December 22nd 1992: Archives of Terror discovered
On this day in 1992, the lawyer Dr. Martín Almada and judge José Agustín Fernández discovered the ‘Archives of Terror’ in a police station in Paraguay’s capital city of Asunción. The records detailed the violence perpetrated against thousands of Latin Americans during Operation Condor, which began in the 1970s. The terror campaign was carried out by the intelligence agencies of right-wing dictatorships in Latin America against supposed communist influences, and was supported by the United States government. The secret archives listed 50,000 people murdered, 30,000 disappeared, and 400,000 imprisoned. Almada was himself a victim of the violent regime of Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay, and had been searching for fifteen years for the documents that would prove his claims when he received a tip to search the police station. The evidence found in the 700,000 documents have since been used to prosecute former military officers, the most high-profile of which was the case against General Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean dictator from 1973 to 1990.
“I cried with joy, because people used to treat me as though I was making up everything I saw. It was like an explosion of memory. I felt that each folder we opened up would help us go back to the past and understand the regime of terror which we suffered. Every document revealed terror and tragedy.”
- Dr. Martín Almada
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