Building Tools to Analyze the Files of the Uruguayan Dictatorship: Information Extraction From the Personal Records of Organización Coordinadora de Operaciones Antisubversivas (OCOA)

An automated method to analyze personal record cards generated by Organismo Coordinador de Operaciones Antisubversivas (OCOA) during the civic-military dictatorship in Uruguay between 1973 and 1985 is presented. These personal records are part of Archivo Berrutti, a collection of digitized documents, partially processed by the Uruguayan government. The main goal of this study is to extract the maximum amount of information from the personal record cards to ease the analysis by specialized teams. To achieve the goal, a methodology which combines image processing and pattern recognition techniques has been developed. This methodology takes advantage of the known geometric structure of the cards to straighten them, identify and extract relevant pieces, classify them, extract relevant fields, and transcribe crucial information such as names and identification numbers.