URUGUAY 1964 to 1970
Torture -- as American as apple pie
excerpted from the book
Killing Hope
by William Blum
"The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect."{1}
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.{2}
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."{3} 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.{4}
"The violent methods which were beginning to be employed," said Otero, "caused an
escalation in Tupamaro activity. Before then their attitude showed that they would use violence
only as a last resort."{5}
The newspaper interview greatly upset American officials in South America and Washington.
Byron Engle later tried to explain it all away by asserting: "The three Brazilian reporters in
Montevideo all denied filing that story. We found out later that it was slipped into the paper by
someone in the composing room at the Jornal do Brasil."{6}
Otero had been a willing agent of the CIA, a student at their International Police Services
school in Washington, a recipient of their cash over the years, but he was not a torturer. What
finally drove him to speak out was perhaps the torture of a woman who, while a Tupamaro
sympathizer, was also a friend of his. When she told him that Mitrione had watched and assisted
in her torture, Otero complained to him, about this particular incident as well as his general
methods of extracting information. The only outcome of the encounter was Otero's demotion.{7}
William Cantrell was a CIA operations officer stationed in Montevideo, ostensibly as a member of
the OPS team. In the mid- 1960s he was instrumental in setting up a Department of Information
and Intelligence (DII), and providing it with funds and equipment.{8} Some of the equipment,
innovated by the CIA's Technical Services Division, was for the purpose of torture, for this was
one of the functions carried out by the DII.{9} "
One of the pieces of equipment that was found useful," former New York Times correspondent
A. J. Langguth learned, "was a wire so very thin that it could be fitted into the mouth between the
teeth and by pressing against the gum increase the electrical charge. And it was through the
diplomatic pouch that Mitrione got some of the equipment he needed for interrogations, including
these fine wires."{10}
Things got so bad in Mitrione's time that the Uruguayan Senate was compelled to undertake
an investigation. After a five-month study, the commission concluded unanimously that torture in
Uruguay had become a "normal, frequent and habitual occurrence", inflicted upon Tupamaros as
well as others. Among the types of torture the commission's report made reference to were
electric shocks to the genitals, electric needles under the fingernails, burning with cigarettes, the
slow compression of the testicles, daily use of psychological torture ... "pregnant women were
subjected to various brutalities and inhuman treatment" ... "certain women were imprisoned with
their very young infants and subjected to the same treatment" ...{11}
Eventually the DII came to serve as a cover for the Escuadrón de la Muerte (Death Squad),
composed, as elsewhere in Latin America, primarily of police officers, who bombed and strafed
the homes of suspected Tupamaro sympathizers and engaged in assassination and kidnapping.
The Death Squad received some of its special explosive material from the Technical Services
Division and, in all likelihood, some of the skills employed by its members were acquired from
instruction in the United States.{12} Between 1969 and 1973, at least 16 Uruguayan police
officers went through an eight-week course at CIA/OPS schools in Washington and Los Fresnos,
Texas in the design, manufacture and employment of bombs and incendiary devices.{13} The
official OPS explanation for these courses was that policemen needed such training in order to
deal with bombs placed by terrorists. There was, however, no instruction in destroying bombs,
only in making them; moreover, on at least one reported occasion, the students were not
policemen, but members of a private right-wing organization in Chile (see chapter on Chile).
Another part of the curriculum which might also have proven to be of value to the Death Squad
was the class on Assassination Weapons -- "A discussion of various weapons which may be used
by the assassin" is how OPS put it.{14}
Equipment and training of this kind was in addition to that normally provided by OPS: riot
helmets, transparent shields, tear gas, gas masks, communication gear, vehicles, police batons,
and other devices for restraining crowds. The supply of these tools of the trade was increased in
1968 when public disturbances reached the spark-point, and by 1970 American training in
riot-control techniques had been given to about a thousand Uruguayan policemen.{15}
Dan Mitrione had built a soundproofed room in the cellar of his house in Montevideo. In this room
he assembled selected Uruguayan police officers to observe a demonstration of torture
techniques. Another observer was Manuel Hevia Cosculluela, a Cuban who was with the CIA and
worked with Mitrione. Hevia later wrote that the course began with a description of the human
anatomy and nervous system ...
Soon things turned unpleasant. As subjects for the first testing they took beggars,
known in Uruguay as bichicomes, from the outskirts of Montevideo, as well as a
woman apparently from the frontier area with Brazil. There was no interrogation, only
a demonstration of the effects of different voltages on the different parts of the human
body, as well as demonstrating the use of a drug which induces vomiting -- I don't
know why or what for -- and another chemical substance. The four of them died.{16}
In his book Hevia does not say specifically what Mitrione's direct part in all this was, but he
later publicly stated that the OPS chief "personally tortured four beggars to death with electric
shocks".{17}
On another occasion, Hevia sat with Mitrione in the latter's house, and over a few drinks the
American explained to the Cuban his philosophy of interrogation. Mitrione considered it to be an
art. First there should be a softening-up period, with the usual beatings and insults. The object is
to humiliate the prisoner, to make him realize his helplessness, to cut him off from reality. No
questions, only blows and insults. Then, only blows in silence.
Only after this, said Mitrione, is the interrogation. Here no pain should be produced other than
that caused by the instrument which is being used. "The precise pain, in the precise place, in the
precise amount, for the desired effect," was his motto.
During the session you have to keep the subject from losing all hope of life, because this can
lead to stubborn resistance. "You must always leave him some hope ... a distant light."
"When you get what you want, and I always get it," Mitrione continued, "it may be good to
prolong the session a little to apply another softening-up. Not to extract information now, but only
as a political measure, to create a healthy fear of meddling in subversive activities."
The American pointed out that upon receiving a subject the first thing is to determine his
physical state, his degree of resistance, by means of a medical examination. "A premature death
means a failure by the technician ... It's important to know in advance if we can permit ourselves
the luxury of the subject's death."{18}
Not long after this conversation, Manual Hevia disappeared from Montevideo and turned up in
Havana. He had been a Cuban agent -- a double agent -- all along.
About half a year later, 31 July 1970 to be exact, Dan Mitrione was kidnapped by the
Tupamaros. They did not torture him. They demanded the release of some 150 prisoners in
exchange for him. With the determined backing of the Nixon administration, the Uruguayan
government refused. On 10 August, Mitrione's dead body was found on the back seat of a stolen
car. He had turned 50 on his fifth day as a prisoner.
Back in Mitrione's home town of Richmond, Indiana, Secretary of State William Rogers and
President Nixon's son-in-law David Eisenhower attended the funeral for Mitrione, the city's former
police chief. Frank Sinatra and Jerry Lewis came to town to stage a benefit show for Mitrione's
family.
And White House spokesman, Ron Ziegler, solemnly stated that "Mr. Mitrione's devoted service
to the cause of peaceful progress in an orderly world will remain as an example for free men
everywhere."{19}
"A perfect man," his widow said.
"A great humanitarian," said his daughter Linda.{20} go to notes
The military's entry into the escalating conflict signaled the beginning of the end for the
Tupamaros. By the end of 1972, the curtain was descending on their guerrilla theatre. Six months
later, the military was in charge, Congress was dissolved, and everything not prohibited was
compulsory. For the next 11 years, Uruguay competed strongly for the honor of being South
America's most repressive dictatorship. It had, at one point, the largest number of political
prisoners per capita in the world. And, as every human rights organization and former prisoner
could testify, each one of them was tortured. "Torture," said an activist priest, "was routine and
automatic."{21}
No one was dancing in Uruguay.
In 1981, at the Fourteenth Conference of American Armies, the Uruguayan Army offered a paper
in which it defined subversion as "actions, violent or not, with ultimate purposes of a political
nature, in all fields of human activity within the internal sphere of a state and whose aims are
perceived as not convenient for the overall political system."{22}
The dissident Uruguayan writer, Eduardo Galeano, summed up his country's era of
dictatorship thusly: "People were in prison so that prices could be free."{23}
The film "State of Siege" appeared in 1972. It centered around Mitrione and the Tupamaros
and depicted a Uruguayan police officer receiving training at a secret bomb school in the United
States, though the film strove more to provide a composite picture of the role played by the US in
repression throughout Latin America. A scheduled premier showing of the film at the
federally-funded John F. Kennedy Arts Center in Washington was canceled. There was already
growing public and congressional criticism of this dark side of American foreign policy without
adding to it. During the mid-1970s, however, Congress enacted several pieces of legislation
which abolished the entire Public Safety Program. In its time, OPS had provided training for more
than one million policemen in the Third World. Ten thousand of them had received advance
training in the United States. An estimated $150 million worth of equipment had been shipped to
police forces abroad.{24} Now, the "export of repression" was to cease.
That was on paper. The reality appears to be somewhat different.
To a large extent, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) simply picked up where OPS
had left off. The drug agency was ideally suited for the task, for its agents were already deployed
all over Latin America and elsewhere overseas in routine liaison with foreign police forces. The<
