Eva Newton is an aspiring investigative journalist interested in movements challenging capitalist and neo-colonial exploitation, particularly in Latin America. She is currently based in London, and has previously volunteered with the United Voices of the World Union, the Socialist Party and the Latin American Bureau.

Issue #197 of The Internationalist examines Uruguay's decades-long struggle to investigate the "disappeared" from its 1973–1985 dictatorship, highlighting how military obstruction, immunity laws, and a persistent "pact of silence" have delayed justice—even as recent institutional breakthroughs offer new hope.

To read Part 2, click here.

On June 22nd, 2026, Uruguayan state agencies signed an accord that aims to galvanise a long-awaited investigation into military archives.[^1] This investigation concerns the desaparecidos - citizens 'disappeared' during Uruguay's military dictatorship - which took place from 1973-1985. Forty-one years later, investigators have only just gained full access to these archives and the tools to transform disjointed papers into meaningful data.[^2] Entrenched institutional resistance, the legacy of immunity laws and the fear of recurring despotism explain why.

The investigation is headed by the INDDHH, the Institucion Nacional de Derechos Humanos y Defensoria del Pueblo (the National Human Rights Institution and Ombudsman's Office). At face value, it seems that steady progression through archival resources should have been possible for the investigative team since 2019. In that year, the historic Law 19.822 was passed, granting the INDDHH the necessary authority to access both public and private archives relevant to the fates of the desaparecidos.[^3]

Yet Law 19.822 did not delineate how the military should comply with providing the INDDHH access to archives.[^4] So, the INDDHH were not allowed to look through the archives themselves.[^5] They were also not given an inventory.[^6] At first, they could only blindly request documentation about a certain topic, and hope that it existed.[^7] Further, in an almost absurdist, Kafkaesque fashion, if the exact file name the INDDHH asked for did not match anything in military records, then, according to the institution that committed the crimes, they could not help the INDDHH investigate.

Mariana Mota, head of the INDDHH, is calling for more proactivity from the military, demanding a 'guidance and directive'.[^8] Through either genuine or weaponised incompetence, the military are not going an iota beyond what is legally required of them to help Mota and her team.

Following an order from Sandra Lazo, the Minister of Defence, in December 2025, the INDDHH are now able to search through the archives themselves.[^9] In just the seven months after that, eight new desaparecidos were added to the official list.[^10] However, the military's vast records are unwieldy and convoluted, containing much which is not relevant to the desaparecidos.[^11] They were designed to conceal illicit actions: nonetheless, 'within that framework, they are registered. The issue is how to reach them.' [^12] The order given by Lazo in December still does not require the military to provide the INDDHH with an inventory of the files.[^13] Consequently, Mota comments that it's as if the military simply 'open a door and you find a massive archive stretching for kilometres'.[^14] It could be argued that the military are reluctant to provide an inventory because that requires them to actively and fully disclose what records they hold. If, after doing so, a file was discovered that wasn't mentioned in the inventory, perhaps the armed forces could face investigation or prosecution.

Mota is dubious of the military's commitment to the search. Whilst she states that the military presents a general 'willingness to cooperate', she also recalls cases where the INDDHH asked the military for records of certain information and was told there was 'no such thing'.[^15] Yet, when the INDDHH carried out a search themselves, they found the information was there.[^16] A refrain of the military's that certain records are expunged every ten years has generated further doubt in Mota: 'I don't know whether it's been destroyed, or whether they don't want to show it to me, or whether they don't know where it is'.[^17]

However, as of the 22nd of June, 2026, the University of the Republic (Udelar) has been formally incorporated into the INDDHH's investigation.[^18] Crucially, this will allow the INDDHH to harness Udelar's technology to synthesise the disparate data of the military archives. This, hopefully, will override the delay caused by the military's recent prevarication, and optimise the analysis of archives from other state agencies. At last, the investigation has a definite and viable apparatus through which to function.

The glacial rate at which the investigation is inching forwards is still a triumph. To understand this, we need to comprehend the insidious way in which authoritarianism planted its roots within democratic structures of pre-dictatorship Uruguay and then broke them down. Consequently, when democracy was reconstructed using the same building blocks post-dictatorship, a culture of impunity persisted, extending beyond the military. As a survivor of political persecution by the dictatorship, no one comprehends this more thoroughly than Stella.

Roots Planted

Stella's early childhood memories are of a big house, noisy with lots of music. Windows and doors always open, neighbours often popping in. An obnoxious (her words) older brother whom she adored. This was early 1960s Uruguay, in a working-class neighbourhood of the capital city, Montevideo.

How she recalls the next few years is that gradually 'the sunshine started getting darker and darker'. She became aware of her parents' struggle to find food. Supplies were limited, and at the shops she would join long queues for a bottle of milk, or a loaf of bread. Her brother would queue two people behind her, her mother further down, stocking up on as much as possible.

Since the mid-1950s Uruguay's economy had been stagnating.[^19] By 1963, the working class had been so devastated that an urban guerrilla group known as the Tupamaros had formed, aiming to overthrow the government and build a more equitable economy.[^20] They rapidly devolved into more and more militant actions, just as the government, police, and army combatted their efforts with increasingly brutal and authoritarian measures. This was also when the Doctrina de Seguridad Nacional (the National Security Doctrine) entered the curriculum of military and intelligence officers in training.[^21] This ideological framework justified military intervention into state and civil affairs by promoting the idea of an 'internal enemy' to the country.[^22]

Initially, the enemy was designated as the Tupamaros. However, by the time Stella started secondary school in the late 1960s, widespread civilian protests had also erupted in response to the economic crisis.[^23] The administration retaliated against the student and workers movements with authoritarian methods too.[^24]

In June 1968, inflation reached an all-time high at 183%.[^25] At Stella's school, older students would stop younger students from entering the school gates and encourage them to strike against the government's economic policies. This appealed to Stella, who had seen her father come home and pretend to the family that he had got work for the day, rather than reveal he had been waiting at the docks for an opportunity that never came. Through the student movement she discovered the process of struggle and resistance - it gave her the tools to combat the injustice facing her family. And soon, to oppose wider injustices she saw carried out too: the government invoked emergency powers, known as Prompt Security Measures, in reaction to the public's protests. Strikers found their wages frozen, five left-wing parties banned and media of the opposition parties forcibly closed.[^26] [^27] The police and military could also now implement 'discretionary' arrests of students and trade unionists.[^28]

In this hothouse of rising pressures, Stella threw herself into underground work. The house, once lively with family visitors, now instead received a steady flow of activists for covert seminars on the dictatorship in Argentina and how Uruguay could avoid a similar situation. As of 1972, if accused of subversion, citizens were tried in a military court, with insufficient due process.[^29] [^30] The disappearances of 'subversives', both tried and untried, became more common.[^31] These were either through long-term imprisonment, forced exile, or murder - but all cases were most likely preceded by torture.[^32] [^33] Uruguay was already building its reputation as the 'torture chamber of Latin America'.[^34]

Despite the efforts of many to prevent it, the crushing wheels of the dictatorship were already in motion; soon the regime was formally confirmed. On June 27th, 1973, President Bordaberry broadcast an announcement halting constitutional administration due to the 'criminal actions of the conspiracy against the country', despite the Tupamaros being militarily extinguished in 1972.[^35] The National Doctrine of Security was soon legally codified to define state policy around the threat of the 'internal enemy', but Stella continued her activities - puncturing military tires, handing out seditious leaflets - until one day, someone told her "they know you, and they know your house".[^36]

A fellow activist had been caught, and they were probably going to give up information about Stella. So, in 1974, at only seventeen years old, Stella had to flee the country with her then-partner, Marcos (name changed).

She took refuge in Buenos Aires, just a two-hour ferry from Montevideo. Sometimes she met up with two activists in exile - a couple, the woman pregnant - who appeared to be high up in the leadership. After a month in Buenos Aires, they told her it would be safe for her to go home - whomever got captured obviously didn't talk.

Stella and Marcos rushed home to surprise her family, planning to visit Marcos's house first, as well as the newspaper kiosk that his father ran. By chance, their plans changed last minute. But Stella felt ill, so they went straight to her parents - narrowly avoiding the army, who had been waiting for Marcos at the kiosk. Somehow, the military knew the couple was back in the country.

Oblivious to the danger she was in, Stella was sitting with her family, drinking mate, when an employee of Marcos's father arrived. About to enter the kiosk to collect papers, he noticed the army van outside, then officers hiding in nearby houses. Not a militant himself, but a good friend of Marcos's, he rushed to warn him.

Marcos had been printing a subversive newspaper in the basement of his father's kiosk. Whilst he and Stella were able to escape back over the border to Argentina, 205 Uruguayans in total are believed to have been disappeared in this period for similar dissidence.[^37] This includes the pregnant couple that Stella met in Buenos Aires. Today, the whereabouts of only 43 have been deemed resolved by the INDDHH.[^38] The 205 were disappeared either by the Uruguayan authorities alone, or in cooperation with the regimes of nearby countries, through the framework of repression in the Southern Cone known as Plan Cóndor. Plan Cóndor targeted left-wing activists and was financially backed and organised by the US.

However, through the series of lucky coincidences outlined above, Stella escaped persecution and emigrated to the United Kingdom. Precisely because she was so lucky, she now campaigns passionately for an investigation into what happened to the desaparecidos, helping the group Diáspora Uruguaya por la Memoria to organise the annual London March of Silence in the desaparecidos' memory. Stella set the London march up in line with the March of Silence that was established in Uruguay by the human rights organisation Madres y Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos (Mothers and Families of the Detained-Disappeared) - referred to from here onwards as Familiares. Familiares is the most prominent group advocating for the desaparecidos in Uruguay.

A Culture of Impunity

These groups endure because although the dictatorship ended after 11 years, in 1985, very few of its leaders have faced prosecution for their violations of human rights. This is despite one in every fifty citizens having been imprisoned in the dictatorship.[^39] The leadership protected themselves from prosecution by putting pressure on the new government to pass the 'Ley De Caducidad' or Expiration Law in 1986. This law provided immunity to the military and police personnel for human rights violations committed between 1973 and 1985. Prior to it being passed, the military was openly declaring that they would refuse to testify in civilian court trials investigating the crimes of the dictatorship, which many officers had received subpoenas for.[^40] Hours before the first trial began, the new President Sanguinetti broke under the pressure of this prospect and pushed the Expiration Law through Parliament.[^41] This sort of standoff continues to play out in Uruguay today, albeit on a more implicit scale, between military and government authority.

Following the installation of the Expiration Law, the government in turn put pressure on the people not to resist it: 'banking on the legacy of fear' left in the dictatorship's wake, they advised that reversal of the law could provoke a military coup and employed intimidation tactics.[^42] At least partially as a result of this, the law stayed in place until 2011. In fact, in referendums on the law in 1989 and 2009, the public voted in favour of upholding it. Both referendums took place at the behest of campaigns run by grassroots initiatives such as Familiares.[^43] [^44]

Whilst members of these groups have been arguably the most affected by the dictatorship's crimes, having had loved ones executed or disappeared by the regime, other Uruguayans called it undemocratic to overturn the Expiration Law after the public referendums.[^45] Then-presidential nominee Mujica, despite being a former Tupamaros, argued it would have a 'politically destabilising effect'.[^46] However, the Expiration Law was finally overridden by the Uruguayan government following the 2011 Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) landmark ruling that the Expiration Law was a violation of the American Convention on Human Rights.[^47] Despite this progress, as demonstrated by the INDDHH's struggles with military archives, there is a long way to go before Familiares reach their goal of fully uncovering what happened to the desaparecidos.

We are therefore just as far from prosecution of the perpetrators. Uruguay's armed forces have never formally apologised for the dictatorship, unlike the military of other countries in the Southern Cone who led dictatorships during the same period. Many in Uruguay believe the military still maintains a pact of silence today, in some cases actively preventing further details of their dictatorship atrocities from coming to light.[^48] Graciela Montes de Oca from Familiares maintains that 'This mafia code keeps the truth hidden'.

In May, I spoke with Graciela and Patricia López Melo at the Familiares headquarters in Uruguay. They explained that they call it a pact of silence because when the military are summoned by criminal or civil courts, or by any civilian requesting information, 'They always say they know nothing. However, we know that among themselves, they hide the information because when there's a military court trial they show up' and provide it. This is in keeping with the dictatorship's National Doctrine of Security, which holds military authority as superior to civil or criminal courts, nominally in cases of national security.[^49] [^50] [^51]

Having been active since 1983, Familiares has a long history of demonstrative instances of the pact of silence.[^52] Patricia and Graciela highlighted that when the army's 2005 Commander-in-Chief Bertolotti provided then-president Vázquez with information regarding the desaparecidos, he was 'punished' by the military.[^53] After the referendum on the Expiration Law in 1989, successive Presidents ignored Familiares' demands for the desaparecidos. Vázquez was only the second President to formally contribute to the search for the disappeared, resulting in strong backlash from the military.[^54] In 2022, leaked documents revealed that a military court of honour recommended sanctioning Bertolotti for 'serious misconduct' - i.e. assisting Vázquez with the arrest of six military members.[^55] General Ricardo Galarza called Bertolotti 'a traitor, a liar, and a communist' for it, revealing that old prejudices still lurked in the backwaters of the military.[^56] Other contributors to the search for the desaparecidos have also faced intimidation and threats.

In 2019, The Working Group for Truth and Justice found that there was 'permanent harassment' and 'constant interference' in desaparecidos search areas from 'people, drones, livestock, robberies, and planted objects'.[^57] [^58] This even included an explosive device.[^59] In 2024, the family member of the desaparecido Oscar Tassino found a message on his car: 'I know where they are, and you could end up the same'.[^60] The U.N. Working Group on Enforced Disappearance similarly argues that information regarding the desaparecidos is being destroyed, hidden, or withheld from investigators.[^61] Numerous times, ex-military officials have given the locations of claimed burial sites to investigators - and yet, when they were examined, nothing was found.[^62] Further, various military personnel have claimed that a process known as 'Operation Carrot' took place as the dictatorship ended.[^63] To avoid prosecution in the impending democratic takeover, bodies of desaparecidos were exhumed, cremated and then deposited in places such as the Río de la Plata to prevent them ever being found.[^64]

However, in some cases, bodies claimed to have been disposed of via Operation Carrot were later uncovered by investigations.[^65] Amelia Sanjurjo and Luis Eduardo Arigón were two such victims - military members declared their bodies were destroyed in the Uruguayan state's 2003 peace commission, but then their buried remains were discovered in 2023 and 2024.[^66] Alicia Lusiardo, the head of Grupo de Investigación en Antropología Forense (GIAF), has publicly stated that she thinks Operation Carrot did not truly take place.[^67] If Operation Carrot did not take place, then perhaps the other previously mentioned officials who led investigators to empty burial sites were doing so intentionally. A few desaparecidos at least were definitely not exhumed: information provided by some military members has actually been accurate, leading directly to the remains of desaparecidos. It was an ex-soldier's anonymous tip-off which first prompted authorities to search for bodies in Battalion 13, a clandestine torture centre of the military, where two bodies were found.[^68] As Patricia and Graciela put it:

'If after years they come and give you this information - with the first and last name of the person who is [buried] there - it implies that they have it stored away and don't want to hand it over.'

In the context of this obfuscation, Familiares argue that it is critical that the President of the Republic demand the military share all the information they possess about desaparecidos. Ignacio Errandonea from Familiares asserted that this demand was 'very different' from the order for the military to give the INDDHH access to all their archives back in December.[^69] This may initially read as a contradiction to Patricia and Graciela's words: 'if there's one thing we've seen and that's been made clear to us, it's that they recorded everything.' But if the archives contain the whole truth concealed within misleading records, then it's crucial to verify them against other forms of information, such as witness testimony. Supporting this, Mota commented in January 2026 that she hopes that following Lazo's December 2025 order there will also be 'assurance that those archives will remain there, that they have not been modified since this access was reported'.[^70] The fact that a key state institution such as the INDDHH considers this defiance a possibility indicates that the military's subordination to the government has still not been concretised. As Errandonea put it, 'The Armed Forces must answer to the political authorities; otherwise, we are living under a dictatorship'.[^71] Providing all information about the dictatorship, given the tampering of evidence that can and has occurred otherwise, would symbolise the military acquiescing to government authority.

Endnotes:

A version of this article was published previously in NACLA.

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