Today, the question remains unclear: should the US be held accountable for the thousands of lives lost in its backing of right-wing dictators to deter Soviet influence in Latin America, and did Latin America benefit from US involvement overall?
El Muro de la Verguenza (The Wall of Shame), a barrier separating the wealthy and poor neighborhoods in Lima, Peru [Credit: TeleSUR English]
Some say US participation in Operation Condor, while a
success in deterring the Communist takeover of Latin America,
was nothing less than a failure to protect human rights.
Although U.S. involvement in Operation Condor stilted a growing
communist presence in Chile and Argentina and advanced political
stability, political turmoil between left and right seems to persist
in countries such as Peru and Bolivia as a consequence.
With this said, another argument is that the communists would have
been the ones to commit atrocities if the right-wing dictators did
not supplant them. Evidence of this lies in China under Mao Zedong,
Cambodia under Pol Pot, Cuba under Fidel Castro, and dozens of other
Communist nations of the twentieth century.
From 1975 to 1979 - through execution, starvation, disease, and forced labor - the Khmer Rouge systematically killed an estimated two million Cambodians, almost a fourth of the country's population.
- Loung Ung, Cambodian-American human-rights activist
[Credit: Northern-Scot]
During Castro's rule, thousands of Cubans were incarcerated in abysmal prisons, thousands more were harassed and intimidated, and entire generations were denied basic political freedoms.
- Human Rights Watch
[Credit: Northern-Scot]