#dirty war

Liberation theology, Operation Condor, and all of that sort of thing.

I'd jabber about it more, but I've got things to do (annoying work things, alas). I'm reading a bunch of fiction related to Operation Condor.

The Twilight Zone and Space Invaders by Nono Fernandez. Twilight Zone is just stellar. Painful, hard, but stellar.

Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez. Pen, Sword, and Camisole by Jorge Amado.

If you’ve been following the news, Argentina has been thrown a lifeline. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced on X (formerly Twitter), that “we stand ready to do what is needed to support Argentina and the Argentine people. There’s more than that and tango in Argentine, something that will explain how for Latin America, the topic of people being disappeared (desaparecido)  hits harder…

Käsemann was born in Germany; her father was theologian Ernst Käsemann. The family moved frequently during her childhood due to Ernst's work. She studied politics at the Freie Universität Berlin, which required she take a mandatory practical training semester. he took her semester in Bolivia, working for the Evangelical Methodist Church. Käsemann then decided to study economics at the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina.

After the 1976 military coup in Argentina, Käsemann helped forge documents for political targets who were trying to escape the country. She was arrested in March 1977 and taken to a torture camp, where she was killed sometime in late May 1977. In the aftermath, the German government faced criticism for not securing her release from Argentina. The two men who ran the torture camp were given life sentences in prison by Argentine courts in 2011.

#cowardly, disgusting and pathetic

#one-sided war on civilians

Operation Gardel was the codename given by the Peronist guerrilla organization Montoneros involving the downing of a Lockheed C-130 Hercules during takeoff from the old Teniente General Benjamín Matienzo International Airport on 28 August 1975. The target was a military intervention transporting 114 Gendarmerie personnel to Tucumán province.

The plan involved detonating an explosive charge, shaped like a conical tip, strategically placed beneath the runway when C-130E TC-62 reached full throttle during takeoff. A disused sewer near the runway, connected to a storm drain, served as the location for the explosive setup. A cable, running through a 250-meter tunnel, linked the charge to a parked vehicle's 12V battery. The activation switch was situated in a nearby pit. This meticulously planned operation, hailed as a "masterpiece of military engineering" by Montoneros, required at least six months of preparation, using a forked branch as a benchmark to calculate the plane's trajectory.

TC-62, departing from El Palomar Air Base, carried 85 Argentine Federal Police members and landed at Benjamin Matienzo International Airport. After refueling, 114 National Gendarmerie members boarded for their leave, with the next leg scheduled for San Juan. During takeoff at around 13:00, an explosion occurred, creating a 12x2-meter crater 100-150 meters in front of the C-130. The aircraft, 12-15 meters above the ground, caught fire, tilted, and crashed 400 meters down the runway. The blast killed 5 gendarmes and wounded 29, including 6 crew members. One unhurt crew member attempted rescues but succumbed to asphyxiation later.