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Santurce street contrasts

Vallejo Nocturno 2008- street logic

Posted on July 26, 2008 at 04:58 PM in Images | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 25, 2008

Seven counts of murder

From Boston Review regarding Argentina's plight with its recent past:

From 1976 to 1983, Argentina was ruled by the most repressive dictatorship any South American country has ever endured, and the Dirty War was its clandestine campaign against “subversion.” Official government reports estimate that some 14,000 people were “disappeared” in this campaign: kidnapped by the military, held in secret detention centers, tortured, and, typically, murdered. The junta never acknowledged any illegal activity. Almost no records of the campaign survive.

The subsequent twenty-five-year effort to bring perpetrators to justice reveals a painful discord between the impulse to punish past wrongs and the goal of fostering a democratic community, a tension that afflicts all countries after periods of authoritarian rule. In Argentina the justice-seeking began almost immediately after the military regime collapsed amid a slumping economy and a disastrous attempt to reclaim the disputed Malvinas/Falkland Islands from the British. Raúl Alfonsín, the first democratically elected president after the junta’s fall, made history when his government indicted the leading members of the military dictatorship. In the 1985 trial of the junta, five of Argentina’s nine ruling commanders, including General Jorge Videla (the junta’s first de facto president) and Admiral Emilio Massera (the Navy’s ex-commander-in-chief and co-architect of the 1976 coup), were convicted of human rights abuses. The trial revealed the systematic horrors unleashed by the military government, forced Argentines to reflect on the roots of their authoritarian past, and forged a collective witness to ensure that such horrors would never happen again.

But as indictments reached down the chain of command, an anxious military strongly asserted its opposition to further prosecution. Under the threat of another coup—the military had overthrown Argentina’s constitutional government six times in the twentieth century and often played a central role in politics, even if not formally in power—Alfonsín pushed the Full Stop law through congress in 1986, which left only sixty days for new indictments. Alfonsín hoped only a few dozen would follow, which would ease military anxiety and solidify democratic transition. Instead, 400 indictments came in before the deadline. In the days before Easter of 1987, Lieutenant Colonel Aldo Rico staged a rebellion at the Campo de Mayo army base. In response, 400,000 people gathered in the Plaza de Mayo outside the government house in Buenos Aires. On a tense Easter Sunday, facing the prospect of bloodshed and civil war, President Alfonsín flew to Campo de Mayo. Though Alfonsín denies negotiating, the rebellion ended, and by June the Due Obedience law was passed. Due Obedience exculpated mid- and low-ranking officials for their involvement in the disappearances. Together, the Full Stop and Due Obedience laws were a wide-reaching amnesty, ending all but a few of the 400 prosecutions in process.

Toward the end of Alfonsín’s tenure, Argentina was crippled by a hyperinflation reaching levels as high as 2000 percent. Politically unpopular for his perceived capitulation to the military and his failure to reign in the inflation, Alfonsín was forced out of office early and succeeded by Carlos Menem in 1989. After further isolated revolts, Menem issued blanket pardons in 1989 and 1990. Though most Argentines found the pardons unsettling, Menem recognized that, seven years after the military’s collapse, economic reform had eclipsed the Dirty War in immediate political importance. Equally pragmatic and principled, Menem silenced military unrest in order to protect his presidency and move ahead with economic privatization.

For years human rights organizations challenged his impunity. The Madres (Mothers) de Plaza de Mayo—who began their weekly protests at the height of the junta’s power—continued marching around the Plaza, demanding accountability for the disappearance of their children. Legal organizations brought constitutional challenges. But the combined moral and juridical force of the human rights movement did not prevail. In 1987, the Supreme Court upheld the amnesty laws, and in 1990—after Menem successfully packed the court by increasing its membership from five to nine—upheld the pardons. With the amnesty cemented in law, the transition appeared over. The mothers marched, but no one listened.

Posted on July 25, 2008 at 11:17 PM in War & Torture | Permalink | Comments (0)