DEATH SQUADS AS PARALLEL FORCES: URUGUAY, OPERATION CONDOR, AND THE UNITED STATES

Journal of Third World Studies, Spring 2007 by McSherry, J Patrice

In September 1972 the armed forces discovered Raul Sendic, the top leader of the Tupamaros, in a house (he had escaped from prison in September 1971). There was a shootout and Sendic was badly wounded when a bullet destroyed his jaw. As soldiers carried the bleeding militant to an ambulance, Campos Hermida arrived, recognized him, and shouted that it was Sendic and that he should be killed on the spot. In a striking response, the navy officer in charge, Julio Alvarez, retorted that Sendic was his prisoner and no one would touch him.61 The episode highlighted the distinction between the regular military and the parallel forces that operated in its midst, whose mission was to exterminate, not detain, the Tupamaros.

THE BARDESIO CONFESSION

In 1972 the Tupamaros kidnapped Nelson Bardesio, an ambitious police agent who had also been CIA officer CantrelPs driver and confidant.62 Under questioning (without violence, as Bardesio acknowledged), the policeman confirmed the existence of a death squad within the police. He named names of participating officers, including Hugo Campos Hermida and Victor Castiglioni, and admitted his own involvement in the squad. Castiglioni was the director of intelligence of DNII and Campos Hermida was in charge of DNII investigations, Department 5.63 Bardesio also named a Paraguayan who worked with them-documenting the early transnational links that would develop into Condor-Angel Crosas Cuevas. He, Campos Hermida, and several others founded the Death Squadron on the orders of the Ministry of the Interior, Bardesio said.64 Crosas Cuevas was in charge of "special operations," mandated by Armando Acosta y Lara, the undersecretary of the Interior Ministry, and he recruited Bardesio with the argument that, to confront the Tupamaros, "a violent psychological action"65 was necessary. The Death Squadron planned and executed bombing attacks against a socialist leader, Arturo Dubra; a journalist, Maria Ester Gilio; a lawyer, Alejandro Artucio; and Communist Party leader Manuel Liberoff. Bardesio admitted that the squad had "disappeared" and assassinated Hector Castagnetto and that he had directly participated.66 Bardesio also admitted to personally participating in bombing the houses of Gilio, Artucio, and Liberoff under orders of the Ministry of the Interior. The Death Squadron operated under the protection of President Pacheco (his personal secretary was involved in directing it), when Uruguay was still nominally a democracy.67

In 1970 Bardesio had been assigned a group of five men who would carry out surveillance and would receive training from Servicio de lnteligencia del Estado (SIDE), the Argentine state intelligence service, he said. Bardesio also revealed that the DNII had sent two officers, one of whom was Fontana, to Brazil for training in death squad operations. Bardesio documented the concerted effort to strengthen the links between Brazil and Uruguay's police. He discussed the role of William Cantrell in the creation of the intelligence structure DNII and said that the American personally controlled large sums of money that he disbursed for DNII operations.68 When Pacheco's private secretary, Carlos Piran, sent Bardesio and other members of the Death Squadron to Buenos Aires to train with SIDE, they picked up gelignite explosives for use in bombings in Uruguay, he admitted.6' The explosives were used in bombing the houses of Liberoff and Artucio.70 SIDE also trained them in "antiterrorist activities" as well as surveillance techniques. Bardesio's confession thus provided key documentation of the Death Squadron as well as the early development of the cross-border collaboration that became Operation Condor.