The recent execution of Jang Song Thaek (12/12/13) by his nephew, North
Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, brought to mind the various ways in which
ego-centric totalitarian leaders have sought to silence criticism throughout the
ages, and especially the Latin American regimes of the 20th Century.
The exhumation and autopsy of the body of for Brazilian president João “Jango”
Goulart and the 40th anniversary of Pinochet’s coup d’etat underline
this historical nadir.
New leaders always try to consolidate their power, be it a freshly
minted CEO of a large corporation, the recently appointed director of a
governmental agency, or a usurping monarch who won the crown on the field of
battle. The less democratic the institution or the circumstances, the more
ruthless these individuals tend to be in the elimination of dissenting voices.
Stalin’s purges, Mao’s “Cultural Revolution,” Elizabeth’s execution of Mary,
Queen of Scots: all of these are examples of absolute power attacking others
who may more or less legitimately oppose it, especially when said opposition
may itself house some form of power-base, be it military, political, or moral
authority.
The history of Latin America overflows with totalitarian and
quasi-totalitarian regimes, from the first European monarchs, through the
corporatist models of the mid-20th Century such as Vargas and Peron,
and including various military regimes throughout the region. In some cases, dissenting voices were stifled
by fiat: the government suspended rights of expression and assembly, utilizing
strong-arm tactics to enforce the decrees. More hardline rulers also used fabricated
and/or exaggerated charges of treason, similar to Kim Jong Un’s declarations
regarding his uncle, as reported in CNN, describing him as a “traitor for all
ages” who plotted to overthrow the dictator’s regime “by all sorts of intrigues
and despicable methods.” CNN quoted Marcus Noland, a senior fellow at the
Peterson Institute for International Economics, who described Jang Song Thaek’s
arrest as “theatrical” and execution as “unprecedented.”1
As obviously false and vile as these kangaroo court proceedings may be,
the dictators of Latin America in the latter half of the 20th
Century developed an even more insidious mechanism for silencing critics who
could potentially harm their credibility by casting the light of truth on their
lies and abuses: the dissidents simply disappeared. The military regimes in
Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, among others, disposed of inconvenient individuals
in a manner that defined the ultimate lack of transparency. Friends, family and
coworkers would not know the fate of a “disappeared person,” encountering stone
walls when inquiring of police and other governmental agencies. Someone could
leave for work one morning and never be heard from again. At places of
employment, colleagues would find mysteriously vacant offices. At schools and
universities, desks and lecterns would suddenly be empty without explanation.
And adjacent to secret government installations, such as the “31 de Março”
ranch in São Paulo2 or the “300 Carlos” at the headquarters of the
13th Infantry Battalion in Montevideo, clandestine cemeteries
received the mutilated bodies of those “disappeared” who were tortured to
death.3 Vast numbers of these individuals were erased from the face
of the Earth by their own governments, gone without a trace. As 86-year old
former coroner and director of the Brazilian Forensic Medicine Institute (Instituto Médico Legal) under the
military regime, Harry Shibata, declared, “Disappeared is disappeared.”4
The disappearance of hundreds of individuals under these Latin American
dictatorships defines the extreme in cowardice. Afraid to operate under
democratic institutions – sometimes regent in constitutions the very regimes
purported to uphold – this practice lacked even the theatrical “transparency”
of Kim Jong Un’s farce. At the same
time, it constituted an act of domestic terrorism, for a collateral intention
was to strike such fear into the hearts of the general citizenry that further
dissent would be dissuaded. This
facilitated the role of secret police. Like the infamous Gestapo of the Nazi
regime, agents or informants could be lurking around the next corner, or at the
next table. Others would be too terrified to speak out, since they, too, could
simply disappear.
In the final analysis, the tactic of “disappearing” people demonstrated
the actual impotence of those who practiced it. Unable to govern openly,
incapable of leading their people honestly, too weak to build a democratic base
for their governments, the self-serving tyrants chose deceit and violence in an
attempt to cover up their own inadequacies.
