Though I've got to admit, I did like Pinochet's method of giving the free helicopter rides to be very creative.
Posted on 03/20/2023 6:19:26 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Assistant Professor Katelyn Bolhofner (left) and Assistant Teaching Professor Adriana Sartorio (right) of Arizona State University were recently awarded a grant from the Humanitarian and Human Rights Resource Center to support their project “They Are Our Parents.” Credit: New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences
For decades, hundreds of families across South America have lived in the shadow of Operation Condor, a 1970s-era campaign of political repression that led to the disappearance and murder of an estimated 60,000 individuals in South America. As of 2019, 37 bodies out of around 400 of the murdered individuals were recovered in Paraguay. Only four of those found have been identified so far.
This summer, two forensic science faculty members from Arizona State University’s New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences will travel to Paraguay to aid in the excavation of a mass grave containing victims of Operation Condor in Lambaré, Paraguay.
The faculty members, Assistant Professor Katelyn Bolhofner and Assistant Teaching Professor Adriana Sartorio, were recently awarded a grant from the Humanitarian and Human Rights Resource Center to support their project “They Are Our Parents.”
“They Are Our Parents” was one of four projects that was funded by the HHRRC for 2023 to promote research, training and on-the-ground support of global humanitarian and human rights efforts that employ diverse forensic approaches. The projects are funded collaboratively by the National Institute of Justice’s Forensic Technology Center of Excellence and the American Academy of Forensic Sciences.
Bolhofner, Sartorio and a graduate student researcher will implement an anthropological approach to the excavation in an effort to locate, identify and repatriate the victims. The team will perform biological profile and trauma assessments of the exhumed individuals, excise samples for future DNA analysis and use a portable digital radiography machine to explore the potential of obtaining positive identifications through means other than DNA comparisons.
The project will not only provide aid to the Paraguayan humanitarian organizations but will also assist local organizations in obtaining independence in their efforts to conduct their own forensic investigations and identifications by establishing local expertise in forensic anthropology and archaeology.
On the ground in Lambaré they will collaborate with Rogelio Goiburú, a retired doctor of medicine who has dedicated years of his career to locating and excavating mass graves in Paraguay in order to find his father. As the director of the Justice Ministry’s Department for Historical Memory and Reparation, he also leads efforts in identifying other victims.
For Sartorio, who is originally from Paraguay, this project hits especially close to home.
“I am doing it for my father and people who went through what he went through,” Sartorio said. “He was affected by the dictatorship at such an early age when he was incarcerated. His family and friends were affected one way or another. These actions are hard to forget, especially when the loss of friends during Operation Condor was a marking point in your life. I can't even imagine losing your teenage innocence and needing to leave your country to escape further penalties. My personal connection is something driven from a long time ago and it’s finally getting heard.”
Long term, the team hopes to continue this work to bring closure to the families who lost loved ones, many of which have had unanswered questions for years.
“I became an anthropologist because I love people's life stories,” Bolhofner said. “For me, this project is so significant because I have the opportunity to use my skills and training to help tell these stories — which is really what I love about my job in all contexts. But in this context, where these stories have been silenced very intentionally, the opportunity to assist in bringing those individuals' life stories back, in giving them back their names, giving them back to their family, is really what drives me as a forensic anthropologist.”
Republished courtesy of ASU.
Latin American juntas were cooperating with each other in using death squads to kill Communist guerrillas and their sympathizers. The major countries typically mentioned are Argentina and Chile.
Not me, but as far as I’m concerned ANYTHING done by the US in favor of winning the Cold War was a good thing.
After the Cold War, my views now are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT, and the fact that others (meaning Neocons) could not properly adapt to Cold War ending is why She is meeting with Putin and they are becoming an alliance that the US does not stand a chance against...for many, many, reasons.
Scientists? What kind of scientists? Sounds like they need MDs/pathologists with expertise in forensics - not some politically motivated PinHeaDs.
How much expertise is needed to conclude a skull was blown apart by a gunshot?
Kinda, kinda not. Hunting down goons like Che Guevara or terrorists who planted bombs on Argentine navy ships is fine. But Paraguay especially was run by Nazis who fled Germany after the war. Guys like Mengele. Klaus Barbie, eichmann, etc and another war criminals were eyeballs deep in those governments. And everyone they murdered was not a terrorist.
Oh for example in Chile they murdered a famous folk singer, that’s all he did was ride and sing songs. College students who had no connection with terrorism, they were just politically on the left. Those kind of people were rounded up, murdered, flown under the ocean and thrown out. Chilean secret police
And regular old morality aside, the blowback has been enormous. Pretty much all of South America today is a leftist enclave. The secret police of Chile got so out of control they set off a car bomb in Washington DC to murder a leftist. They actually got their leash yanked about no direct action inside the United States.
Hard fighting is one thing. But when your fight against communism involves straight up murder of noncombatants. Mass murder, secret police, and employing Barbie, and the other kind of things they were doing, you leave bystanders wondering what the difference is between you and the enemy.
We’ll see it different - as far as I’m concerned, one Cuba was enough for the Western Hemisphere and if it took people who were not as pure as Mother Teresa to prevent the Soviets from establishing additional Cuba’s, starting in Chile, that was JUST FINE with me.
When Jimmy Carter tried to replace the ‘good enough’ (for Cold War objectives), with Mother Teresa-level perfection, we wound up losing a lot of ground and getting damn close to losing the entire Cold War.
...but even given my opinion above, it has still NEVER been explained to me why we needed to bomb Serbia, and most of the other countries that we attacked after the Cold War.
“Scientists? What kind of scientists? Sounds like they need MDs/pathologists with expertise in forensics.”
Just need people to do measurements and collect bones with DNA. Forensics can be done remotely—with enough grant money.
No U.S. President has bombed more countries than Obama...
That’s exactly the justification for groups like Azov.
And it was ineffective. The reason you have a resurgent and very defiant left in South America. Venezuela with Hugo Chavez, Lula in Brazil, Kirchner in Argentina, Morales in Bolivia, the new socialist constitution in Chile is al the result of the Condor nazi loving and imitating mentality.
And when you get right down to brass tacks, Cuba was easy pickings for Fidel because of the brutality of Batista. Cuba was a brutal dictatorship, established by a military coup, and treated the very reasonable opposition as though it was the Red Army itself coming in. That idiot mentality is the classic example of JFK’s quote that “those who make peaceful change impossible, make violent revolution inevitable”.
In short, imitating the Gestapo and SS is not justified by saying you are fighting communism. That is the reason George Washington did not send out death squads to conduct assassinations and mass murders of Brit supporting Tories.
It feels fun to think you are really sticking it to them, but it’s counterproductive and makes you no different than them.
Think about it. The FBI is conducting themselves that way today against normal Americans. The end does not justify any means you can dream up.
Though I've got to admit, I did like Pinochet's method of giving the free helicopter rides to be very creative.
Thank you. The deep state was at its epitome under this "Peace Prize" jackass. Biden is his third term.
Were these 60,000 Communists? (I’m trying to figure out how much to care)
Your CIA tin horn dictator police state dollars at work. Google “School of the Americas”. You want to know why the Latin American 3rd World hates our guts, look no further. We’re currently sleeping in the bed we made. We handed the left the propaganda ammunition that has our backs to the wall in the Culture Wars. That’s because we’re smart, right? Anyone get the sense that Darwin is at work here?
Operation Condor. Pope John Paul II solved the problem in Paraguay by visiting in May 1988. The problem was that Alfredo Stroessner was President from 1954 to 1988. Stroessner was in the process of destroying the freedom-loving citizens. Then Pope John Paul II arrived and called for a “moral cleansing of the country. Then Stroessner was overthrown, the Catholic Bishops supported freedom-loving citizens, and then, finally, in 1993 fair elections were held. Paraguay needed five years and one Pope to remove a tyrant.
Like I say, we see it different and I’ll leave it at that as no one will ever change my mind regarding the Cold War, and I really doubt anyone will change my mind regarding post Cold War, which is entirely different, due to totally different circumstances.
“Were these 60,000 Communists? (I’m trying to figure out how much to care)”
Even more are being churned out from US universities...
More than Assistant Professor PhDs with some grant money likely have.
So, everything g in the world changed when the U.S. lost the Cold War?
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