'Disappearing' people without warning or trial
June 4, 2025
by Kat Armas
... In 1973, Gen. Augusto Pinochet overthrew Chile's democratically elected president and launched a reign of terror under the pretense of restoring order and reform. He desecrated a nation in the name of salvation. And those who dared to resist? He cast them as threats, enemies. And then, they vanished. Thousands were taken — students, teachers, artists — gone without explanation. Some were tortured. Some were never found. Los desaparecidos — the disappeared, they called them.
The regime didn't just kill, it erased identities, stole information, even stripped people of their ability to mourn ... No charges. No courts. Just whispered orders and a knock at the door. But los desaparecidos were not absent. Their presence haunted the living with empty chairs at dinner tables.
This is the anatomy of empire: not just the taking of land or bodies, but of law itself. In Argentina, the junta followed suit, disappearing about 30,000 souls. Francoist Spain rehearsed the same brutal script. And still today, modern Nebuchadnezzars walk among us, treating justice like property to be bought, bartered or buried. Yes, in Syria. In North Korea. But we'd be mistaken to think it ends there ...
Officials claimed to be targeting violent felons, but 101 of the 196 arrested had no criminal history whatsoever, and yet they were taken — many of them to a Louisiana detention center — without warning, without trial. It's likely that many were here legally ... No chance to explain. Only disappearance ...
... It begins in the imagination, in the belief that some lives are expendable, that some belong and others do not. When a ruler starts deciding who gets to stay, who deserves the nation, who belongs in the fire, he is no longer leading. He is playing god. And we must not look away ...
https://www.ncronline.org/opinion/guest-voices/disappearing-people-without-warning-or-trial-ice-does-work-empire