Terror archives

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The "terror archives" were found on December 22, 1992 by a lawyer, Dr. Martín Almada, and a human-rights activist and judge, José Fernandez, in a police station in a suburb of Asunción (Lambaré), capital of Paraguay. José Fernandez was looking for files on a former prisoner. Instead, he found archives describing the fates of thousands of Latin Americans who had been secretly kidnapped, tortured, and killed by the security services of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay. This was known as Operation Condor.

The "terror archives" counted 50.000 persons murdered, 30.000 "disappeared" and 400.000 incarcerated people ^[1]. They also revealed that other countries such as Colombia, Peru and Venezuela also cooperated, in a greater or lesser degree, by providing intelligence information that had been requested by the security services of the Southern Cone countries. Now in Asunción's Palace of Justice, some of these countries have used portions of them to prosecute former military officers. Much of the case built against General Pinochet by Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón were made using those archives. Martín Almada was twice interviewed by Baltasar Garzón.

"[The documents] are a mountain of ignominy, of lies, which Stroessner [Paraguay's dictator until 1989] used for 40 years to blackmail the Paraguayan people," says Martín Almada, original archive discover. He wants the UNESCO to list the Archives of Terror as an international cultural site, as this would greatly facilitate access to funding to preserve and protect the documents.

In May 2000, a UNESCO mission visited Asuncion following a request from the Paraguayan authorities for help in putting these files on the Memory of the World Register, one element of a program aimed at safeguarding and promoting the documentary heritage of humanity to ensure records are preserved and available for consultation.