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THE ‘DISAPPEARED’: LESSONS FROM LATIN AMERICA  
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National Security Archive
May 12, 2025
National Security Archive

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_ We can’t help but connect what is happening in our country today
to a long history in the Americas of governments’ use of enforced
disappearance. Three experts with direct experience provide lessons in
how to protest, to mobilize, to fight back. _

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On April 30, the National Security Archive and the Washington Office
on Latin America (WOLA) co-hosted an online conversation with three
Latin American experts to learn from their experiences with enforced
disappearance. The motivation behind the meeting was a growing sense
of alarm, disbelief, and helplessness among many Americans as we
witness the Trump administration’s unprecedented actions targeting
immigrants in the United States.

At the president’s direction, U.S. government agents have seized
men, women, and children for detention and deportation without due
process. We have seen the images of masked security forces swarming a
student outside her home, a mother driving with her kids, workers in a
restaurant kitchen. To take them where? Whether the agents are from
ICE, DEA, ATF, CPB, or the local police, they don’t always reveal
the victim’s destination. They don’t always inform their families
that they’ve taken them. They don’t always allow the victim to
contact their lawyer. They don’t always bring them before a judge.
And now they don’t even always imprison them in the United States.
How do we make sense of this?

For those of us working in Latin America, the actions of Trump’s
security forces ring a deeply disturbing bell. We can’t help but
connect what is happening in our country today, right now, to a long
history in the Americas of governments’ use of enforced
disappearance to punish people considered dissidents. In Latin
America, that could mean armed guerrillas or suspected subversives;
more often it meant students, teachers, journalists, investigators,
indigenous activists, opposition politicians, lawyers, priests.

But if the region has a dark history of disappearing its perceived
enemies, it also has a proud and powerful tradition of fighting back.
People mobilized. They organized. They created strategies to protest
the disappearances, demand information, hold hearings, fight in the
courts, create new laws, search for the missing, expose injustice, and
tell the rest of the world what was happening.

That’s why we invited these three experts – these colleagues and
friends – to speak to us. Mimi Doretti, Juan Méndez, and Marcela
Turati all have direct experience with enforced disappearance and its
impact on a society. We need to hear from them. We need to learn from
their histories. We need to pull lessons from what they have to tell
us about how to fight back.

Our conversation is archived for anyone who missed the live event. And
go to WOLA’s posting
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the webinar for a transcription of the some of the key remarks and a
set of powerful conclusions drawn from our speakers’ presentations.

Learn about disturbing parallels between the U.S. government’s
current trajectory and what their nations have lived through—and
learn about how courageous people from many walks of life have
responded.

WATCH THE RECORDING

Speakers include:

* MERCEDES DORETTI, Executive Director, Argentine Forensic
Anthropology Team
* JUAN E. MENDEZ, Professor of Human Rights Law in Residence,
Washington College of Law, American University
* MARCELA TURATI, an investigative journalist based in Mexico
* KATE DOYLE, Senior Analyst at the National Security Archive,
will MODERATE.
* CAROLINA JIMÉNEZ SANDOVAL, President of WOLA,
will INTRODUCE the event.

_ABOUT THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE: Founded in 1985 by journalists
and scholars to check rising government secrecy, the National Security
Archive combines a unique range of functions: investigative journalism
center, research institute on international affairs, library and
archive of declassified U.S. documents ("the world's largest
nongovernmental collection" according to the Los Angeles Times),
leading non-profit user of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, public
interest law firm defending and expanding public access to government
information, global advocate of open government, and indexer and
publisher of former secrets._

* Latin America
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* disappeared
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* Political repression
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