Is the Condor Plan operative again?

False accusations and media campaigns are used against Latin American leaders and governments to dethrone them from the political life. Many believe it is a sort of revival of the Condor Operation as the goals are the same, but with different methods.

The Condor Operation —also known as Condor Plan— is a kind of crime multinational corporation implemented in the southern side of Latin America between 1970-1980 by military regimes backed by the U.S. to assassinate opposition leaders, especially those with left-wing stances.

At that time, they sought to silence those voices by means of assassinations, tortures, and forced disappearance. Today, other means are used to disqualify them politically.

A new Condor Operation is already in motion in the region, warned Rafael Correa —former President of Ecuador. He also explained that false accusations of corruption are now used to discredit former presidents and therefore, undermine their reputation and rule them out of the electoral process.

The latest case is Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s, founder of Brazil’s Workers Party, who is imprisoned by order of the examining magistrate Sergio Moro, after a court sentenced him to 12 years and month by an allegedly case of corruption. No evidences have been provided nor any witness able to accuse him, though.

Lula’s incarceration triggered a surge of rejection in the region where political leaders denounced that the true intention of the process against the former head of state was to impede him to run as a political candidate for the upcoming presidential elections to be held in October.

Despite his illegal incarceration, the founder of the Workers Party leads the voting intention with a view to the upcoming elections, with a wide open advantage over the far-right wing candidate Jair Bolsonaro.

The persecution against Lula is a new phase of the parliamentary and judicial coup plotted by the Brazilian Senate in 2016 against President Dilma Rousseff, accused of alleged violation of tax rules.

With 61 votes for and 28 against, the Senate removed her from office. She had been elected democratically by more than 54 million voters.

This sort of “soft coups”, as military force is not applied, had been implemented already in 2012 in Paraguay, against Fernando Lugo.

Asked about the attacks against progressive governments in the region, Bolivian head of state Evo Morales assured the region is living another Condor Operation, which is now written in judicial coups.

Evo warned in his Twitter account that every time a left wing leader or government emerge, this kind of coup comes to life.

Evo himself was the target, back in 2015, of a media war whose sole goal was to cause damage to the change process.

By means of a misinformation campaign, the reputation of the first Bolivian indigenous president was attacked.

Bolivia grew in less than a decade as it was among the least developed countries in South America. Bolivia quickly became the nation with higher economical growth in the region. As a result, more than 2 million people have been lifted out of poverty.

President Morales pointed OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro as the man behind all these plans against progressive governments.

“Almagro has a Condor Operation behavior. If he cannot remove you physically, he does everything in his power to oust anti-imperialist government and leaders politically,” warned Evo.

The OAS Secretary General uses the international body as an open tribune to constantly attack Venezuela and foster sanctions against that country. He also refuses to recognize the electoral process and even dares to encourage a foreign intervention, as evidenced in the Summit of the Americas held in Lima, Peru.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has also voiced the revival of old methods used in Latin America to trigger chaos and violence, and thus, pave the way of an American intervention.

Maduro once stated “Venezuelan and Latin American right wing is fed by the Condor Operation. They want us to regress to the times of foreign dominance, plundering. That is the oligarchy in our nation.”

To some experts, there are similar patterns between the dirty war against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and what the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio did from 1970 to 1973 against the Democratic government of president Salvador Allende.

History repeats itself four decades later in South America. Today, other paths to destabilize governments such as media campaigns, psychological war, street-fight encouragement, incitement to uprising, and social disobedience are being promoted.

Translated by Sergio A. Paneque Diaz/CubaSi Translation Staff