In less than one day since Henry Kissinger’s death on November 29, 2023 at 100 years old, there have been countless obituaries written about the man , some more vocal than others about his utter disregard for human rights in pursuit of realist politics. However, this is a substack about Uruguay and thus, on the occasion of his death, it’s worth considering his policies toward the country at a critical moment in the Southern Cone’s political trajectory.
The short version is similar to his policies in many other parts of South America at the time: Kissinger supported anti-communist dictatorships, many of which committed horrible human rights abuses in the name of fighting ‘subversives.’ This approach has been well documented by historians, and Uruguay is no exception.
Starting in 1969 as Nixon’s National Security Advisor, Kissinger actively supported sending US officials to help train the Uruguayan police in methods to counterinsurgency methods, which included torture. By 1971, Kissinger so feared another leftist victory like Salvador Allende in Chile that the Nixon Administration played a role in Brazil’s intervention in the election to prevent a Frente Amplio victory, and ensure Juan Maria Bordaberry’s ascension to the presidency.
Further, as the 1970s went on, and Bordaberry shut down Parliament and handed over power to the military in an autogolpe (self-coup), the Nixon administration continued to support his regime despite, or perhaps because of, the extreme anticommunist stand and methods the military took against any perceived subversive.
This policy ran up again an increasingly strident Congress, which reacted to Kissinger’s intransigence towards human rights by cutting off aid to these regimes. Indeed, in an amendment sponsored by Ed Koch (D-NY), Congress did exactly this with respect to Uruguay in 1976.
The following actions by Kissinger and his State Department in response to that cut off is below, excerpted and lightly edited from my book, Of Light and Struggle.
The U.S.’s termination of aid to Uruguay after the congressional hearings on Uruguay and Kissinger’s continued support for the government illustrate the chasm between the U.S. Congress and administration policy over human rights, which weakened the possible impact of aid cuts. Despite Congress’s focus on human rights measures, Kissinger and Ford’s State Department ultimately sent a different message to leaders in Uruguay by attempting to stall congressional measures. In fact, the State Department viewed Congress as an impediment to its foreign policy initiatives. In a meeting with Uruguay’s foreign minister, Kissinger argued that, for the U.S., the “biggest problem in this country is the role of the legislature.”[1] As one 1974 State Department briefing paper explained, the administration believed that military regimes in South America “favored U.S. interests” and efforts to support them were “seriously hampered by hostile Congressional attitudes.”[2]
Political scientist Kathryn Sikkink notes that during Ford’s administration, State Department personnel appeared to be “uninformed about the human rights situation in Uruguay.”[3] However, documents suggest that they were not so much unaware as intransigent. Ambassador Siracusa maintained close ties to the dictatorship and was often an “apologist” for the Uruguayan regime at the “expense of human rights.”[4] In Uruguay, he was known as the “public relations agent for the dictatorship.”[5] Siracusa explained that Uruguay and other Southern Cone nations believed that “communist manipulation and infiltration…are really responsible for the mounting attacks against them on human rights issues.” Meanwhile, Siracusa noted his belief that these countries “face[d] a regional, coordinated therrorist[sic] threat is fact, not fiction” and even encouraged a coordinated regional response that ultimately cohered as Operation Condor.[6]
As early as 1975, Kissinger also had the State Department Congressional Relations representative respond to Donald Fraser’s request for action against the regime’s human rights abuses with justifications for the Uruguayan government’s actions against “subversives.” In addition, Kissinger argued that the State Department “believe[s] the number of arrests has been greatly diminished.”[7] The letter explained that Uruguay’s traditional democratic institutions were just undergoing a restructuring as a temporary measure to fight against the communist “menace.” In January 1976, Siracusa reiterated this viewpoint, showing consistency across Kissinger’s State Department and acknowledging that the military committed human rights abuses, but it was isolated to a “small minority of people” who were members of “terrorist or subversive organizations.”[8] In essence, he understood the measures to be justified since they were part of operations focused on national security.[9] Overall, Ford’s government at every level of policy formation disregarded growing evidence of human rights abuses in favor of supporting these governments’ anti-communist policies.
Kissinger’s State Department’s reaction to the Koch Amendment proved to be the most revealing measure of Ford’s human rights policy—or lack thereof. Acting Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs Hewson Ryan had publicly endorsed Uruguay’s “success in restoring order and safety for ordinary citizens after years of terrorist assaults.”[10] Ryan also followed up privately to Koch, revealing his agitation with the Congressman. Ryan explained that he did “not share the same conclusions about the human rights situation” and instead cited a communist threat as justification for the military’s actions. He argued, “it is in our national interest to maintain good relations with Uruguay…Uruguay has been consistently friendly toward the United States,” by allying with the U.S. on key international issues in the Organization of American States and the United Nations. Hewson also explained that Uruguay’s human rights had improved since the fight against the Tupamaros had abated. He wrote to Koch that he was “sorry that you have sponsored an amendment.”[11]
Then, in a meeting with Uruguay’s foreign minister, Juan Carlos Blanco Estradé, Siracusa tried to reaffirm his commitment to blocking pro-human rights measures in Congress and maintaining a strong relationship with the military. Blanco noted his country’s “extremely negative” reaction to the Koch Amendment, a stance that was supported by newspapers across the country deploring U.S. “interference in Uruguay’s affairs.”[12] Siracusa acknowledged that “the question of human rights” had become the “fulcrum of relations” between the two countries, but added that Kissinger’s State Department had opposed the Koch Amendment. Siracusa attempted to assuage Blanco’s concerns and downplay the government’s evidence of abuses. Siracusa explained that any cuts to U.S. funding had to be tied to a consistent pattern of gross violations of human rights. Siracusa argued that proving a consistent pattern was a “difficult one” and had “not yet been defined.” He noted that he “personally accept[ed] the GOU’s statement that it did not advocate or condone torture,” but only that the “instances” of torture and political confinement had occurred in the past.[13] Through these types of legal and linguistic gymnastics, Kissinger’s State Department worked against Congressional attempts to integrate human rights into the foreign policy calculus. Ultimately, these moves succeeded in sending a weak message to the Uruguayan government about how much its northern neighbor cared about human rights violations in Uruguay.
At a basic level, Kissinger’s State Department never embraced a human rights agenda.[14] To the extent that he evolved at all on human rights issues, Kissinger encapsulated his and Ford’s approach in a speech to the Synagogue Council on October 19, 1976, at the height of the Carter-Ford campaign season when Carter was pushing the issue as a defining component of his electoral platform. Here, Kissinger acquiesced that while the administration “must bend every effort to enhance respect for human rights…a public crusade is frequently not the most effective.” Kissinger opposed attempts to deal with sensitive international human rights issues through legislation and stated that quiet diplomacy was a better method. Since human rights issues were complex, he claimed, only diplomats could address the inherent contradictions between universal claims, conflicts with power, and balance moral aims with finite resources and competing goals.[15] When forced to confront the human rights revolution, Kissinger claimed that human rights could be an element of foreign policy only if morality was understood to be a measure of national power. These beliefs ultimately structured the Ford administration’s approach to addressing abuses in Uruguay throughout his two and a half years in office, and more broadly from 1969-1976, which was throughout Kissinger’s time as both National Security Advisor and Secretary of State.[16]
[1] Memorandum of Conversation, Uruguayan Foreign Minister’s Bilateral Meeting with the Secretary, May 10, 1975, Department of State Virtual Reading Room (DOSVRR).
[2] Memo, Agency Briefing Papers on Major Foreign Policy Issues, Aug 17, 1974, NSC, Latin American Affairs Staff, Subject Files, Box 11, Ford Presidential Library.
[3] Sikkink, Mixed Signals, 73.
[4] Holland and Bird, “Siracusa,” 334.
[5] “Adios,” Desde Uruguay, abril 1977, 4, Reel 325, NACLA
[6] Memo, Ernest Siracusa to Assistant Secretary Shlaudeman,” July 20, 1976, NSA, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB125/. Dinges also writes about Siracusa’s goals in Condor Years, 169.
[7] Letter, McCloskey to Fraser, October 12, 1975, Folder AMR Americas-Uruguay 1974-1985, Box 6, Executive Director Files 1967-1997, AIUSA archives.
[8] Siracusa to Kissinger, Memorandum, New Initiative in Human Rights, January 20, 1976, DOSVRR.
[9] Siracusa to Kissinger, Memorandum, High-level Military Briefing on Results of Arrests of Communist Party Figures, December 29, 1975, DOSVRR.
[10] Hewson Ryan Statement, “Hearings on Human Rights in Uruguay and Paraguay,” 111.
[11] Letter, Ryan to Koch, June 11, 1976, Box 12, Folder 6, George Lister Papers.
[12] Ernest Siracusa to Henry Kissinger, Memorandum, Meeting with Foreign Minister, September 11, 1976, DOSVRR; Howard Handelman, “Uruguayan Journal,” October 15, 1976, Worldview, Folder: Background Press, Box 279, WOLA archives. Handelman also noted that President Méndez called the Democratic Party “the best supporter of subversion and sedition in the world.”
[13] Siracusa to Kissinger, Memorandum, Meeting with Foreign Minister, September 11, 1976, DOSVRR.
[14] Jeremi Suri, Henry Kissinger and the American Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), 245–46; Greg Grandin, Kissinger’s Shadow (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2015), 146-155; Rabe, Kissinger and Latin America.
[15] Kissinger Speech, “Moral Promise and Practical Needs,” The Department of State Bulletin, November 15, 1976, Ford Presidential Library Digital Collections.
[16] Both in his time in office and while critiquing Carter’s administration, Kissinger reinforced this belief. See: Memo, Harold Saunders to Warren Christopher, “Comment on Kissinger Article ‘Morality and Power,’” October 25, 1977, Folder: Human Rights Theory, Box 46, Christopher Papers, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. Also see Walker, Principles, 57-8.