Includes bibliographical references and index.

Preface -- 1. Historical Setting and Political System -- 2. The 1960's: Economic Decline, Political Crisis and the Coup -- 3. The Military Government: The First Ten Years -- 4. Gross Human Rights Violations (GHRV) -- 5. State and State-sponsored Actors I: Police and Intelligence Services -- 6. State and State-sponsored Actors II: The Armed Forces -- 7. The Long Transition and the New Democracy -- 8. Conclusions -- Bibliography.

This book deals with the gross human rights violations that characterized the military repression in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay from the 1960s to the 1980s. Dr Wolfgang Heinz, the author of three of the four case studies is a German scholar. The second author, Dr Hugo Frühling, is a Chilean researcher. Both are renowned human rights specialists who have done in-depth research on the causes of gross human rights violations in these countries. They have interviewed generals and officers directly involved in the repression. They have unearthed secret documents and, building on existing scholarship, they have managed to draw a unique picture of the mechanisms of repressive domestic social control. They have investigated international factors as well as the dynamics of the interaction between guerrilleros and urban terrorists on the one hand, and the military, the police forces and the death squads on the other. The result is a comprehensive volume, broad and comparative in scope, and written with clinical detachment but also with humanitarian sympathy for the victims of repression.

Description based on print version record.