Archives of Terror Expose CIA, By Deirdre Griswold


Date: Thu, 12 Aug 93 13:49:37 EDT
Distribution: world
Organization: NY Transfer News Collective

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'ARCHIVES OF TERROR' EXPOSE CIA

By Deirdre Griswold

Somewhere in the city of Asunci›n, the capital of Paraguay, sits a
roomful of documents that has become known as the "Archives of
Terror."

The four tons of documents, photos and recordings were discovered
last December and January. They are reported to be the meticulous
records of arrest, torture and murder carried out by the political
police under the dictatorship of Gen. Alfredo Stroessner from 1954
to 1989.

The archives come from the Department of Police Investigations and
the Technical Office for the Repression of Communism. They shed
additional light on Operation Condor.

That is the agency for collaboration among the political police
agencies of the countries of the Southern Cone of Latin America.
Its headquarters was in Chile under the dictatorship of Augusto
Pinochet.

FALL OF STROESSNER

Despite the fascist repression of the Stroessner regime, the ruling
class in Paraguay faced a growing mass opposition by the 1980s.
Thousands demonstrated in Asunci›n. In the countryside the peasants
were seizing land from the big latifundias.

A February 1989 military coup, led by Gen. Andr€s Rodrøguez,
overthrew Stroessner. It preempted a popular uprising and
established a "restricted democracy" in Paraguay.

As in Chile and other countries in Latin America, the transition to
"democracy" in Paraguay has been managed by bourgeois forces in
alliance with U.S. imperialism. Their objective is to keep the
repressive forces of the state intact while presenting a more
liberal political face to the masses.

The political transition has been accompanied by the even more
aggressive economic intervention of foreign corporations seeking to
exploit the country's natural resources.

UNDER TUTELAGE OF CIA

The progressive forces of Paraguay have been regrouping after
decades of fascist terror. In collaboration with the movements of
Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay, they have begun a campaign
to open the "Archives of Terror" so the truth about the period of
the dictatorship can at last be known. They are demanding
compensation for victims of state terror.

The archives are now in the custody of the judicial system. But it
is feared they could already be in danger of being "sanitized" by
the shadowy secret police, whose crimes are detailed in the
thousands of documents. The newsmagazine Proceso of Mexico City
reports that the documents reveal extensive collaboration among
Operation Condor agencies in the "disappearance" of political
prisoners from all five countries.

Perhaps the greatest danger to the files comes from such U.S.
agencies as the CIA, whose agents are reported to have collaborated
with and coordinated the activities of their Latin American
counterparts.

As the campaign to open the archives gathers steam, it can damage
even further Washington's spurious claims to be a champion of
"human rights" around the world. Detailed files on U.S.
collaboration with the torturers and executioners of an admittedly
pro-Nazi regime will be hard to explain away.

                               -30-

(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted
if source is cited. For more information contact Workers World,
55 West 17 St., New York, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@blythe.org.)

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