (who would later go to Bolivia to hunt down Che Guevara), OPS set out to “eliminate terrorist and subversive groups which seek to create economic and social chaos.” By the time OPS arrived in Uruguay, the U.S. State Department had established public safety programs throughout the world, with the largest operations centered in Southeast Asia. According to OPS documents, public safety programs were established in nations “facing an actual or potential danger of internal subversion” and served to “counter communist-inspired or exploited subversion and insurgency.” Typical operations included the training and equipping of foreign police forces which, in cases like Uruguay, transformed the police from an insignificant institution into a torturous paramilitary force. The founding director of OPS, former CIA agent Byron Engle, forged a close relationship with the CIA and established an official liaison where OPS and CIA joined forces to choose high-ranking police officers to receive training at the International Police Academy (IPA) in Washington DC.
Immediately after its establishment, the OPS began intense counterinsurgency training and anti-communist indoctrination for the Uruguayan police. Paul Katz, an OPS telecommunications expert who designed the communications system in South Vietnam, designed and installed a similar system in Uruguay. Years later, this system would play an integral role in the infamous Operacion Condor, allowing southern cone dictatorships to effectively eliminate dissent. Among the purchases for the Uruguayan police was a fresh stockpile of teargas—accompanied by special gas masks for police—and dozens of vehicles, which replaced the horses that police had previously relied upon. In Saenz’s own words, these purchases allowed the Uruguayan police to successfully defeat the “communist-led mobs.” By the end of 1965, the New York Times revealed the extent to which the police had been transformed, reporting: “helmeted policemen used automatic weapons, tear gas equipment, and concrete- breaking bazookas,” as well as grenades in their operations on the streets of Montevideo.
By the late 1960s, IPA graduates, such as Alejandro Otero, were returning to Uruguay to become chiefs of police. Otero, like many others, landed on the CIA payroll and met regularly with OPS officials. Another IPA graduate, Jose Bonaudi, became chief of the newly created mobile police force supplied with vehicles from the OPS. By 1967, the Uruguayan police, with the support of the United States government, was conducting full-scale war on the Uruguayan left.
The Tupamaros and the Escalation
With the presence of an increasingly violent repressive apparatus came the presence of an increasingly militant guerilla movement. By the late 1960s, the Movimiento Liberacion Nacional, Tupamaro had established a presence on the streets of Montevideo. In the early years, creative tactics such as hijacking delivery trucks and redistributing the contents in poor neighborhoods earned the Tupamaros the unique title of the “Robin Hood guerillas.” These tactics also included bank robberies in which records revealing corruption were published in newspapers, leading to legal prosecutions and resignations of public officials. Much of the money taken in these heists was dropped off at impoverished schools and community centers and resulted in widespread public support for the Tupamaros. The Tupamaros also succeeded in conducting sophisticated urban guerilla warfare on the Uruguayan government and its ally, the U.S. government.
Throughout the end of the 1960s, the Uruguayan Cold War became increasingly hot. President Jorge Pacheco Areco outlawed the Socialist Party and issued far-reaching censorship of the press. In response to a June 1968 general strike, emergency powers were declared and ruled under throughout the close of the decade. During the strike, five workers were shot by OPS trained-and-equipped police and, in response, the General Electric offices were firebombed.
In August 1968, the Tupamaros added the tactic of kidnapping to their arsenal by abducting Pacheco’s close advisor, Ulises Pereira Reverbel. They chose Pereira because his advocacy of IMF-mandated austerity and the subsequent repression needed for implementation. While Pereira was being held hostage, OPS-trained police invaded the National University in Montevideo, supposedly looking for clues in the Pereira kidnapping. This ignited violent clashes between police and over 3,000 students defending their traditionally autonomous university. In the clashes, dental student Liber Arce was shot and killed by police. After five days, the Tupamaros released Pereira unharmed and issued a warning that they would tactics unless the government met student and worker demands.
In June 1969, Nelson Rockefeller’s visit to Uruguay was greeted with the bombing of the General Motors offices, causing over $1 million in damage. Leaflets left at the scene denounced Rockefeller as “the agent of Yankee imperialism” and blamed General Motors for providing cars and equipment to the Montevideo police “for the repression of Uruguayan students.” On June 20, Montevideo police records show that at least 12 firebomb attacks were directed against U.S. enterprises.
At the height of violence, the OPS program flourished. Saenz noted in his book, The OPS Story, that the Uruguayan president “called me at my office to thank us for our help and asked that we expand our assistance.” At the OPS office, regular meetings between the U.S. Embassy, CIA officials, and Montevideo police were held and by 1970 the OPS program’s “major emphasis was shifted to improving anti-terrorist capabilities.” After the multiple bouts of street fighting, OPS records noted that “the police’s riot training and equipment were severely tested…and found adequate.”
In September 1969, the Tupamaros struck again by kidnapping another Uruguayan diplomat, Gaetano Pellegrini Giampetro. In exchange for his life, the guerillas demanded, “favorable settlement for striking Uruguayan bank workers” and threatened to kill him if any protesters were killed on the streets of Montevideo. After 72 days, the Tupamaros released Pellegrini unharmed after a ransom of $60,000 was paid to a workers hospital and an underserved primary school.
Early in 1970, as jails filled with dissidents, accusations of police torturing protestors surfaced in the Montevideo press. Although emergency powers had nearly stripped Parliament of any meaningful power, an official investigation was conducted to examine torture accusations. Alejandro Otero, the OPS- trained IPA graduate who was on the CIA payroll, testified on behalf of the police and denied the charges. Workers, students, and doctors testified that they had been “stripped, beaten, burned and subjected to electric shocks” at the hands of the police.
In June, the parliamentary commission released its findings to the press. The first finding of the report read: “Without any possibility of doubt… within the police organization under the control of Montevideo’s Police Headquarters, the application of torture is a normal, frequent, and habitual occurrence.” Many of the instances of torture were reported to have occurred in Montevideo Police Headquarters, the same building as the OPS offices. Nevertheless, police practices and the OPS program continued uninter- rupted.
During the investigation, the Tupamaros took it on themselves to end the torture by assassinating Hector Moran Charquero, an alleged architect of torture. According to Saenz, Moran Charquerro was a “good man” and “valued friend of the OPS.” Leaflets left at the scene warned U.S. and Uruguayan officials that they could meet the same fate. The assassination marked a new phase of the Uruguayan internal war in which deadly force was met with deadly force.
Late in 1969, Saenz was replaced with former IPA instructor and Indiana Police Chief, Dan Mitrione. According to sources within the Uruguayan police, Mitrione’s arrival brought drastic changes in police operations. Interrogations became “more technical” and “the almost automatic application of all sorts of torture to the political prisoners” became a matter of policy within the police/OPS operations. Weapons such as, “new 45-caliber submachine guns, new 9-millimeter guns and also 30-caliber machine guns on tripods” arrived for police to conduct war on the Tupamaros. According to Otero, Mitrione’s presence brought “scientific refinement” to the “methods of inflicting pain.” After witnessing numerous torture sessions supervised by Mitrione, which included the use of electric shocks on fingernails and genitals, Otero resigned his post within the Montevideo police.
After nearly a year in Uruguay, on July 30, 1970, the Tupamaros kidnapped Mitrione. Days later, they released a communiqué demanding freedom for political prisoners in exchange for Mitrione’s life and set August 9 as the deadline for the prisoner release. Just before noon on August 9, a classified cable from U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers urged the Uruguayan government to use the “threat to kill [Tupamaro leader Raul] Sendic and other key MLN prisoners if Mitrione is killed.” Among the leading members of the jailed Tupamaros were President Mujica. In response, the Uruguayan Foreign Minister ensured the Ambassador that Tupamaro prisoners were informed that, “members of the ‘Escuadrón de Muerte’ (Death Squad) would take action against the prisoners’ relatives if Mitrione were killed.”
Declassified only in 2008, these cables represent the first time in public record that both the U.S. and Uruguayan governments acknowledged the use of death squads. According to the testimony of Uruguayan police official Nelson Bardesio, the death squads were created with the financial assistance and intelligence support of CIA agent and OPS official, William Cantrell. Despite the threats, the Uruguayan government failed to negotiate with the guerillas and at 4:15 AM on August 10, 1970, Mitrione’s body was found in the backseat of an abandoned car.
The last chance for Uruguayan democracy was the 1971 elections. Having seen the electoral victory of Salvador Allende in Chile, the Tupamaros supported a leftist coalition, the Frente Amplio, and agreed to a ceasefire during the elections. However, the United States would not allow another electoral victory for the South American Left, and thus took various measures to insure a Frente loss. As documented in the National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book 71, the U.S. Embassy in Montevideo reported that it would “collaborate overtly and covertly with those media elements that compete with those of the Frente” and recommended that the State Department send a team “of professional journalists well versed in psychology” to combat the Frente campaign.
During the campaign, the U.S. Embassy also underscored the importance of continuing the OPS program despite publicity about involvement in torture. “It is essential that a public safety program be maintained in Uruguay” noted the Embassy, and pledged “support of the police on internal security matters.” Furthermore, the Embassy highlighted the need to “provide both the police and armed forces with the material, or access to material, necessary to implement their organizational and operational efforts” during the campaign. Juan Maria Bordaberry won the fraudulent elections and soon after taking office, peacefully handed power over to the military and police.
Parliament was closed and a “state of internal war” was declared. A reign of terror, made possible by the material and logistical support of the United States government, swept the streets of Uruguay. By 1972, the Tupamaro threat was exterminated through blood and incarceration.
Thus, in 1973 one of the beacons of democracy in the western hemisphere ended. The repressive apparatus that the Uruguayan dictatorship inherited was built-up with over $2 million in military and financial assistance from the United States ($10 million today if adjusted for inflation). Despite the well-known fact that Uruguayan police were regularly employing brutal methods of murder and torture as early as 1970, U.S. assistance continued until 1976.
At the Congressional investigation on Human Rights in Uruguay, political scientist Dr. Martin Weinstein asserted in his testimony that, “the significant increase in U.S. aid to the Uruguayan armed forces and police, and their increasingly close relationship to the U.S. embassy, strengthened them not only as a security force, but as a political institution.” Furthermore, he concluded, “by supporting this regime, the United States is helping to support a brutal dictatorship.” The brutality lasted until 1985, claiming the lives of hundreds of Uruguayans and prompting thousands to flee their homeland.
The Return of Democracy and the Struggle with Collective Memory
In 1985, democracy was restored in Uruguay. Thousands of exiles, including world-renowned writer Eduardo Galeano, returned home. Political prisoners, including President Mujica and the playwright/novelist Mauricio Rosencof, were released from jail. However, with the return of democracy also came a blanket amnesty for the crimes committed during the dictatorship. Since 1989, legal and political battles have raged over attempts to overturn the amnesty laws. Changing court rulings have allowed some high-ranking officials, such as former U.S.-ally Bordaberry, to be charged for various crimes against humanity. However, the amnesty has hindered systematic investigation and resulted in many criminals, including U.S. officials, to remain free.
The roots of the first meaningful decision to overturn the amnesty reach back to the year 2000 when Macarena Taurino found out that she was, in fact, Macarena Gelman. Her biological parents María García and Marcelo Gelman were kidnapped by the neighboring Argentine dictatorship and Maria was taken to Montevideo as part of Operacion Condor. Soon after her abduction, Maria gave birth to Macarena in captivity. Baby Macarena was given to a Uruguayan police officer to be raised and both of her parents were “disappeared” (read murdered) like thousands of Argentines. When Macarena discovered her true identity through the efforts of her biological grandfather, Argentine poet Juan Gelman, she took her case to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. In 2011, the court ruled that Uruguay must investigate the crimes of the dictatorship.
As a result, the Uruguayan government passed law 18.831 in February 2011, which annulled the amnesty law. By the end of 2011 over 200 cases of torture and human rights violations were brought to Uruguayan courts. However, in February 2013, the Uruguayan Supreme Court ruled that law 18.831 was unconstitutional, thereby reinstating the amnesty. Nevertheless, the movement for justice continues in Uruguay and in the words of Uruguayan poet Mario Benedetti “el cuento no se ha acabado” (this story is far from over).
In the midst of this struggle, the role of the United States has been largely overlooked. While this is, perhaps, due to the fact that documentation of U.S. involvement has only recently been released, any discussion of the subject has been completely absent from public discourse. A valuable precedent for moving forward with Uruguayan justice is the 1988 International Court of Justice ruling Nicaragua v. United States of America, in which the court ruled that the U.S. policy of “training, arming, equipping, financing, and supplying” the Contras was a violation of international law. Despite the fact that this precise wording could accurately describe what occurred in Uruguay, no charges have been brought. In light of the Cuban Twitter program, we can safely assume that USAID’s actions have not substantially changed.
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