19. Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre, 73.
20. It was John Roosa who suggested I look into this connection, and who originally asserted to me that disappearances were put to use for the first time in Asia in 1965. For someone without special expertise on this specific issue, it’s hard to check or prove that there was not the use of disappearances before 1965 in Indonesia. So I put the question, “Do you know of the use of mass disappearance as a form of state terror in Asia prior to Indonesia 1965” to the following experts: Noam Chomsky, Ben Kiernan, Alfred McCoy, Bradley Simpson, and Baskara Wardaya. None could recall an incident that would refute Roosa’s thesis.
21. On Longan’s arrival and Operation Limpieza, see Greg Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 11–12, 73–75. For discussions of disappearance within the history of Latin American violence in the twentieth century, see Greg Grandin’s introductory essay, “Living in a Revolutionary Time: Coming to Terms with the Violence of Latin America’s Long Cold War,” in Greg Grandin and Gilbert M. Joseph, eds., A Century of Revolution: Insurgent and Counterinsurgent Violence During Latin America’s Long Cold War (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2010).
22. Martin Aleida, Tanah Air Yang Hilang (Jakarta, 2017), chap. 1.
23. Taomo Zhou, Migration in the Time of Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019), chap. 8, 163.
24. Ibid., 4.
25. Ibid., 167–68.
26. Ibid., 174.
27. Author interview with Sarmadji, Amsterdam, 2018. He described years of living in Beijing while the Cultural Revolution blew up around him, but never exactly engulfing Indonesian students like him; Zhou, Migration, 176–78.
28. Zhou, Migration, 188–89.
29. Zhou notes in Chapter 9 that Zhou Enlai also endorsed the idea of a “Fifth Force” in Indonesia. The description of the influence on the Cultural Revolution is also in this chapter. I want to re-emphasize the point I made earlier, that despite reviewing both of Taomo Zhou’s presentations of Aidit’s final in-person conversation with Mao, I follow Robinson in disagreeing with her interpretation that the exchange proves that Aidit had already formulated broad plans for the September 30th Movement, and shared this plan with Mao. Like Robinson, I don’t think the evidence Zhou presents supports this theory.
30. Schlesinger Jr., Robert Kennedy and His Times, 733.
31. Memorandum of Conversation, Visit to Department of Time-Life Inc. Officials, January 5, 1967, RG 59, Central Files 1967–1969, FN 9 Indonesia, NARA.
32. Robinson, The Killing Season, 209–25; author interviews.
33. Proceedings of the Indonesian Investment Conference, “To Aid in Rebuilding a Nation,” November 2–4, 1967, RG 59, Central Files 1967–1969, FN 9 Indonesia, NARA.
34. Short, Pol Pot, 135–45.
35. In a “historical lessons” document composed in early 1977, Pol Pot looked back on the 1966 period as follows: “If our analysis had failed, we would have been in greater danger than [were the communists] in Indonesia. But our analysis was victorious, because our analysis was agreed upon, because most of our cadres were in life-and-death contradiction with the enemy; the enemy sought to exterminate them constantly.” Ben Kiernan, Pol Pot Plans the Future: Confidential Leadership Documents from Democratic Kampuchea, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 213–226. The quotation appears on page 218, and Kiernan explained it to me as follows: “By that statement, Pol Pot conveyed that the Communist Party of Kampuchea, as he had renamed it in 1966 after visiting China, had decided on armed struggle against Sihanouk’s Cambodian government, rather than peaceful competition or cooperation (i.e. to ‘live together with Sihanouk inside the country’) as was the policy of the Indonesian Communists towards Sukarno’s government.”
36. John Henrik Clarke, “Kwame Nkrumah: His Years in America,” The Black Scholar 6, no. 2 (October 1974): 9–16.
37. The notion of “black” Africa, of course, is incoherent and itself a product of external, colonial imposition, but it certainly existed as a geopolitical category for Western observers in the twentieth century.
38. Kwame Nkrumah, Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism (Melbourne: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1965), x-xi.
39. Kwame Nkrumah, Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare (New York: International Publishers, 1968), 42. Cited in Prashad, Darker Nations, 111.
40. Prashad, Darker Nations, 163–64.
41. Gerlach, Extremely Violent Societies, 86.
42. Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, 307.
43. “Covert Action in Chile 1963–1973,” Staff Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations, US Senate, December 18, 1975, 15, at www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94chile.pdf.
44. Paul E. Sigmund, The Overthrow of Allende and the Politics of Chile, 1964–1976 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977), 297.
45. “Covert Action in Chile,” 7.
46. Author interviews with Carmen Hertz, in person (Santiago) and by phone, 2018 and 2019.
47. Orlando Millas, Memorias 1957–1991: Una digresión (Santiago: ChileAmerica, 1996), 162–63.
48. Punto Final, Año 1, 2 quincena de octubre de 1966, no. 14, 25.
49. Punto Final, Año 1, 1 quincena de marzo de 1967, no. 24, 21.
50. Tanya Harmer, Allende’s Chile and the Inter-American Cold War (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 34–36.
51. Thomas, The Very Best Men, 36.
52. Bernard Eccleston, Michael Dawson, and Deborah J. McNamara, eds., The Asia-Pacific Profile (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 311–12.
53. Tyrell Haberkorn, “Getting Away with Murder in Thailand: State Violence and Impunity in Phatthalung,” in Ganesan and Chull Kim, eds., State Violence in East Asia (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2013), 185–87.
54. Author interviews with Endang Tedja Nurdjaya “Nury” Hanafi, in Paris (2018) and by phone (2019).
55. Harmer, Allende’s Chile, 34–36.
56. Zhou, Migration, 173–74.
57. Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson, Inside the League: The Shocking Exposé of How Terrorists, Nazis, and Latin American Death Squads have Infiltrated the World Anti-Communist League (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1986).
58. Burke, Revolutionaries for the Right, 55.
59. Anderson and Anderson, Inside the League, chaps. 1 and 2.
60. Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father (New York: Crown, 1995), 40.
Chapter 9. Jakarta Is Coming
1. Simpson, Economists with Guns, 20.
2. Obama, Dreams from My Father, 45–46.
3. This is the 1967 parliamentary elections. At the time the “Socialists” were called the Federation of the Democratic and Socialist Left (Fédération de la gauche démocrate et socialiste or FGDS).
4. Charlotte Denny, “Suharto, Marcos and Mobutu Head Corruption Table with $50bn Scams,” Guardian, March 26, 2004.
5. Robinson, Killing Season, 209.
6. Napolitano, 1964, 70–85.
7. Napolitano, 1964, 86–90.
8. El Pais, “Atentados de direita fomentaram AI-5,” October 2, 2018.
9. It was President Artur da Costa e Silva who put AI-5 into effect, and Médici used it to unleash terror when he took over. See Napolitano, 1964, 71–72, 91–95.
10. João Roberto Martins Filho, “Military Ties between France and Brazil during the Cold War, 1959–1975,” Latin American Perspectives 198, Vol. 41, no. 5 (September 2014): 167–183.
11. Sandra Kiefer, “Dilma Rousseff Revela Detalhes do Sofrimento Vivido Nos Porões da Ditadura,” Correio Braziliense, June 17, 2012.
12. Napolitano, 1964, 126.
13. Paulo Coelho, “I Was Tortured by Brazil’s Dictatorship. Is That What Bolsonaro Wants to Celebrate?” Washington Post, March 29, 2019.
14. Tanya Harmer, “Brazil’s Cold War in the Southern Cone, 1970–1975,” Cold War History 12, no. 4 (November 2012):
659–681.
15. Memorandum for the Record, Washington, June 27, 1970, FRUS, 1969–1976, Vol. XXI, Chile, 1969–1973, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v21/d41.
16. Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, 308–10.
17. El Mercurio, September 7, 1970. Cited in Harmer, Allende’s Chile, 664.
18. Harmer, Allende’s Chile, 3.
19. Peter Kornbluh, The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability (New York: New Press, 2003), 36.
20. Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, 310.
21. It’s not clear it was actually meant to resemble a spider, but it became common to refer to it as that “araña” logo. See José Díaz Nieva, Pátria y Libertad: El Nacionalismo Frente a la Unidad Popular (Santiago: Centro de Estudios Bicentenario, 2015), 80–82, on the symbol’s origin.
22. John Dinges, The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents (New York: New Press, 2004) 18–20; Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, 310–13.
23. Author interviews with Chileans who were both left-wing journalists and low-level military officers at the time, 2018.
24. Kristian C. Gustafson, “Re-examining the Record: CIA Machinations in Chile 1970,” CIA Library, www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol47no3/html/v47i3a03p.htm#_ftn76.
25. Carmen Hertz, La Historia Fue Otra (Santiago: Debate, 2017), 45.
26. Harmer, Allende’s Chile, 81–83.
27. Ibid., 78–79.
28. Ibid., 24.
29. Ariel Dorfman, “Salvador Allende Offers a Way Out for Venezuela’s Maduro,” The Nation, February 11, 2019.
30. Kornbluh, The Pinochet File, 119–20.
31. Harmer, “Brazil’s Cold War,” 660.
32. Ibid., 669–70.
33. Gabriel Warburg, Islam, Nationalism, and Communism in Traditional Society (London: Frank Cass, 1978), 130–35. The SCP had paid close attention to what happened in Indonesia in 1965, and for this reason had been trying to avoid direct confrontation, according to Alain Gresh, “The Free Officers and the Comrades: The Sudanese Communist Party and Nimeiri Face-to-Face, 1969–1971,” Journal of Middle East Studies 21. no. 3 (August 1989): 13. According to the SCP itself, thirty-seven members were executed by hanging. Author interview with Fathi Alfadl, 2019, by email.
34. On Operação Jacarta as part of Operation Radar, starting in 1973, see Graziane Ortiz Righi, “Angelo Cardoso da Silva: Herzog gaúcho,” Comissão Nacional da Verdade (CNV) Processo no 00092.000932/2013-01, Sistema de Informações do Arquivo Nacional (SIAN) do Brasil. The same assertion, as well as the claim that Operação Jacarta took the life of Vladimir Herzog, is made in “Comissão Estadual da Verdade Rubens Paiva,” (Assembleía Legislativa do Estado de São Paulo), CNV-SIAN. For more on Operation Radar itself, see “Depoimento de Marival Chaves Dias,” divided among BR RJANRIO CNV.0.DPO.00092000585201317, BR RJANRIO CNV.0.RCE.00092000122201317, v.107/1, and BR RJANRIO CNV.0.RCE.00092000122201317, v.106/2, at CNV-SIAN. For several references to Operação Jacarta, see “Relatório sobre a morte de João Goulart,” Comissão de Cidadania e Direitos Humanos da Assembléia Legislativa do Estado do Rio Grande do Sul—Subocomissão para Investigar as Circunstâncias da Morte do ex-Presidente João Goulart, CNV-SIAN. For the declaration that former president Goulart was monitored in Uruguay as part of Operação Jacarta since 1973, before the creation of Operation Condor, see “Termo de declarações, que presta o senhor Mario Ronald Neyra Barreiro,” 00092.000311/2013-10, CNV-SIAN. For “Operação Jacarta” in reference to a threat made against a leftist named Jesse Jane, see “Relatório de Pesquisa para a Comissão Estadual da Verdade do Rio de Janeiro,” CEV-RIO. I should note again here that no smoking gun exists proving that Brazil’s military officially used the phrase “Operation Jakarta” internally. To prove or disprove that would require more access to military materials. What we have is widespread reports that the term was used (including many not cited here), and a firsthand account of the first-known use of the term in public, later in this chapter.
35. Díaz Nieva, Pátria y Libertad, 176–79. His Croatian background made me wonder if he might have links to the far right in that country, which was active early in the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations and the World Anti-Communist League, but I could find no evidence either way. Díaz Nieva writes that Domic was “almost obligatory reading” for right-wing Chileans at the time. For an early example of Domic’s output on Indonesia, see Juraj Domic, Fundamentos de la Praxis Marxista-Leninista en Chile (Santiago: Vaitea, 1977), 33, on a 1969 article blaming the PKI for their own destruction. According to Manuel Fuentes Wendling, who was chief of propaganda for Pátria y Libertad, Domic and Wendling spoke as early as 1970 about painting five hundred thousand slogans on the walls of Chile, at this point with the goal of supporting presidential candidate Jorge Alessandri. This is recounted in Manuel Fuentes Wendling, Memorias secretas de Patria y Libertad y algunas confesiones sobre la Guerra Fría en Chile (Santiago de Chile: Grupo Grijalbo-Mondadori, 1999), 61–76 and 320–25. I corresponded with Pátria y Libertad leader Roberto Thieme by email in 2018. When I asked about “Yakarta” he only responded that “no Chilean, on the left or right, cares about or knows the history of Jakarta.” During a 2018 interview in Santiago, Orlando Saenz Fuentes, who was active on the right in the early 1970s, said it was very credible that Pátria y Libertad would have been responsible for the graffiti.
36. El Rebelde, January 25–31, 1972, no. 14. Accessed at Biblioteca Nacional de Chile, Sección Periódicos.
37. Carlos Berger, “La conspiración derechista está tomando vuelo,” Revista Ramona, February 22, 1972. Accessed at Biblioteca Nacional de Chile. Berger asserts that Plan Djakarta was given to the Chilean right wing by “el gerente yanqui de Purina,” or “the Yankee boss at Purina.” At the time, Ralston Purina was a pet food company owned in Chile by Rockefeller and Edwards.
38. Author interview with Patricio “Pato” Madera, Santiago 2018; “Patricio Madera: un muralista patrimonial de la histórica Brigada Ramona Parra,” Radio Universidad de Chile, at https://radio.uchile.cl/2018/07/17/patricio-madera-un-muralista-patrimonial-de-la-historica-brigada-ramona-parra/.
39. Hertz, La Historia Fue Otra, 65–73.
40. Harmer, Allende’s Chile, 182–83.
41. Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, 315.
42. Harmer, Allende’s Chile, 237.
43. Luis H. Francia, A History of the Philippines: From Indios Bravos to Filipinos (New York: Overlook Press, 2010), 223.
44. Author interview with Joma Sison. I reported on the CPP for the Washington Post in 2018, so I had the contact of its “Information Bureau.” The bureau advised me to email Sison my questions, and this is his full response relating to 1965 and its bearing on this thinking:I observed and learned the lessons that the PKI members and most active mass activists were easily massacred to the extent of 3 million (according to the strategic command in charge of the slaughter) without any effective resistance because the PKI had no people’s army and was thoroughly exposed to its enemies by its NASAKOM and electoral activities.Of course, the lesson from Indonesian massacre in 1965–66 had a bearing on my thinking in the years afterwards. Since then, I have thought that it is ultimately fatal for a communist party to expose itself mainly or completely before it can seize political power. Thus, the CPP has been clandestine since its founding in 1968 and has preserved itself and grown in strength for more than 50 years despite all the strategic plans to destroy it and the full restoration of capitalism in China, the collapse of the Soviet Union and other factors that have made US imperialism and the world capitalist system look like eternal, as if the epochal struggle between the bourgeoisie and proletariat has come to an end forever.
45. Stanley Karnow, In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines (New York: Random House, 1989), 380.
46. Alfred McCoy, “Dark Legacy: Human Rights under the Marcos Regime,” paper delivered at Ateneo de Manila University, September 20, 1999, at www.hartford-hwp.com/a
rchives/54a/062.html; Karnow, In Our Image, 356–60.
47. Author interviews with Pedro Blaset and Guillermo Castillo, Santiago 2018. As I noted previously, Jakarta was not the site of the most intense and visible violence. If any Chilean sailors did see scenes of bodies lying everywhere, it might have been somewhere else, or they might have just been passing on horror stories secondhand. There were, for example, reports of “heads on stakes along the road” in Aceh. See Prashad, Darker Nations, 154.
48. Harmer, “Brazil’s Cold War,” 673.
49. Puro Chile, July 12, 1973; See also El Siglo, July 8 and 9, 1973, for reports of Godoy Matte’s declaration. On August 1, 1973, Orlando Millas, official in the PCCh, wrote of his own experiences in Indonesia and used the nationalist politician’s words to claim that the Chilean right wanted to reproduce the CIA-backed 1965–66 massacre. Both newspapers at Biblioteca Nacional de Chile, Seccíon Periodicos.
50. Las Noticias de Última Hora, August 3, 1973, at Biblioteca Nacional de Chile, Sección Periodicos.
51. See especially El Mercurio, July 14, 1973. Though the article is unsigned, the language used here is very similar to that used by Juraj Domic in an earlier article, “Modelo Indonesio de Golpe de Estado Comunista,” published in Revista PEC (January/February 1973), which was later published as a small book titled Modelo Indonesia de Golpe de Estado (Santiago de Chile: Vaitea, 1975). Also notable is that on September 7, radio host Sergio Onofre Jarpa compared the situation to Jakarta in 1965. Reprinted on September 10, 1973, one day before the coup. Biblioteca Nacional de Chile, Sección Periodicos.
52. Harmer, Allende’s Chile, 133.
53. Mary Helen Spooner, Soldiers in a Narrow Land: The Pinochet Regime in Chile (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), 31–35.
54. Ibid., 35–36.
55. Patricia Politzer, Altamirano (Santiago, 1990), 132.
56. For a long time, the theory that Allende did not actually pull the trigger was widely circulated, and many people, especially outside Chile, still automatically assume this is the case. These rumors persisted for good reason, but we can also put them to rest for good reason. Allende’s suicide was witnessed by a member of his medical team, Patricio Guijón, who had returned to the room in which they had been sheltering to take a gas mask as a souvenir for his son. The rifle itself bore Allende’s fingerprints. Nevertheless, the theory that Allende was murdered by the military was fueled by Allende’s widow, Hortensia Bussi de Allende. While Bussi de Allende originally accepted Guijón’s testimony from her new position in exile in Mexico City, three days later she retracted that statement and insisted that her husband once told her that the only way he would leave La Moneda would be “dead, but fighting.” This revised version of Allende’s death offered more comfort to his supporters, especially outside Chile, and was amplified by the likes of Pablo Neruda, the Nobel Prize–winning Chilean poet who succumbed to cancer just twelve days after the coup. Guijón’s testimony is now widely accepted as the true course of events that day. This episode is recounted in Mary Helen Spooner, Soldiers in a Narrow Land: The Pinochet Regime in Chile (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1994), 40–44, 50–54.
The Jakarta Method Page 36