Join Dr Tanya Harmer, Professor Francisco Panizza and Dr Pilar Elizalde for this event to celebrate the publication of Dr Francesca Lessa's new book, The Condor Trials: Transnational Repression and Human Rights in South America.
Through the voices of survivors and witnesses, human rights activists, judicial actors, journalists, and historians, Francesca Lessa (@UruguayFran) unravels the secrets of transnational repression masterminded by South American dictators between 1969 and 1981. Under Operation Condor, their violent and oppressive regimes kidnapped, tortured, and murdered hundreds of exiles, or forcibly returned them to the countries from which they had fled. South America became a zone of terror for those who were targeted, and of impunity for those who perpetuated the violence. Lessa shows how networks of justice seekers gradually materialized and effectively transcended national borders to achieve justice for the victims of these horrors. Based on extensive fieldwork, archival research, trial ethnography, and over one-hundred interviews, The Condor Trials explores South America’s past and present and sheds light on ongoing struggles for justice as its societies come to terms with the unparalleled atrocities of their not-so-distant pasts.
Francesca Lessa (@UruguayFran) is a lecturer in Latin American studies and development at the University of Oxford. She has a PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics. Her work focuses on human rights, accountability, impunity, transitional justice, and Operation Condor with a regional focus on South America. In 2022, Yale University Press published her second monograph, The Condor Trials: Transnational Repression and Human Rights in South America. She is also the author of Memory and Transitional Justice in Argentina and Uruguay (Palgrave Macmillan 2013) and has published widely on transitional justice and human rights in South America in prestigious journals, including Human Rights Quarterly, The Journal of Latin American Studies, The International Journal of Transitional Justice, and The Journal of Human Rights Practice. She is also the honorary president of the Observatorio Luz Ibarburu (Uruguay).
The structure of the event is a presentation of the book and a panel discussion with comments from Professor Panizza, Dr Elizalde (@pilizalde) and Dr Harmer (@tanyaharmer) from 6pm - 7.30pm. Followed by a reception at 7.30pm.