Torture and Death in Uruguay

By Jeri Laber
March 10, 1976

In Uruguayan prisons there are two kinds of “submarine.” Both are forms of torture.

When the “wet submarine” method is used, the prisoner is immersed, head down, in a tank of putrid water polluted by vomit, excrement and blood. He is suspended until he has almost drowned, process that is often repeated for hours on end.

Sometimes it is fatal, as in the case of Alvaro Balbi, a 32‐year‐old medical student with four children. His mutilated body was delivered to his pregnant wife on July 31, 1975, two days after his arrest, with the official explanation that he, a healthy man with no medical history, had succumbed to an asthma attack.

The “dry submarine” threatens slow suffocation by tying a plastic bag tightly over the victim's head. Nibya Sabalsagaray, a 24‐year‐old teacher in Montevideo died that way on June 29, 104, only ten hours after her arrest. Her relatives were told that she committed suicide:

“Submarines” are known throughout Uruguay. They are two of the more modest methods of torture among many that have become routine. Used to punish and intimidate rather than to obtain information, torture is directed against both the right and the left, against anyone who expresses views in opposition to the regime.

According to the research department of Amnesty International, at least 6,000 persons, about one in every 450 of the country's 2.5 million people, is a political prisoner. During the last few years, one in every 50 persons has been subjected to interrogation, arrest, imprisonment or torture.

• Uruguay, once a democratic oasis in Latin America, now has the highest per capita concentration of political prisoners in the world.

More:
https://www.nytimes.com/1976/03/10/archives/torture-and-death-in-uruguay.html

New York Times, 1976: Torture and Death in Uruguay

Torture and Death in Uruguay

By Jeri Laber
March 10, 1976

Before the 1970's, Uruguay was known for its liberal Constitution, its economic, educational and cultural achievements, and its long tradition of civilian rule and respect for human rights. The military destroyed all this in a two‐year period, during which steadily acquired control over a weak and not‐unwilling civilian President, Juan Maria Bordaberry. The process was a gradual one, compared with the classic pattern of military takeover in South America.

The kind of coup that focused world attention upon Chile did not occur in Uruguay, nor did the armed forces overthrow the elected civilian President. This may explain, to some extent, why the outside world has paid so little attention to a rule of terror in Uruguay that is as brutal and as far‐reaching as any in the world.

Moreover, many outsiders have assumed that the military in Uruguay increased its powers In direct response to specific disturbances caused by the Tupamaros, a violent urban‐guerrilla movement formed in the 1960's that had developed considerable middleclass support.

Yet, while the Tupamaro movement has been effectively suppressed since 1972; a few months after a decree established emergency powers for this purpose, the armed forces have intensified their repressive rule.

The Uruguayan Congress has been dissolved, total censorship established and all activity by political parties, trade unions and university groups has been banned.

Selmar Balbi is a well‐known teacher, a retired union leader and former member of the Uruguayan Communist Party. He is the father of Alvaro Balbi, the medical student who died during “submarine” torture.

Last August, haunted by the fear that his “status as a trade union leader led to [his] son's murder,” Selmer Balbi wrote “the most difficult letter of [his] life'—a controlled and dignified appeal to President Bordaberry to end the terror in his nation.

But President Bordaberry lacks that power. When his term ends this year, the armed forces will determine Uruguay's political future. An undisguised military dictatorship seems inevitable unless the monstrous crimes of the present regime are exposed to the world by an international protest.

Jeri Laber, a writer, is a member of Amnesty International, which has just released what is described as an authenticated list of 22 people who have been tortured to death in Uruguay.

https://www.nytimes.com/1976/03/10/archives/torture-and-death-in-uruguay.html

The civic-military dictatorship of Uruguay (1973–85), also known as the Uruguayan Dictatorship, was an authoritarian military dictatorship that ruled Uruguay for 12 years, from June 27, 1973 (after the 1973 coup d'état) until March 1, 1985. The dictatorship has been the subject of much controversy due to its violations of human rights, use of torture, and the unexplained disappearances of many Uruguayans.[2] The term "civic-military" refers to the military regime's relatively gradual usurpation of power from civilian presidents who continued to serve as head of state,[3] which distinguished it from dictatorships in other South American countries in which senior military officers immediately seized power and directly served as head of state.

The dictatorship was the culmination of an escalation of violence and authoritarianism in a traditionally peaceful and democratic country, and existed within the context of other military dictatorships in the region. It resulted in the suppression of all former political activity, including the traditional political parties. Many people were imprisoned and tortured, especially Uruguayans with left-wing sympathies.[4]

Political situation in Uruguay
The slow road to dictatorship started in the late 1960s. Between 1952 and 1967, the country experimented with a collective presidency. The National Council of Government had nine members, six from the majority party and three from the opposition. It provided weak leadership in the midst of a worsening economic situation.

After the re-establishment of the Presidency, the new President Óscar Diego Gestido of the Colorado Party was unable to improve economic conditions. He died in December 1967, six months after taking office. His constitutional successor, President Jorge Pacheco Areco (1967–1972) banned the Socialist Party of Uruguay, other leftist organizations and their newspapers, purged liberal professors from universities, and suppressed labor unions. His repressive politics as well as the crisis in economy and high inflation fueled social conflict and far-left guerrilla activity; the latter of which manifested in the form of the Tupamaros. On June 13, 1968, Pacheco declared a state of emergency. On August 14, 1968, 28 year old university student Líber Arce became the first student killed by police forces in Uruguay under the Pacheco administration. Another state of emergency was declared in August 1970, after Tupamaros killed US security expert Dan Mitrione. To coordinate their anti-guerrilla activities, the armed forces created the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Junta de Comandantes en Jefe y el Estado Mayor Conjunto) abbreviated as ESMACO. It was granted complete independence from the Ministry of Defense. [5] Another state of emergency was declared in January 1971 when the Tupamaros kidnapped UK ambassador Geoffrey Jackson. On September 9, 1971, more than 100 Tupamaros escaped from jail, prompting Pacheco to order the army to suppress all guerrilla activities.[6]

Between 1968 and 1971, expenses on the military doubled from 13.3% of the national budget to 26.2% while expenses on education fell from 24.3% to 16%.[7]

. . .

Dictatorship
Uruguay's democratically elected Parliament was dismissed on June 27, 1973 for resisting the military regime. Bordaberry created a new Council of State and put the military in control of civilian affairs. The new dictatorship was inspired by the Brazilian military government, which claimed the Cold War justified the use of all necessary means to defeat the Left.[8]

More:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civic-military_dictatorship_of_Uruguay

I learned from it that Uruguay, like Argentina, dropped political prisoners from aircraft into the water to hide them. There is a useful view of a map which shows the area of Latin America engaged in the program "Operation Condor" which has been openly known for decades.

Uruguay Forty Years Later...

On edit, adding a short video, 6 minutes long, concerning something I did not know. You may find it obnoxious, disgusting, or even slightly amusing, in an unpleasant way:

TO SAVE DAN MITRIONE NIXON ADMINISTRATION URGED
DEATH THREATS FOR URUGUAYAN PRISONERS

In Response Uruguayan Security Forces Launched Death Squads to Hunt and Kill Insurgents

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 324
By Carlos Osorio and Marianna Enamoneta
With the Collaboration of Clara Aldrighi
Posted – August 11, 2010

Washington, D.C., August 11, 2010 - Documents posted by the National Security Archive on the 40th anniversary of the death of U.S. advisor Dan Mitrione in Uruguay show the Nixon administration recommended a “threat to kill [detained insurgent] Sendic and other key [leftist insurgent] MLN prisoners if Mitrione is killed.” The secret cable from U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers, made public here for the first time, instructed U.S. Ambassador Charles Adair: “If this has not been considered, you should raise it with the Government of Uruguay at once.”

The message to the Uruguayan government, received by the U.S. Embassy at 11:30 am on August 9, 1970, was an attempt to deter Tupamaro insurgents from killing Mitrione at noon on that day. A few minutes later, Ambassador Adair reported back, in another newly-released cable, that “a threat was made to these prisoners that members of the ‘Escuadrón de la Muerte’ [death squad] would take action against the prisoners’ relatives if Mitrione were killed.”

Dan Mitrione, Director of the U.S. AID Office of Public Safety (OPS) in Uruguay and the main American advisor to the Uruguayan police at the time, had been held for ten days by MLN-Tupamaro insurgents demanding the release of some 150 guerrilla prisoners held by the Uruguayan government. Mitrione was found dead the morning of August 10, 1970, killed by the Tupamaros after their demands were not met.

“The documents reveal the U.S. went to the edge of ethics in an effort to save Mitrione—an aspect of the case that remained hidden in secret documents for years,” said Carlos Osorio, who directs the National Security Archive’s Southern Cone project. “There should be a full declassification to set the record straight on U.S. policy to Uruguay in the 1960’s and 1970’s.”

“In the aftermath of Dan Mitrione’s death, the Uruguayan government unleashed the illegal death squads to hunt and kill insurgents,” said Clara Aldrighi, professor of history at Uruguay’s Universidad de la República, and author of “El Caso Mitrione” (Montevideo: Ediciones Trilce, 2007). “The U.S. documents are irrefutable proof that the death squads were a policy of the Uruguayan government, and will serve as key evidence in the death squads cases open now in Uruguay’s courts,” Osorio added. "It is a shame that the U.S. documents are writing Uruguayan history. There should be declassification in Uruguay as well,” stated Aldrighi, who collaborated in the production of this briefing book.

Uruguay, with a long-standing democratic tradition, entered a crisis during most of the 1960’s and 1970’s. The U.S. government feared the strongest Latin American insurgency at the time, the leftist Movimiento Nacional de Liberación (MLN-Tupamaros) would topple a weak Uruguayan government so they therefore supported the Uruguayan Government with economic and security assistance. The U.S. AID Office of Public Safety helped enhance the counterinsurgency techniques of a Uruguayan police renowned for the wide use of torture among prisoners. Under Dan Mitrione, the OPS consolidated the Uruguayan police’s National Directorate for Information and Intelligence (Dirección Nacional de Información e Inteligencia, DNII). It was right at this time that the Tupamaro insurgents kidnapped Mitrione on July 31, 1970, and demanded the release of 150 Tupamaro prisoners.

More:
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB324/index.htm

Uruguay, 1964 to 1970: Torture—as American as apple pie
“The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect.”

The words of an instructor in the art of torture. The words of Dan Mitrione, the head of the Office of Public Safety (OPS) mission in Montevideo.

Officially, OPS was a division of the Agency for International Development, but the director of OPS in Washington, Byron Engle, was an old CIA hand. His organization maintained a close working relationship with the CIA, and Agency officers often operated abroad under OPS cover, although Mitrione was not one of them.

OPS had been operating formally in Uruguay since 1965, supplying the police with the equipment, the arms, and the training it was created to do. Four years later, when Mitrione arrived, the Uruguayans had a special need for OPS services. The country was in the midst of a long-running economic decline, its once-heralded prosperity and democracy sinking fast toward the level of its South American neighbors. Labor strikes, student demonstrations, and militant street violence had become normal events during the past year; and, most worrisome to the Uruguayan authorities, there were the revolutionaries who called themselves Tupamaros. Perhaps the cleverest, most resourceful and most sophisticated urban guerrillas the world has ever seen, the Tupamaros had a deft touch for capturing the public’s imagination with outrageous actions, and winning sympathizers with their Robin Hood philosophy. Their members and secret partisans held key positions in the government, banks, universities, and the professions, as well as in the military and police.

“Unlike other Latin-American guerrilla groups,” the New York Times stated in 1970, “the Tupamaros normally avoid bloodshed when possible. They try instead to create embarrassment for the Government and general disorder.” A favorite tactic was to raid the files of a private corporation to expose corruption and deceit in high places, or kidnap a prominent figure and try him before a “People’s Court”. It was heady stuff to choose a public villain whose acts went uncensored by the legislature, the courts and the press, subject him to an informed and uncompromising interrogation, and then publicize the results of the intriguing dialogue. Once they ransacked an exclusive high-class nightclub and scrawled on the walls perhaps their most memorable slogan: O Bailan Todos O No Baila Nadie … Either everyone dances or no one dances.

Dan Mitrione did not introduce the practice of torturing political prisoners to Uruguay. It had been perpetrated by the police at times from at least the early 1960s. However, in a surprising interview given to a leading Brazilian newspaper in 1970, the former Uruguayan Chief of Police Intelligence, Alejandro Otero, declared that US advisers, and in particular Mitrione, had instituted torture as a more routine measure; to the means of inflicting pain, they had added scientific refinement; and to that a psychology to create despair, such as playing a tape in the next room of women and children screaming and telling the prisoner that it was his family being tortured.

More:
https://williamblum.org/chapters/killing-hope/uruguay

Uruguayan Clears Up 'State of Siege' Killing

By Shirley Christian, Special To the New York Times
June 21, 1987

Mr. Sendic, speaking recently about the political crime that thrust Uruguay into the international limelight, said that Mr. Mitrione, a former police chief in Richmond, Ind., had been selected as a target for kidnapping because he was helping to teach riot control procedures to the Uruguayan police.

Although not specifically accusing Mr. Mitrione of instructing in torture, as was suggested in ''State of Siege,'' he said student demonstrators had been killed by the Uruguayan police as a result of the anti-riot training.

Training to Put Down Protests
An American familiar with Mr. Mitrione's work at the time said it was true that Mr. Mitrione was giving anti-riot training but that it had focused on ways to put down demonstrations ''without creating martyrs.''

The United States cut off training for police forces in Uruguay in 1973 and by July 1, 1975 the Congress shut down all such assistance programs.

Mr. Sendic said he had not been part of the command that kidnapped Mr. Mitrione and held him in a house in Montevideo for 10 days but was making the decisions from another location in the city, accompanied by other members of the Tupamaro directorate.

More:
https://www.nytimes.com/1987/06/21/world/uruguayan-clears-up-state-of-siege-killing.html

Intended to Keep Mitrione Alive
Mr. Sendic said the Tupamaros demanded the release of about 150 imprisoned guerrillas and threatened to kill Mr. Mitrione if the demand was not met. The Tupamaro leaders decided later, he said, that if the Government continued to refuse the demand they would hold Mr. Mitrione indefinitely instead of killing him.

But on Aug. 7, 1970, a week after the kidnapping, the police raided the house where the leadership was staying and captured Mr. Sendic and the others. A short time later, he said, the replacement leadership, which knew of the plan to keep Mr. Mitrione alive, was also captured.

''Those captured lost all contact with the others,'' he said, ''and when the deadline came the group that was left with Mitrione did not know what to do. So they decided to carry out the threat.''

Mr. Sendic, who served a total of 13 1/2 years in prison during two periods, spent a year in Europe, Cuba and Nicaragua after being amnestied, then returned to Uruguay late last year. He said the Tupamaros' efforts to overthrow the Government came only after the constitutional Government, even before the military took power in 1973, had begun to repress leftist groups.

'First came the repression,'' he said, ''then our response.''

https://www.nytimes.com/1987/06/21/world/uruguayan-clears-up-state-of-siege-killing.html

Daniel Mitrione was born in Italy on 4th August, 1920. The family emigrated to the United States and in 1945 Mitrione became a police officer in Richmond, Indiana.

Mitrione joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1959. The following year he was assigned to the State Department's International Cooperation Administration. He was then sent to South America to teach "advanced counterinsurgency techniques." His speciality was in teaching the police how to torture political prisoners without killing them.

According to A.J. Langguth of the New York Times, Mitrione was working for the CIA via the International Development's Office of Public Safety (OPS). We know he was in several foreign countries but between 1960 and 1967 he spent a lot of time in Brazil and was involved in trying to undermine the left-wing president João Goulart, who had taken power after President Juscelino Kubitschek resigned from office in 1961.

João Goulart was a wealthy landowner who was opposed to communism. However, he was in favour of the redistribution of wealth in Brazil. As minister of labour he had increased the minimum wage by 100%. Colonel Vernon Walters, the US military attaché in Brazil, described Goulart as “basically a good man with a guilty conscience for being rich.”

The CIA began to make plans for overthrowing Goulart. A psychological warfare program approved by Henry Kissinger, at the request of telecom giant ITT during his chair of the 40 Committee, sent U.S. PSYOPS disinformation teams to spread fabricated rumors concerning Goulart. John McCloy was asked to set up a channel of communication between the CIA and Jack W. Burford, one of the senior executives of the Hanna Mining Company. In February, 1964, McCloy went to Brazil to hold secret negotiations with Goulart. However, Goulart rejected the deal offered by Hanna Mining.

More:
https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKmitrione.htm