The Centre also holds documents related to the Operation Condor, a secret agreement on co-operation between the security forces of at least five Latin American military dictatorships. The premises, which have ca 50 square meters, serve as a depository, reading room and office for the staff. The ca 700,000 documents including several thousand photos are in fairly good condition but suffer considerably from the acidity of the paper. The documents are kept in Leitz folders and in bound files. At present, the Centre employs four people.
Access is free.
There are reportedly three to five visitors per day. Within the holdings of the Centro de documentos y archivo para la defense de los derechos humanos , only ca 1,200 documents, mainly reports addressed to the Paraguayan police regarding suspect persons, are directly related to the Operation Condor, according to the archivists. The adequate management of state security archives of former repressive regimes is not only a technical problem which administrators and archivists have to solve, but is an essentially ethical and political challenge for states which are ready to guarantee the liberties and responsibilities conferred by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In addition to their undoubted legal and scientific value, security archives of former repressive regimes withhold a heavy symbolic value as monuments of intellectual and physical terror. Therefore, their safekeeping, appropriate management and accessibility are important to society.