The Death and Resurrection of Human Rights in Argentina: The Crime of State Terrorism and Punishing the Transgressors
published in Crime and Justice International
November/December Volume 20, 2004, pp. 11-18
By Dr. Gary Feinberg
St. Thomas University
16400 NW 32 Avenue
Miami, Florida 33054
This paper was researched and developed at FLACSO Buenos Aires, Argentina on the CIEE International Faculty Development Seminar in Chile and Argentina as a result of sponsored support from St. Thomas University, Miami, Florida.
July 2004
Introduction
Argentina enters the 21st Century freed from the yoke of authoritarian military rule that for decades dominated its socio-political landscape. It is also a country having to confront a draconian history of major human rights abuses and a legacy of military repression. These include 30,000 cases of people who simply vanished, i.e., “Los Desaparecidos,” 3000 extra-judicial executions, kidnappings of infants, and a profusion of torture sites, looted properties, and related brutalities aimed at terrorizing a population into political compliance. Moreover, it seeks to redress these wrongs against a background of profound economic crisis, a weakening of state influence, and the need to build the infrastructures of democratization. Further aggravating this troublesome state of affairs, Argentina is in the unenviable position of having to direct scarce resources into remedying past human rights violations while concomitantly attending to the pressing demands of an 18% unemployment rate, a poverty level that encompasses 40% of the population, the significant erosion of a once viable middle-class stratum that embraced 60% of the population, growing economic disparities between the richest and poorest sectors of Argentinean society, equity issues, and an uncertain financial future capped off in 2001 when Argentina was forced to default on major loans from the World Bank and the International Money Fund. With this resume Argentina seeks to redress past human rights abuses, bring those responsible to justice, reestablish civil order, and cleanse its related embarrassing international reputation. Indeed, current Argentinean leadership recognizes that repairing its damaged justice system is a key to its recovery as an economy and as a nation (International Herald, July 18, 2003). To this end the current political administration is implementing four very different types of retrospective justice. These include: 1) the use of criminal sanctions as tools of retribution for high profile offenders; 2) the application of non criminal sanctions such as dismissing or disqualifying mid-level and lower level offenders from holding certain positions; 3) a form of moral rectitude associated with the official acknowledgment of previously denied crimes by the government and related victim grievances, and 4) the implementation of corrective justice whereby efforts to restore, compensate or assist the victims of state terrorism are undertaken. (See: McAdams, 2001). This paper examines the history, nature, and extent of Argentina’s human rights atrocities, the legal infrastructure that until recently protected human rights abusers, as well as varied efforts at truth-telling and retrospective justice.
State Terrorism in Argentina: The Problem in Historical Perspective
Throughout the 1970s and into the early 1980s a military elite governed Argentina. What made this generation of military rule especially different from previous military regimes is the culture of violence that descended upon the nation. It began with the murder of President Aramburu by leftist guerrillas (i.e., the Montoneros) seeking to reinstate exiled populist President Juan Peron. The right wing military responded to what it saw as an armed threat from the left with a series of hard-line anti-subversive laws and officially approved violence against suspected leftist insurgents. For a brief time (1973-1974) the military sought to appease a nation gripped in political turmoil by reestablishing civilian rule with Peron again at the helm. By 1976 with the country on the brink of economic collapse and armed guerrilla warfare spreading throughout the land, the military again seized power. This continuing civil strife, which lasted from 1976 to 1983, came to be commonly known as the “Dirty War.” During this war repression of civil and political rights was strict, systematic, and thorough under the guise of protecting national security. The military, aided by local police and other paramilitary forces, harassed, beat, tortured, imprisoned, and murdered thousands of alleged dissidents, trade unionists, journalists, lawyers, political activists, community leaders and their families, and especially college students. These actions were justified as the regrettable but necessary requirements for controlling “insurrection.” Censorship of the press was total. Laws were passed providing that spreading information derived from so-called terrorist organizations could be subject to an indefinite sentence. Another law made speaking out against the military a crime carrying a ten-year prison term. Hundreds of journalists were the victims of death threats, torture, or imprisonment. Others were forced to flee into exile. Still hundreds more simply disappeared. Civil rights such as freedom of speech, freedom to assemble, and the right to vote were transmogrified into acts of subversion, sedition, and treason. Secreted behind the thick walls of police stations physically brutal beatings of suspected subversives, forced confessions and coerced denouncements were commonplace, as were extra-judicial executions.
The military defended that it was saving western culture from godless Communism. It declared that it was engaged in nothing less than a ”holy war.” Furthermore, its violent and coercive methods were highly successful. By 1981 the military had effectively destroyed the labor movement, backbone of leftist insurgency. Collective bargaining agreements were nullified, pension plans scaled down, and social security along with public health programs were terminated (Goodwin, 1998). Even more outrageous in a civilized society, as a direct result of the Dirty War it is estimated that 30,000 men, women, and children disappeared in Argentina, and an additional 3,000 are known to have been assassinated. Whether labeled kidnappings, forced disappearances, or abductions, these constitute a continuing source of human rights violations in Argentina, a variation of the crime of state terrorism in which the government holds its citizenry hostage.
Argentina’s “Disappeared”: Who Are They and What is Their Fate?
The Disappeared, or Los Desaparecidos as they are known in Spanish, were typically young idealists, often college students, generally ranging in age from adolescents of about 14 years to adults in their early 20’s and 30’s. Many were suspected of having spoken out against the government dictatorship or were alleged to have acted in a way inconsistent with the approved government position and military rule. Some were at fault merely for being intellectuals. Still others were simply blameless teenagers and young adults. Their only crime was having their names in the personal phone book of a suspected political activist, being seen with an alleged subversive, being a relative or friend of such a suspect, or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Many were Jews, and evidence of a festering anti-Semitism is readily available. Numerous Jewish sites were targeted for violence, such as the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, the 1994 bombing of a leading Jewish center and later looting of surrounding homes, and the desecration of Jewish cemeteries. (See: Herald Tribune, 2003). These young people were abducted by members of the armed forces at their place of work, bus stops, railway depots, restaurants, cafes, and bookstores, as well as from their homes. Once in clandestine custody they were summarily taken to one of several hundred undisclosed torture centers distributed throughout Argentina. There they suffered brutal beatings, electric shock induced interrogations, after which their drugged and stone-weighted bodies were secretly flown over the Atlantic Ocean where they were unceremoniously discarded never to be seen again. The Escuela de Mecanica de la Armada (ESMA) in Buenos Aires, a former naval training center, housed one such torture center just off a major boulevard in the downtown section of the city. It also contained a warehouse where property looted from the homes of the disappeared was stored. The favored form of torture here as elsewhere was electroshock. The victim would be stretched out naked on a steel bed and tethered accordingly. A special electronic metal probe would be wielded and the victim shocked into revealing the names and whereabouts of close friends and associates with whom they supposedly conspired against the government. . At ESMA there was even a maternity ward where pregnant women were taken, beaten and tortured but allowed to bear their children before being eliminated. These children, in turn, were given to military personnel who had expressed the desire to undertake such adoptions. Some of the more creative tortures used included having the electric current pass through the body of a mother so that she could experience the pain the current brought to her teenage child who she could see and hear writhing and screaming in agony. Subsequent to their tortures, the surviving victim would be hauled out of the detention facility, their broken bodies counterbalanced to prevent floatation, after which they were loaded onto a navy plane flown over the seaway behind the ESMA complex and dropped to their doom. A similar site was the so-called Athletic Club in the San Telmo district of Buenos Aires. Here 1500 young men and women who opposed the military regime between 1976 and 1983 were murdered. The building has since been destroyed to make way for a roadway. However, the city council is now excavating the ruins of the place seeking to learn what happened to some of the disappeared. A sign at the site reads: ¡Ni olvido, ni pardon!, i.e., neither forget nor forgive. (Campbell and Goni, 2003).
In addition, numerous sites have been located throughout Argentina where bodies of previously missing young people were discovered buried in mass graves. One such site was revealed in the course of demolishing an old police station in Buenos Aires, another when undertaking some road excavation. Seven other similar sites became known when a former military officer implicated in the torture and disappearances, possibly disappointed in his failure to be promoted, revealed their whereabouts along with secreted graves. In this way about 3000 are now identified as deceased at the hands of the repressive government. Additional burial sites include Il Olimpo, La Perla in Cordoba, and El Pozo de Vargas in Turcoman (Interview, 2004).
It is important to realize that at no time were any charges filed against these hapless individuals, no marshaling of the evidence, no cross-examination of accusers, no findings of guilt by any court of law. There is no documentation showing they were ever jailed, brought before the courts, convicted or imprisoned. Who ordered their abductions remains for the most part unknown. Equally, who carried out these abductions, why they were abducted, and what fate awaited these forced victims of abduction continues to be a matter of conjecture. In effect these were forced disappearances, kidnappings and extra-judicial executions sanctioned by the military government in a planned campaign of terror. Those carrying out the despicable tortures may have been sadists who were only carrying out orders. However, they did so with the full knowledge and consent of the military, local police and the courts. Moreover, that it was all done in great secrecy suggests they knew what they were doing was wrong, even according to the laws in force at the time. And, they were acting with at least some level of volition. These are important considerations in justifying the leveling any criminal charges against the perpetrators.
The Atrocities End
By 1981 the leftist guerrilla groups had been successfully annihilated. The military had triumphed and the nation began a slow recovery from the internal strife known as the Dirty War. Indications of a possible return to civilian rule began to surface. Then in 1982 President Leopoldo Galitieri decided to reinstate Argentinean sovereignty over the Falkland Islands and undertook an assault on these remote British outposts in the South Atlantic. Galtieri sought to capture popular support for his attack by appealing to Argentina’s passion for nationalism and its self-image of being Latin America’s most advanced nation and premier power player. Correspondingly, he hoped to cleanse the sullied image of the military brought on by years of internal warfare and related human rights atrocities. The attack woefully miscalculated Britain’s resolve to protect its interests in the Falklands. The result was a shameful defeat for the Argentina military. A decisive by-product of this debacle was that its hold on labor was cast asunder. Moreover, popular support for a humiliated military that lost a major international conflict virtually on home ground to an enemy that had to travel 10,000 miles to engage a successful defense was effectively neutralized. Having lost hegemony, the once omnipotent military were assailed by an embittered and emboldened news media which now found the courage to challenge the disgraced military leaders about their responsibility for the disappearances during the Dirty War. By 1983 Argentina once again had a popularly elected civil authority headed by President Raul Alfonsin.
One of the leading issues of Alfonsin’s new presidency was how to address the human rights abuses of the former military junta. Alfonsin sought to do this by distinguishing degrees of responsibility for these crimes. The highest ranked officers were to be put on trial as directly responsible, followed by those whose actions with respect to human rights violations were confirmed to have been extreme. Right wing radicals among the military officers balked and declared their opposition to any such trials. They orchestrated a series of revolts that destabilized the civilian administration. By 1986 the voice of the right-wingers among the military had been heard loud and clear. To placate them the Argentine Congress, in consort with President Alfonsin, passed two major pieces of legislation that eventually provoked grave human rights criticisms from Amnesty International, the International Commission of Jurists, other NGO’s, as well as numerous foreign governments, especially those whose nationals were among Argentina’s disappeared (Amnesty International, April 1, 2003).
The first of these laws, passed on December 12th 1986, is the infamous Full Stop Law (Punto Finale, Law No. 23492). This law prevented the prosecution of any cases filed with the courts after a sixty-day deadline. The second of the laws passed on June 4, 1987 is known as the Due Obedience Law (Obediencia Debida, Law No. 23521). It allowed that only those in the highest positions of leadership could be held responsible for atrocities associated with the Dirty War. Correlatively, it granted impunity to all lower and mid-level military officers, as well as the rank and file, irrespective of the horrible or excessive nature of their human rights abuses if they could demonstrate they were only acting under orders. Such persons were now effectively shielded from bearing any legal responsibility for their criminal actions during the Dirty War. Taken together these two laws articulated a culture of impunity that had become institutionalized in the Argentinean power hierarchy. (See: Human Rights Watch, August 10, 2003). A third piece of legislation that effectively completed the protections afforded those who otherwise could be accused of human rights atrocities was Decree 1581. Issued by President de la Rua in 2001, it proscribed the extradition of military officers for purposes of allowing foreign countries to prosecute them for human rights abuses committed against their nationals living in Argentina during the Dirty War. (See for example: Amnesty International, July 29, 2003). Still other pieces of national legislation granted impunity for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Until most recently these laws were used to obstruct the investigation of thousands of cases of forced disappearance, torture and extra-judicial execution committed between 1976 and 1983 when the military governments were in power. The only exception was the crime of baby stealing, i.e., the theft of babies born to pregnant women being kept in secret detention prior to their being murdered. It would appear this crime was too opprobrious even for Argentina’s military to advocate pardon (Human Rights Watch, 2003).
Undoing Human Rights Violations in Argentina: Truth Telling and Retrogressive Justice
Today’s battle for truth and retrogressive justice in Argentina with respect to past human rights violations is being fought in its legislative halls, executive offices, and courtrooms. The current government of President Nestor Kirchner is sincerely concerned about redressing previous human rights abuses, torture, extra-judicial executions, murders, and the disappearances that often left families in disarray, children growing up without knowing who they really are, and teenagers in the dark about the fate of their parents and siblings. This entails such proactive policy moves as informing victimized families what became of their loved ones whenever possible, identifying and meting out justice to those responsible for their losses, offering closure by acknowledging governmental transgressions, providing some type of corrective justice in the form of financial compensation to wronged relatives, and preventing similar atrocities in the future.
Arguably the principle thrust for rectifying these human rights violations are efforts being played out in the legislature and courts to nullify the Full Stop Law, the Due Obedience Law, and Decree 1581, the three-ply inter-laminated shield that gives legal authority to Argentina’s culture of impunity. The first attempt to nullify the Full Stop Law and Due Obedience Law occurred in 1998 when they were legislatively repealed. However, the repeal was interpreted as not being retroactive. Practically speaking this meant that most violations committed from 1976 to 1983 continued to be exempt from prosecution.
A more promising development aimed at rectifying such legislated injustice occurred in August 2003 when both the Argentine Chamber of Deputies and the Senate by a vote of 43 to 7 with one abstention annulled the Full Stop Law and Due Obedience Law retroactively (Human Rights Watch, August 21, 2003). Their elimination means that no members of the military or police, regardless of rank, and irrespective of whether or not they were simply “acting under orders” from superiors, any longer has prosecutorial immunity for beatings, tortures, extra-judicial executions, kidnappings or related human rights atrocities committed by them or with their authorization. Correlatively, the Argentinean Congress passed a bill to amend legislation barring immunity for prosecution for War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity. Furthermore, since taking office President Nestor Kirchner has championed the cause that those who violated human rights during military rule are held to the fires of accountability. In keeping with this he repealed Decree 1581 set in place by President de la Rua thereby allowing the extradition of Argentineans to stand trial in other countries for crimes committed against foreign nationals. (Human Rights Watch, January 2004). This clears the way for Spain to seek extradition of 45 former members of Argentinean security forces and to put them on trial for human rights violations against Spanish citizens in Argentina.
France, Germany, Sweden, and Italy are also demanding the extradition of military officers who are believed to be responsible for murders of their own nationals during the Dirty War. Meanwhile, several federal court cases including one involving an abducted juvenile have addressed the constitutionality of the Full Stop Law and the Due Obedience Law. For example, in a leading 2001 case (Jose Liborio Roa et al) Federal Court Judge Gabriel Cavallo declared the Full Obedience Law to be not only unconstitutional, null and void, but in violation of international law including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the American Convention on Human Rights, and the Convention Against Torture and Other Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. A similar ruling with respect to the Full Stop Law was made in 2002 by Federal Judge Claudio Bonadio who opined that it along with the Full Obedience Laws were “contrary to the National Constitution but also to the law of nations”.(Amnesty International, April 1, 2003). Other Argentinean courts have taken a similar position. Thus, in March 2003 Federal Judge Carlos Skidelsky in a related ruling on these two laws stated that “these laws leave the deaths of thousands of Argentinean citizens and foreigners over a specific period of years -- from 1976 to 1983 – without any punishment whatsoever and for that period only, established as a consequence a special category of people who have no right to the protection of that most sacred of possessions, human life.” (Amnesty International, April 1, 2003). These legal efforts to nullify the Full Stop and Due Obedience Laws as well as the Decree 1581 translate into very practical and significant consequences for those seeking truth and retrospective justice in Argentina. For example, military dictator Leopoldo Galiteri and dozens of other former military officers have been arrested in Argentina on charges of murder, kidnapping and torture related to their activities during the Dirty War. Pardons of six junta leaders issued by former Argentine President Menem have been set aside and subsequent arrests made. Other military officers have been jailed for their part in stealing babies born to women held at ESMA (Vann, 2002; PolitInfo, March 24, 2004). The legitimacy of the Full Stop and Due Obedience laws is currently before the Argentinean Supreme Court awaiting a definitive decision that will affect a number of open court cases alleging human rights violations by members of the military as well as the police. The Court is expected to make its judgment by mid 2004 (PolitInfo.com, March 2004).
Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo
A unique group of heroes leading efforts to counteract these outrageous crimes against humanity and petitioning the government and its courts to rectify these wrongs is a group of women whose sons and daughters disappeared at the hands of the authorities during the Dirty War years. Maturing into a formidable vested interest group, these women waging peace and championing justice have come to be known worldwide as Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo. They assembled for the first time on April 30, 1977 in Buenos Aires’ famous Plaza de Mayo. A band of only fourteen women, mostly housewives, they shared a tragic family history. Their children had disappeared at the hands of government authorities. Wearing their children’s diapers symbolically as kerchiefs they cried out for information about the whereabouts of their missing offspring. The route that led each mother to this impressive plaza and their political protest was at once idiosyncratic and despairingly similar. Some told of a child who failed to appear for a scheduled dinner engagement and was never seen again. Others had homes invaded late at night by machinegun toting government representatives. Their property was ransacked, family members brutally interrogated, beaten, and, most disastrous of all, their children were blindfolded and torn out of the house to disappear forever. Moreover, all this was done without explanation, much less any semblance of due process.
Regardless of how the disappearance occurred, each mother had in common that they made the rounds to the police stations, churches, courts, army headquarters, Ministry of the Interior looking for answers about the whereabouts of their children and finding none. No one knew anything. Many writs of habeas corpus were filed individually and as a group. Some mothers were warned not to file these writs, that they were being contentious and that their children would more likely reappear if they showed legal restraint. In the last analysis, those who braved filing writs of habeas corpus were answered only by silence. In essence the courts supported repression by the armed forces. None of the kidnappers were ever arrested or brought before the judiciary. Not a single detention center was ever located, nor was there ever any news of someone being punished for these crimes. By the time of their initial meeting at Plaza de Mayo the mothers had begun to comprehend the reality of what was happening, and it was a terrifying reality (Sabato, 1986).
Las Madres began their long vigil at Plaza de Mayo when all other resources were exhausted and no officials had responded to their cases. Gradually their numbers mounted into the thousands and they and their cause attracted world attention. The battle they wage is on two fronts: the territory they seek is circumscribed on one side by truth and the other by retrospective justice. First they want to locate their missing children, or ascertain their fate. (They realize that after 20 years it is unlikely that their children are still alive, but they want closure). Second, they want those responsible for their loss to come forward, admit their wrongdoing, and atone for their heinous crimes. Some accuse them of not putting the past behind them, of vengeance seeking, and ultimately hindering national reconciliation. They defend that what they seek is not retribution but a kind of moral affirmation that will come from knowing what transpired under the military regime during the Dirty War. Moreover, they contend there can be no legitimate reconciliation until the guilty repent their crimes and serve the proper punishment, i.e., without truth and justice for the disappeared. They also posit that the reputation of innocent military officers can be lifted from the shadow of human rights atrocities only when the guilty among them are publicly discredited. As one commission on the subject writes, “If this does not happen then the transcendent mission which the judicial power fulfills in all civilized communities will prove completely valueless.” (Sabato, 1986). Importantly, the scope of their crusade is not limited to Argentina and their personal tragedies. They are working to end forced disappearances forever throughout Latin America, including such violence prone countries as Columbia, Brazil, Panama, and Venezuela where disappearances and other human rights violations continue even today. Lastly, they seek to end the impunity protections that immunize the perpetrators of these cruelties from criminal prosecution (Interview, 2004).
An especially vexing grievance of the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo stems from the realization that many of those who committed excessive human rights atrocities, including the deaths or disappearances of scores of children, now live as respected citizens. Their neighbors and friends regard them as pillars of the community, decent, honorable fellow residents. To rectify such inauthentic posturing, the families of the disappeared have created and implemented a new method of shaming and banishing law violators. It is known in Argentina as “escrache.” When investigations by the Madres confirm the identity and whereabouts of a former serious human rights violator, and they discover he is living a life that evades or obfuscates his past history of sadistic horrors, they execute a form of popular justice. They denounce him publicly. Specifically, they splash pure red paint around his home, symbolic of the innocent blood shed by the accused. They reveal to the community that the person regarded as a respectable neighbor has a nefarious criminal past that includes such serious offenses as abduction, torture, or murder. This public denouncement is highly effective. It is forcing many former human rights offenders to quit or be disqualified from their jobs, vacate their homes, withdraw from their community and otherwise acknowledge the lies they have been living.
In sum, the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo have become transformed from housewives and mothers who busied themselves maintaining their families into a formidable political force in defense of human rights. As one of the Madres explained when recently interviewed at FLACSO in Buenos Aires: “We have become our children’s voices and the quest for a better, more humane society that motivated them has now become our cause” (Interview, 2004).
The current national government of Argentina is also undertaking several additional policy initiatives aimed at redressing previous human rights violations. One such effort is to offer significant financial compensation (the equivalent of $100,000) to families of known victims. However, many of the Madres feel such compensation should be rejected until those responsible for their losses are identified, acknowledge their wrongdoing, and are appropriately sanctioned. They posit that there can be no acceptable compensation without truth and justice. For those who are more secure financially this position is easier to advocate than it is for those in financial stress or living below the poverty line. A second argument against financially compensating victims of state terrorism comes from a totally different quarter. With Argentina having significant problems of unemployment, underemployment, and 40% of the population living at or below the poverty line there are those who argue that dedicating money to rectify past wrongs comes at the expense of denying investment in Argentina’s economic future. As one Buenos Aires taxi driver argues, “I’ve done nothing wrong, why should my economic prospects and that of my children be weakened by a government that is more concerned about paying past debts than building a better economic future for us all?”
Another governmental palliative to help heal the festering human rights wounds of the past military administration is to acknowledge the existence of the disappeared, the anguish of their families, and related acts of terrorism by creating so-called “memory sites.” These are newly sanctified locations throughout Buenos Aires and other cities where atrocities are known to have occurred. People can pay their respects to those who lost their lives or disappeared there, and also remember these crimes by the government so they can never happen again. One such site currently under construction is the Parque de la Memoria. It borders the waterfront were the bodies of thousands of the disappeared are believed to have met their fate. Posted prominently at one end of the park is a billboard featuring row upon row of equal-sized photographs, the faces and names of the scores of young people who likely disappeared there. Some are against the proliferation of these memory sites. They contend that in general creating an array of memorial sites really promotes a political agenda, one that seeks to carry on the leftist struggle to transform Argentina into a socialist system. They urge it is better to leave the difficult past behind and to move forward. This in part is what motivated President Menem’s desire to tear down the reviled ESMA and obliterate it from memory. In this instance the Madres and the courts rejected the idea. Instead, they propose to make it a memorial site resembling what was done with the concentration camps in Europe. This, they counsel, will help people recall Argentina’s tragic past and thereby ensure it will never happen again. President Kirchner is in accord, and has signed an agreement with the city government to transform ESMA into “A Museum of Memory.” (PolitInfo.com, March 24, 2004). Construction is scheduled to begin next year, but some continue to vie against it. Time will tell.
Meanwhile, President Kirchner has taken several encouraging steps towards reforming the Argentine justice system. He has: 1) fired many high ranking leaders in the police and military; 2) petitioned the legislature to impeach numerous corrupt Supreme Court judges appointed by his predecessor Menem; and 3) ordered Argentina’s intelligence agency (SIDE) to open its secret files on the terrorist bombings of two major Jewish sites and its own agents to testify. In addition, President Kirchner has moved to retire three-fourths of Argentina’s highest-ranking military leaders. This includes the forced retirement of 22 generals, 13 admirals, and 12 brigadier generals. Most of these are in their late sixties or early seventies. Replacing them is a much younger generation, a military leadership team whose average age is about 50. Seemingly this move is motivated by the desire to modernize the military and bring newer ideas into play. However, many believe the real motive behind this retire-the old-and hire-the-young military recruitment policy is President Kirchner’s desire to purge the military of former human rights abusers and restore honor and respect to Argentina’s criminally sullied military services (Valente, 2003).
In Conclusion
The so-called Dirty War is over in Argentina and democracy has returned along with respect for human rights. However, just as Germany had to undergo de-Nazification and France had to purge Nazi collaborators at the end of the second world war ancillary to their future reconstruction as leading nations of a new Europe, Argentina now seeks to address its own needs for retrospective justice as a prerequisite for reconstituting a viable national future. This quest for retrospective justice has taken four basic forms in Argentina much as it did in Germany and France (See: McAdams, 2001). First and foremost criminal laws and sanctions are now being used to arrest, prosecute or extradite for trial many of the major perpetrators of human rights atrocities such as kidnappings, tortures, murders, disappearances, extrajudicial executions and murders, including rank and file officers and administrators as well as military officers in advanced leadership positions. Laws that gave amnesty or prosecutorial immunity to most of those responsible for these crimes have been struck down by the legislature, declared null and void by the federal courts, and await only a final decision on their constitutionality from the nation’s highest tribunal, the Supreme Court. Second, civil sanctions have been imposed by the government as well as community leaders whereby former human rights violators have been dismissed from their jobs or unofficially disqualified from holding prominent positions within the community. Third, a kind of moral justice has been implemented in which the evils of the former military junta and the violence of state terrorism during the years of the Dirty War have been officially acknowledged and the legacy of lies set aright by truth-telling. Finally, a fourth type of retrospective justice seen in Argentine today may be labeled corrective justice. Victim compensation efforts and the creation of memorial sites to the lost innocents are typical illustrations of this form of retrospective justice being carried out by the present Argentine government. In addition, efforts to locate the disappeared or establish their fate continue to be championed successfully with the help of the current authorities, former military officers, and others who participated in the Dirty War. Correspondingly, the government is working hard to reconstitute the military and change its tainted image as an enemy of human rights and justice. Hopefully the perverse heart and callous federation of state terrorism is thing of the past for Argentina and that efforts such as those discussed here will ensure that it never happens again. ¡Nunca mas!
Bibliography
Amnesty International, (April 1, 2003). “Argentina: The Full Stop and Due Obedience laws and international law.” http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR130042003?open&of=ENG-ARG
Retrieved 6/27/2004.
Amnesty International, (July 29, 2003). “This is a time for justice.” http://www.amnestyusa.org/news/2003/argentina07292003.html
Retrieved 7/12/2004.
Campbell, D. and Uki Goni, (August 18, 2003). “Argentina begins special healing process by reopening wounds of the Dirty War.” The Guardian Unlimited.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/argentina/story/0,11439,1020841,00.html
Retrieved 6/29/2004.
Goodwin, P. B. (1998). Global Studies: Latin America. 8th Edition. Guilford, Conn.: Dushkin/McGraw Hill.
Herald Tribune, (July 18, 2003). “Waiting for justice.”
http://www.iht.com/articles/103165.html
Retrieved 6/27/2004.
Human Rights Watch, January 2004. “Essential background: Overview of human rights issues in Argentina.”
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/01/21/argent6979.htm
Retrieved 6/27/2004.
Human Rights Watch, (August 14, 2003). “Argentina: Holding abusers accountable.”
http://www.hrs.org/press/2003/08/argentina081403.htm
Retrieved 2/22/2004.
Human Rights Watch, (August 21, 2003). “Press release: Argentina.”
http://hrw.org/doc/?t=americas&c=agent
Retrieved 6/27/2004.
Interview with Madres de la Plaza de Mayo at FLASCO Buenos Aires, June…., 2004.
McAdams A. J. (2001). Judging the past in unified Germany. The University of Cambridge Press, Cambridge, United Kindom.
PolitInfo.com., (March 24, 2004). “Argentina made progress in addressing past human rights abuses says Human Rights Watch.”
http://www.politinfo.com/articles/article_2004_03_24_5926.html
Retrieved 6/29/04.
Sabato, E. (1986) Nunca Mas. A report by Argentine’s national commission on disappeared people. London: Faber and Faber Ltd.
Valente, M. (May 26, 2003). “New pres. pushes military brass into retirement.”
http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=18409
Retrieved 6/29/2004
Vann, B. (2002), “Argentina’s ex-dictator Galtieri faces dirty war trial.” World Socialist Website, July 19. www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jul2002/arg-j19.shtml. Retrieved 7/27/04.