It’s quite common when talking about oppressive authoritarian regimes.

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22disappeared%22

Yeah, it's informal but it used mostly for when a government illegally detains someone, often incommunicado --though historically in Latin American countries "disappearances" were a euphemism for government paramilitary forces (or revolutionary forces) taking someone behind the shed and extrajudicially executing them or in lesser cases locking them up in secret prisons. The choice of word probably stems from the stereotypical middle of the night night unwitnessed arrest. (so and so was supposed to come home at 8 but never came back)

In Argentina, one of the countries (along with Chile) where the term "desaparecido" (disappeared) was coined in the 70s, it means specifically:

Government forces (not revolutionaries) which use either their official militaries/police (often) or their secret police (less often) to detain individuals without recourse to the law, then take them to illegal detention centers where they are tortured and eventually killed (in Argentina, some detainees were simply drugged and dropped alive to the Río de la Plata river, where they drowned -- our so called "flights of death" -- and others sometimes simply shot). The key thing that sets "disappeared" people aside from other ways of execution is that there is no official acknowledgement of their fate, and their friends and family are never truly sure of how they died unless their mortal remains are ever found by chance.

If this sounds horrifying, always remember our militaries in Latin America were trained in these tactics by the US government, in things like the School of the Americas [1], under the guise of "learning how to fight insurgency".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_f...

nice try to pin the blame on the USA - of course USA is guilty, but also, who chooses this path.. You cannot say that the people who do this themselves, to their own, are not responsible.

We (The USA) are incredibly guilty of a lot of poor actions and choices in South America. Including active funding & training of multiple regime leaders over decades.

It's hard to choose a good path if a major world power is making sure all the good ones get shut down.

agree fully - that is why it is crucial that we have checks and balances on uniformed services, public process and the ability to speak out here. There were long and serious protests about the School of the Americas by US citizens in public. Here in this international discussion, it is not complete or wholly accurate IMHO to say "the USA did it" without knowing some context.

> it is not complete or wholly accurate IMHO to say "the USA did it" without knowing some context

But this isn't what I said. I definitely didn't say "the USA did it". What I said was:

> always remember our militaries in Latin America were trained in these tactics by the US government

Which is both fair and accurate. The US was definitely involved one way or the other in most Latin American dictatorships of that era, enabling atrocities under the guise of fighting communism and insurgencies in their "back yard".

>> We (The USA) are incredibly guilty of a lot of poor actions and choices in South America.

> agree fully

.. The US was definitely involved one way ..

how are we not in agreement now?

So you basically understand the US is guilty, but somehow assumed I was saying the people on Latin America who used this training to murder their own people are innocent?

Of course it requires two things: murderers and those willing to train and support them.

PS: "nice try" my ass. This piece of history I'm telling you is widely acknowledged, this is not some kind of conspiracy theory.

I apologize if I offended you or others, it is an upsetting chapter in history yes.

Apology accepted.

To be clear: I do consider our dictators and murderers as worse people than those who trained them in the School of the Americas. Because, like you rightly put it, "who chooses this path?".

To be even more specific the phrase is most associated with the dirty war and Argentina’s military dictatorship and their habit of taking people they didn’t like up in helicopters and pushing them out a few miles off shore into the ocean. They just vanished without a trace.

They were called los desaparecidos (“the disappeared”) and for years once a week their mothers would silently carry photos of them and walk in circles at the Plaza De Mayo in Buenos Aires.

The Madres de Plaza de Mayo still do their walk today.

It's a powerful phrase, associated with oppressive regimes. It should be used with the same level of care as "pogrom" or "reeducation".

The Weebls' song 'Magical Trevor'

Everyone loves Magical Trevor 'Cause the tricks that he does are ever so clever Look at him now, disappearin' the cow Where is the cow hidden right now?