On April 27th Jan Rocha is launching her book entitled  CLAMOR: The Search for the Disappeared of the South American Dictatorships.

 CLAMOR, a small ecumenical group based in Brazil, was among the first to investigate, publicize and denounce state terrorism in the Southern Cone dictatorships during the 1970s and 1980s. The author was one of the founding members of CLAMOR and her book gives eyewitness accounts  of  the struggle to find the disappeared who had been seized and taken to clandestine detention camps, and especially to find out what had happened to the babies and children who disappeared. 

Besides Argentina, the book also covers events in Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile and Bolivia, when their democratically elected governments were overthrown and they became members of Operation Condor, targeting exiles in their country of refuge through secret cross-border operations. 

 Members of the Argentinian juntas were later condemned for the “systematic plan to steal babies and children”  and a parallel can be drawn with the indictment of President Putin by the International Criminal Court for the abduction of Ukrainian children. Both situations involved the use of children as political tools.  

CLAMOR: The Search for the Disappeared of the South American dictatorships, is now published in English by the Latin America Bureau and Practical Action Publishing.

Launch Thursday 27th April 6.30-9 pm at the Lumen Centre, 88 Tavistock Place , WC1H 9RS

Tickets on Eventbrite.

Jan Rocha is a British-born journalist and writer who was correspondent for the BBC World Service and The Guardian in Brazil from the 1970s to the 1990s and now writes occasional blogs on politics for the Latin America Bureau. Her books about Brazil include Murder in the Rainforest and Cutting the Wire with Sue Branford. Her other work includes being first coordinator of the Rainforest Journalism Fund of the Pulitzer Center, and  coordinator of an ILO project investigating the extent of slave labour in Brazil.