Operation Condor was a campaign of political repression involving intelligence operations, coups, and assassinations of left-wing sympathizers, liberals and democrats and their families in South America which formally existed from 1975 to 1983. Condor was formally created in November 1975, when Augusto Pinochet’s spy chief, Manuel Contreras, invited 50 intelligence officers from Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil to the Army War Academy on La Alameda, Santiago’s central avenue, which comprised the right-wing dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America. The United States and, allegedly, France were frequent collaborators and financiers of the covert operations.

Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte was a Chilean army officer and military dictator who ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990. He was the leader of the military junta from 1973 to 1981, and was declared President of the Republic by the junta in 1974 and thus became the dictator of Chile, and from 1981 to 1990 as de jure president after a new constitution which confirmed him in the office was approved by a referendum in 1980. His time in office remains the longest of any Chilean ruler.