The Fingerprints of Subversion

This work analyses international inter-police agreements established in Latin America between 1905 and 1920 which were related to fingerprint identification files. It attempts to show a clear link between these agreements, which established the norms and bureaucratic procedures of police identification with regard to social and political “subversive delinquency”, and the manner in which Operación Cóndor (1972-1983) employed files to fulfill its objective of removing, by military means, to this particular form of “delinquency”.