Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy : Chile and Argentina, 1990-2005 [1 ed.] 9780292759275, 9780292759268

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Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy

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Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy Chile and Argentina, 1990–2005 Thomas C. Wright

University of Texas Press   Austin

Copyright © 2014 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2014 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to: Permissions University of Texas Press P.O. Box 7819 Austin, TX 78713-­7819 http://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/rp-­form ♾ The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-­1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper). Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Wright, Thomas C.  Impunity, human rights, and democracy : Chile and Argentina, 1990–2005 / Thomas C. Wright. — First edition.   pages  cm  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 978-­0-­292-­75926-­8 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Impunity—Chile. 2. Human rights—Chile. 3. Democracy—Chile. 4. Impunity—Argentina. 5. Human rights—Argentina. 6. Democracy— Argentina. I. Title.  JC599.C5W75 2014  364.1′310982—dc232013048410 doi:10.7560/759268

In loving memory of my brother, John S. Wright Jr.

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Contents

Acknowledgments ix List of Acronyms xi Introduction 1 1. State Terrorism in the Southern Cone 7 2. The Construction of Impunity 25 3. Human Rights Advocacy 43 4. The Changing Legal Environment, Domestic and International 62 5. Precipitating Events 80 6. The Eclipse of Impunity 96 Conclusion 117 Notes 129 Selected Bibliography 159 Index 179

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Acknowledgments

My interest in state terrorism and human rights in Latin America goes back a couple of decades. I thank my dear friend Rody Oñate for sparking that interest. Rody, who was exiled fifteen years in Canada during the Pinochet dictatorship, introduced me to the phenomenon of mass political exile. This led to the book that we co-­authored, Flight from Chile: Voices of Exile (1998). Forced exile is a clear violation of internationally recognized human rights as laid out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Articles 9 and 13.2. Yet many of those who went into exile had experienced more severe human rights violations, including arbitrary imprisonment and torture, and had family members or friends who were murdered or disappeared by the regime. This realization led me to delve further into state terrorism and its legacies; to place Chile in comparative perspective I decided to broaden the research to include the other most repressive regime in South America, the Argentine dictatorship of 1976–1983. The result was State Terrorism in Latin America: Chile, Argentina, and International Human Rights (2007). As usual, a finished research project generates questions for further study. Hence the present book, in which I explore how advocates of justice were able to break down the formidable walls of impunity that shielded human rights violators from justice under the democratic governments that succeeded the state terrorist regimes. In doing so, they accomplished a feat that has not been achieved in any other countries undergoing the transition from highly repressive governments to democracy: they opened the door to justice not for a few but for all former repressors who violated the human rights of those branded as Marxist or subversive, who were deemed enemies of the state.

x Acknowledgments

This book could not have been completed without the important contributions made by people in Chile, Argentina, Spain, and the United States. I wish first to thank all those who graciously agreed to be interviewed, in many cases about extremely emotional and deeply painful matters. Their names appear in the bibliography. I am deeply indebted to Agustín Colombo Sierra and Patricia Tappatá Valdez for their insights and for making contacts for further interviews in Buenos Aires. Douglas Unger made my original contacts in Buenos Aires with the late Dr. Agustín Colombo and his wife, Graciela. Cath Collins and Rody Oñate provided valuable information and perspectives and arranged contacts in Santiago. I thank all of them for sharing their knowledge and their networks of colleagues and friends. Georgette Dorn, director of the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress, made possible a presentation on this topic when the research was in its earliest stages. The Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, gave me another opportunity to air my preliminary findings as the project moved forward. Arnold Bauer and Charles Walker arranged a talk at the University of California, Davis, when the book was approaching completion. I appreciate the constructive comments and critiques those opportunities provided. Several colleagues read all or parts of the manuscript and greatly improved the final product. For their efforts I wish to thank Joseph A. (Andy) Fry, Jerry L. Simich, Rody Oñate, Eileen Moyle, Lorena Balardini, Alexander Wilde, and my wife and colleague, Dina Titus. John A. Detzner generously provided materials and insights. Therese Chevas and Angela Moor contributed their technical skills to the completion of the manuscript. The Department of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, generously financed research in Argentina and Chile. I am grateful to Theresa J. May, assistant director and editor-­in-­chief of the University of Texas Press, for her invaluable guidance and support.

Acronyms



AFDD Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos (Group of Families of the Detained and Disappeared, Chile) AFEP Agrupación de Familiares de Ejecutados Políticos (Group of Families of Those Executed for Political Reasons, Chile) APDH Asamblea Permanente por los Derechos Humanos (Permanent Assembly for Human Rights, Argentina) CCHDH Comisión Chilena de Derechos Humanos (Chilean Human Rights Commission) CELS Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (Center for Legal and Social Studies, Argentina) CNI Central Nacional de Informaciones (National Information Center, Chile) CODEPU Comité de Defensa de los Derechos del Pueblo (Committee for the Defense of the People’s Rights, Chile) CONADEP Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas (National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons, Argentina) DINA Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (Directorate of National Intelligence, Chile) ESMA Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada (Naval Mechanics School, Argentina) FASIC Fundación de Ayuda Social de las Iglesias Cristianas (Social Aid Foundation of the Christian Churches, Chile)

xii Acronyms

FUNVISOL Fundación de Documentación y Archivo de la Vicaría de la Solidaridad (Foundation of Documentation and Archive of the Vicaría de la Solidaridad, Chile) HIJOS Hijos por la Identidad y la Justicia y contra el Olvido y el Silencio (Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice and against Forgetting and Silence, Argentina and Chile) MIR Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionario (Movement of the Revolutionary Left, Chile) NGO Nongovernmental organization OAS Organization of American States PIDEE Protección a la Infancia Dañada por los Estados de Emergencia (Protection of Children Harmed by States of Emergency, Chile) PPD Partido por la Democracia (Party for Democracy, Chile) RN Renovación Nacional (National Renovation, Chile) SERPAJ Servicio Paz y Justicia (Peace and Justice Service, Argentina and Chile) UDI Unión Democrática Independiente (Independent Democratic Union, Chile) UN United Nations

Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy

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Introduction

Chile (1973–1990) and Argentina (1976–1983) experienced state terrorist regimes that detained, tortured, exiled, killed, and disappeared thousands of people in their quest to eradicate Marxism and “subversion.” In Argentina, the successor civilian government initially prosecuted human rights violators; but under military pressure, trials were discontinued under 1986 and 1987 laws, and blanket pardons in 1989 and 1990 undid the justice done. In Chile, the amnesty law left in place by the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, along with the nature of the “protected democracy” that Pinochet created, prevented prosecution of all but a handful of human rights violators. Thus from 1990, when the Chilean dictatorship ended and the last pardons were issued in Argentina, the former repressors, with very limited exceptions, enjoyed complete impunity under democratically elected governments despite the continuing efforts of human rights organizations to hold them accountable. In the mid- and late 1990s, impunity came under renewed attack from within Argentina and Chile and from abroad. By the turn of the millennium, former practitioners of state terrorism were being investigated and tried, soon to be convicted and sentenced to prison. By 2004, the armed forces’ institutional resistance to justice ended as a new generation of military leaders in both countries renounced the past and embraced a democratic future. The following year, the Argentine Supreme Court ruled amnesty laws enacted in 1986 and 1987 unconstitutional, and in Chile, constitutional reforms eliminated military participation in government and strengthened civilian control of the armed forces. Impunity had ended. This book examines the reasons why military repressors were not initially held accountable for their crimes, except briefly in Argentina, and

2 Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy

focuses on the processes that led to the erosion and collapse of impunity and the rise of prosecutions in recent years. The eclipse of impunity in Chile and Argentina is worthy of study because of its uniqueness. Since the establishment of international human rights norms in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights—itself the outgrowth of World War II atrocities and the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials—few human rights violators have been held accountable for their crimes. Prior to the beginning of the ongoing trials in Chile and Argentina, Greece (1975–1976), Bolivia (1983–1993), and South Korea (1995–1996) tried and convicted leaders of repressive regimes; in Greece and Bolivia, selected subordinates were tried along with leaders. Cases in those three countries had in common that the prosecutions were orchestrated by political authorities, were limited in number, and were intended to be limited in time, although Bolivia’s did not conform to the time limitation. They were designed to render exemplary justice and close out bad chapters in national histories.1 The other trials for human rights violations that preceded the ones in Argentina and Chile were those organized and conducted by the United Nations (UN). In 1993 and 1994, respectively, the UN established ongoing tribunals for human rights crimes in the ex-­Yugoslavia and Rwanda and subsequently inaugurated special tribunals for Sierra Leone, Cambodia, and Lebanon. The International Criminal Court, which opened in 2003, broadens and institutionalizes the work of the special tribunals. In all the above cases of trials for human rights violations, only a small percentage of the perpetrators have been or are being held accountable for the crimes of many. This is not so in Chile and Argentina because advocates of justice, both domestic and foreign, brought about the complete collapse of impunity, not the selective lifting of impunity for a few individuals chosen by the countries’ executive authorities or the UN’s prosecutors to serve as examples to satisfy citizens’ and human rights advocates’ demands for justice. Impunity was firm, under democratically elected governments, at the onset of the 1990s. Fifteen years later, the last barriers to prosecution of the practitioners of state terrorism had fallen or were under siege. No other countries have similar records of successfully challenging what appeared to be iron-­clad, permanent impunity for all persons deemed complicit in human rights violations. The story of overcoming impunity in Argentina and Chile and of the resulting trials is unique in the annals of democratic transitions from repressive regimes. Owing to the blanket defeat of impunity, the ongoing trials in Chile and Argentina are different from any other experiences with holding former repressors accountable. Unlike the World War II trials and the UN tri-

Introduction 3

bunals, alleged human rights violators in Argentina and Chile are investigated, tried, convicted, and sentenced in national courts by judges who are their fellow citizens. In contrast to Greece, Bolivia, and South Korea, the judicial proceedings in Chile and Argentina are not directed by the executive power, do not involve a small number of selected leaders or of leaders and a few subordinates, and are not subject to formal or informal statutes of limitations. In contrast to all the above, they are not orchestrated trials designed to achieve selective justice, close chapters in national histories, and allow either country and its citizens to move on. Rather, they involve intellectual authors, torturers, and killers, generals and admirals along with enlisted men and civilians; anyone deemed complicit in human rights violations is potentially subject to trial. In Argentina and Chile, trials of alleged human rights violators have become a routine, institutionalized component of the judicial process, the pace of which is dictated by plaintiffs, prosecutors, and judges, not political authorities. They are autonomous, ongoing, indigenous processes that would not have been possible without the demise of impunity. As of 2013, hundreds of Chileans and Argentines had been convicted of and sentenced for human rights violations committed during the dictatorships, and hundreds more were under investigation or on trial; there is no end in sight for the processes. Even if political circumstances or judicial inclinations change and prosecutions stop, the successful assault on impunity and the nature of the trials would stand as unique developments in global context. The Argentine and Chilean experiences with holding former repressors accountable are important in another way. The defeat of impunity and the judicial actions in the two countries appear to be influencing political authorities and judiciaries elsewhere in the region. The Peruvian Supreme Court in April 2009 convicted former president Alberto Fujimori on four counts of crimes against human rights and sentenced him to twenty-­five years in prison. Despite two referenda confirming the validity of an amnesty law shielding perpetrators of human rights violations, Uruguayan judges have invoked current international human rights jurisprudence to sentence several military men and civilians, including two former presidents, for their roles in repression during the 1973–1984 dictatorship. In November 2011, Brazil took an initial step toward accountability by enacting a law to establish a truth commission to investigate human rights violations during the 1964–1985 military regime. In May 2013 a Guatemalan court convicted General Efraín Ríos Montt, former president of Guatemala, of genocide and crimes against humanity and sentenced him

4 Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy

to eighty years in prison; however, the country’s highest court overturned the verdict. Overall, legal proceedings have been initiated against former repressors in at least fourteen Latin American countries. Causality cannot be clearly established, but it seems unlikely that these developments would have occurred without the precedents set in Chile and Argentina. Yet, in contrast to the Argentine and Chilean cases, impunity has been lifted very selectively in the other countries that have initiated judicial action, resulting in small numbers of trials and involving few persons rather than the massive proceedings that have taken place and continue to unfold in Chile and Argentina. It is important to note that this book is a study of the construction, erosion, and demise of impunity, not of the justice that followed. It deals with some of the trials involved in breaking down impunity but mentions the “justice cascade” that followed the collapse of impunity only briefly in the conclusion.2 There is a growing body of literature on the topic, some of which is found in this book’s notes and bibliography. Chapter 1 offers an overview of the state terrorist regimes in Chile and Argentina during which the human rights violations occurred that were at the center of the struggle over impunity. This account of complex developments is necessarily abbreviated, but the notes offer references for further reading. The origin of impunity in the two countries is the subject of Chapter 2. In Argentina the military made a hasty retreat to the barracks in the aftermath of its ignominious defeat in the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas War with Britain. The military’s weakened position allowed the successor democratic government to prosecute the leaders of the state terrorist regime in Greek-­style orchestrated trials. However, victims, their families, and human rights organizations overwhelmed the courts with thousands of criminal charges, subverting President Raúl Alfonsín’s plan for limited and speedy trials and provoking a military reaction to perceived persecution that led incrementally to the establishment of full impunity by 1990. In Chile, by contrast, the military regime had carefully constructed a shield of impunity over the years and controlled the 1990 transition to civilian government. As a result, impunity for ex-­dictator Pinochet and the military was firmly established and not seriously challenged for nearly a decade after democracy was reestablished. Domestic and international human rights advocacy, an essential element in the eventual erosion and collapse of impunity, is the subject of Chapter 3. Human rights movements developed during the dictatorships to try to stop or at least attenuate the torture, murder, disappearance, and

Introduction 5

other violations that were the hallmarks of state terrorism. At the onset of the dictatorships, the international human rights movement was merely a work in progress, but largely in response to state terrorism in Chile and secondarily in Argentina, it took shape and gained strength over the next few years. After the return of democracy, human rights advocacy refocused on challenging impunity and pursuing justice for the human rights violations committed under the dictatorships. This proved successful in the first three years of restored democracy in Argentina, but with the establishment of impunity between 1986 and 1990, the human rights movement fell on trying times. Likewise in Chile, the human rights movement went into decline at the onset of democracy as funding and public support faded with the end of state terrorism and the attendant human rights violations. However, both movements persisted and, abetted by the international human rights lobby that had become robust by the 1990s, eventually vanquished impunity. Chapter 4 deals with another indispensable element in the struggle against impunity: changes in the domestic and international legal environments. Under state terrorism, the judiciaries of both countries were completely controlled by the dictatorships and provided legal cover for the massive human rights violations that occurred. In Argentina, the environment changed radically in favor of justice with the return of democracy in 1983, but the imposition of impunity reestablished a climate hostile to human rights advocacy. In Chile, owing to the steps Pinochet had taken to ensure the continuation of impunity, the advent of democracy in 1990 had little effect on the legal environment created by the dictatorship. Facing daunting obstacles to justice, human rights advocates turned to the international human rights lobby that had grown exponentially since the 1973 Chilean coup. The introduction of new international jurisprudence combined with judicial reform in both countries eventually fostered new legal environments that, in the aftermath of events that revived the languishing struggle for justice, proved receptive to the arguments against impunity. The precipitating events that sharpened the conflict over impunity are the subject of Chapter 5. In both countries, anniversaries of key developments under state terrorism, and in Argentina under restored democracy, focused public attention on the past and, with the pain and memory that such anniversaries evoke, on the unfinished business of the present. Coinciding with the anniversaries were foreseeable but unanticipated events: Argentine naval officer Adolfo Scilingo’s 1995 televised confessions about death flights from the Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada (ESMA, Naval Mechanics School), known as the Argentine Auschwitz; and in 1998, the

6 Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy

arrest of General Pinochet in London on charges of crimes against human­ ity brought by a Spanish judge. These dramatic events magnified the impact of the anniversaries, reinvigorated the domestic human rights movements, further engaged the international human rights lobby, changed the legal environment, and made justice for human rights violations an urgent national issue in both countries. In Chapter 6 we see human rights advocacy and changes in the legal environment bear fruit in the aftermath of the precipitating events. Facing mounting pressure from the domestic and international human rights movements, from prosecutors and judges, and from public opinion, the militaries, led by men born a generation after the architects of state terrorism, renounced their institutional past, abandoned their implacable resistance to justice, and accepted, however reluctantly, a new reality of investigations, trials, and prison sentences for their colleagues tainted by the practice of state terrorism. By 2005, after several years of erosion, impunity collapsed, and the doors to justice opened wide. The conclusion reviews the major findings of the study, notes important developments related to impunity and justice that have occurred between 2005 and 2012, and briefly assesses the justice achieved in Chile and Argentina. A note on usage is in order. First, while the military hierarchies of each country established and administered the state terrorist regimes, the perpetrators of human rights violations included more than military personnel. In Chile, the armed national police, Carabineros de Chile, played a central role in the repression; and the secret police, initially the Dirección Nacional de Inteligencia (DINA, Directorate of National Intelligence) and, after 1977, the Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI, National Information Center) consisted of military men, police, and civilians. In Argentina the federal police formed an integral part of the state terrorist apparatus, and civilians also collaborated in the repression. In order to reduce clutter in the text, however, I use the terms “military” and “armed forces” broadly to include those repressors who were not technically members of the Chilean or Argentine army, navy, or air force. Second, where English translations of Spanish books are available, I have cited the English versions to accommodate readers who may not be well versed in Spanish. Finally, all translations from works published in Spanish are mine.

CHAPTER 1

State Terrorism in the Southern Cone

State terrorism in Chile and Argentina occurred during an exceptionally dark period in Latin American history. Beginning with a 1964 military coup in Brazil and ending with a 1996 peace accord in Guatemala, Latin America experienced a third of a century of extreme repression and a grave crisis of human rights. During this period all but a handful of countries and more than two-­thirds of the region’s people came under de jure or de facto military rule that severely curtailed or extinguished human rights in the name of saving their countries from Marxism and subversion. In at least six countries—Brazil, Uruguay, El Salvador, and Guatemala as well as Argentina and Chile—the repression rose to the level of state terrorism. State terrorism was rooted in the Cuban Revolution. For the three decades following Fidel Castro’s assumption of power on January 1, 1959, the Cuban Revolution was the most powerful driving force in Latin American politics. Castro’s revolution ignited a wave of revolutionary activity that posed unprecedented levels of threat to vested interests and shook the Latin American status quo to its core. The rise of this Cuban-­inspired threat of revolution, in turn, catalyzed a wave of reaction that, supported by most U.S. administrations from Eisenhower to George H. W. Bush, led to the militarization of Latin America and the implementation of state terrorism.1

The Threat, or Promise, of Revolution In Cuba there was no debate like that in Russia following the 1917 Bolshevik seizure of power over whether to first consolidate the revolution at

8 Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy

home or to push immediately for revolution abroad. While launching the revolutionary measures that would transform the island, Castro simultaneously called for revolution throughout Latin America and promoted it through rhetoric, material aid, training, and in some cases direct involvement in military actions. Yet while the Cuban government remained deeply committed to promoting revolution, Castro’s exhortations and material aid were secondary to Cuba’s example in inspiring Latin Americans to embrace revolution. Three aspects of the Cuban Revolution were particularly appealing to many of Latin America’s youth, workers, peasants, marginalized slum dwellers, and intellectuals: the method of insurrection that allowed a small group to defeat a national army, the economic and social revolution in Cuba, and the reorientation of Cuba’s foreign relations.2 Castro’s preferred method of overthrowing Batista was to strike direct, dramatic blows such as his 1953 assault on the Moncada barracks and a failed 1956 uprising in Santiago. The method that eventually worked, rural-­based guerrilla warfare supported by urban resistance, was adopted in the wake of the Santiago debacle. Twenty-­five months after Castro and his tiny band took refuge in the Sierra Maestra, the national army collapsed, Batista fled, and the bearded, fatigue-­clad guerrillas emerged from the mountains and entered Havana as heroes. By retaining the beards and combat garb after taking office, the new regime sent the clear message that the rural guerrilla method had secured victory over the U.S.-­t rained and -­equipped Cuban army. Che Guevara’s best-­selling 1960 book, Guerrilla Warfare, purported to recount the Cuban experience in the form of a handbook offering step-­by-­step guidance for revolutionaries seeking to overthrow their governments. The combination of guerrillas in power and Che Guevara’s convincing blueprint for insurrection made the rural guerrilla approach attractive and seemingly easy—deceptively so, as it turned out. Cuba’s was one of the world’s most thorough and rapidly executed revolutions. Within five years of seizing power, Castro’s government had expropriated all foreign-­owned properties and all but the smallest Cuban-­owned businesses, establishing a socialist economy on the island. In addition, the government offered work, education, and health care to all. While these leveling measures set off an exodus of wealthy and middle-­ class Cubans, they created a new society based on an egalitarian model that had mass appeal in a region characterized by extremely uneven distribution of wealth, income, and opportunity. Of the measures that transformed Cuba, the one that resonated most loudly in Latin America was

State Terrorism in the Southern Cone 9

agrarian reform. More than half of the Latin American population in 1960 was rural and mostly landless in countries dominated by large estates; the rapid transformation of the Cuban rural economy and society thus had enormous appeal to the land-­starved of the hemisphere. The third factor that accounted for the Cuban Revolution’s powerful impact on Latin America was the island’s break with the United States. Given Cuba’s history as a U.S. protectorate from 1898 to 1933 and its economic dependence on the United States thereafter, many Cubans harbored strong anti-­Yankee sentiments. As the hegemonic hemispheric power and primary source of foreign capital, the United States had created anti-­Americanism in varying degrees throughout Latin America. When Castro began expropriating U.S.-­owned lands and businesses and refused to buckle under pressure from Washington, he became a hero to nationalists who chafed at U.S. economic and political power over their countries. When he faced and defeated the surrogate U.S. invasion force at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961, he was hailed as the liberator of Latin America, a new Bolívar. In addition to the concrete accomplishments, the style of leadership and the enthusiasm conveyed by the common people of Cuba further embellished the revolution’s appeal. Fidel Castro was an extremely charismatic leader. Handsome, charming, and articulate, he was a mesmerizing speaker who was adept at using the media to his advantage. Images from Cuba also portrayed a high level of enthusiasm for and participation in the building of a socialist society. Whether it was the thousands of youth who took the literacy campaign to the remotest parts of the island or the actions of half of Cuba’s adult population who joined the Comités de Defensa de la Revolución (Committees of Defense of the Revolution), Latin Americans saw what appeared to be massive and willing volunteer work in support of Castro’s revolution. Timing was another major factor in the revolution’s impact. The late 1950s and early 1960s constituted a period of democratic ascendancy second only to the period from 1990 to the present; after the fall of several authoritarian regimes in the 1950s, only six countries—all of them small— were not governed in a reasonably democratic manner. As a result, media censorship was minimal, and freedom to demonstrate, strike, and form new political groups was optimal in most of the hemisphere. The dissemination of news from Cuba was further facilitated by the recent advent of the cheap transistor radio and television, both of which transcended the barrier of illiteracy. The calls for revolution, the positive accomplishments in Cuba, the

10 Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy

style of the revolution, and the freedom and technology to reach out to most Latin Americans created a climate favorable to the rise of an unprecedented wave of revolutionary activity. Herbert Matthews, a New York Times editor and close observer of Cuba, described this as “something new, exciting, dangerous, and infectious [that] has come into the Western Hemisphere with the Cuban Revolution.”3 Others referred to this phenomenon as fidelismo. Fidelismo amounted to acute impatience with the status quo combined with the conviction that revolution should be pursued immediately, no excuses. Castro summed up this attitude in his 1962 Second Declaration of Havana: “The duty of every revolutionary is to make revolution.”4 As proven by the Cuban Revolution, one no longer needed to wait for the objective conditions that the Latin American Communist parties argued must be in place for revolution to occur; and as Che Guevara explained in addenda to Guerrilla Warfare, the guerrilla band’s actions alone could create the necessary conditions for revolution. As the example of Cuba drove up demands for change in the early 1960s, the political agenda in most countries shifted leftward, fidelista groups and publications proliferated, street demonstrations and strikes multiplied, and the walls of Latin America blossomed with the slogan “Cuba sí, yánqui no.” Under the impact of Cuba, the political party landscape was altered. The more progressive elements of mainline reformist parties such as Venezuela’s Acción Democrática (AD) and Peru’s Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA) became disillusioned with reformism and broke away, forming their own parties. Communist parties, wedded to gradualism and caution, also spun off numerous, often competing fidelista groups. Inspired by the Cuban agrarian reform, landless campesinos mobilized, sometimes occupying haciendas and driving out the landowners, while rural guerrilla movements were launched in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Argentina, and elsewhere. The impact of the Cuban Revolution was initially strongest in South America, where in most countries the infrastructure of labor unions, student federations, and left political parties and the prevalence of democratically elected governments provided the conditions for mobilizing advocates of revolution. The 1979 overthrow of the Somoza family dynasty in Nicaragua opened a new front in Central America, as the Sandinista Revolution inspired emulation in the region. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and with it the Soviet subsidy of Castro’s government, however, led to a grave economic crisis in Cuba and forced the regime to look inward in search of survival and forgo the active pursuit of

State Terrorism in the Southern Cone 11

hemispheric revolution. As a result, the period in which the Cuban Revolution played a primary role in Latin American politics came to a close.

Revolution in Chile and Argentina Along with most of Latin America, Chile and Argentina were profoundly affected by developments in Cuba but in very different ways. Owing to Chile’s strong democratic tradition, the radicalization of politics there was largely contained within the existing political system. By the early 1960s, demand for change began to mount, and politics shifted leftward. Reflecting the rising pressure for land reform, a conservative government in 1962 enacted a preemptive land reform law that did little to quell demand. In the 1964 presidential race, Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei Montalva defeated Socialist Salvador Allende and a third candidate. Frei ran on a platform of structural reform that he called a “revolution in liberty,” which entailed dismantling the country’s large estates and “Chileanizing,” or establishing half state ownership, of the U.S.-­owned copper companies that yielded most of the country’s export earnings. Although substantial, Frei’s agrarian and other reforms were insufficient to stem the demand for rapid change and the leftward movement of the electorate, leading to Allende’s victory in 1970 in his fourth bid for the presidency. Thus revolution arrived in Chile in a fashion that Castro and Guevara had not imagined: via the ballot box.5 Allende, the candidate of the six-­party coalition Unidad Popular (UP, Popular Unity) dominated by the Partido Socialista (Socialist Party) and Partido Comunista (Communist Party), was also supported by a more radical party founded in 1965, the Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR, Movement of the Revolutionary Left). He won a close election in a three-­candidate field with slightly more than 36 percent of the vote.6 Allende’s platform was thoroughly revolutionary: he promised to move Chile as quickly as possible to socialism while preserving the country’s democratic political system. From the outset Allende faced serious obstacles to the implementation of his program. His coalition held only the executive branch of government, while the opposition controlled Congress and the conservative judiciary consistently opposed his initiatives. Exacerbating Allende’s problems, the implacably hostile Nixon administration cut the flow of U.S. aid except to the military and enacted a credit boycott that crippled the government financially. After Allende’s

12 Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy

successful first year of significant progress in agrarian reform and nationalization of the economy and an increase in the government’s popularity, the conservative Partido Nacional (National Party) and the Christian Democrats formed an alliance and denied the administration any cooperation. Hard currency reserves dried up, and impatient campesinos and workers, encouraged by the MIR and elements of Allende’s own Socialist Party, began occupying haciendas and factories without waiting for expropriation decrees. This mobilization jeopardized the president’s ability to maintain order and the rule of law and increased apprehension among his opponents. In October 1972 the organizations representing big business and allies they had recruited among smaller-­scale merchants, miners, farmers, industrialists, and professionals—collectively known as the gremios, or guilds—went on strike, virtually shutting down the national economy. Allende was able to end the action only by temporarily bringing military officers into his cabinet. Both sides hoped that congressional elections in March 1973 would resolve the impasse, either by giving the UP a majority or the opposition the two-­thirds vote necessary to remove the president. Instead, the results—44 percent for the UP, 56 percent for the opposition—hardened the polarization and gave rise to increased violence. In August 1973, the gremios struck again, this time with the intention of bringing down the government. After resisting mounting pressure for military intervention, General Carlos Prats resigned as army commander in August, and Allende named General Augusto C. Pinochet to the post. By early September, Chile had descended into near-­chaos. When approached by the navy and air force commanders to carry out a coup with U.S. support, Pinochet agreed less than forty-­eight hours before the fateful events of September 11, 1973. The impact of the Cuban Revolution played out differently in Argentina. While revolution was on the agenda and Argentina experienced the common phenomenon of rural guerrilla outbreaks that were quickly suppressed, the main grist of political life was Peronism versus anti-­Peronism. Army Colonel Juan D. Perón, elected president in 1946, was a populist and authoritarian ruler until overthrown and exiled by the military in 1955. One of the legacies of Perón’s presidency was a sharply divided country. On one side was a huge bloc of loyal Perón supporters anchored in the working class and youth and organized in labor unions and Perón’s heterogeneous party, the Partido Justicialista, whose goal was to secure their leader’s return from exile and restoration as president. On the other side was a staunchly anti-­Perón bloc consisting of the elites, much of the

State Terrorism in the Southern Cone 13

middle class, and the military, whose primary objectives were to prevent Perón’s return from Spain and to keep his loyalists marginalized from power. This deep division made the country virtually ungovernable, leading to a succession of short-­lived military and weak civilian governments after 1955. Seeking to end the pattern of revolving-­door administrations, General Juan Carlos Onganía seized power in 1966 with a pledge to combat “ideological infiltration, subversion, and chaos.” He established an anti-­ Peronist national security state in which political parties were banned, universities purged, the labor movement repressed, and the independent press silenced.7 A 1969 popular uprising in the industrial city of Córdoba against the Onganía government and its brutal repression had a radicalizing effect on major segments of the Argentine population. The Cordobazo led to the formation of several guerrilla groups that chose cities as their battleground—given Argentina’s heavily urban demography, including Buenos Aires’s ten million people—and the discrediting of rural guerrilla warfare with Che Guevara’s 1967 defeat and death in Bolivia. The original six quickly coalesced into two major guerrilla organizations: the Trotskyist-­ Guevarist Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (ERP, People’s Revolutionary Army) and the Peronist-­socialist Montoneros. The ERP and Montoneros quickly became a challenge to the Onganía government, which was overthrown by another general who promised to defeat the guerrillas. But influenced by the tactics of the Tupamaro urban guerrillas in neighboring Uruguay, the ERP and Montoneros cultivated public support by carrying out Robin Hood-­style actions such as distributing stolen food in the slums and forcing foreign corporations to rehire dismissed workers while also attacking police and military posts and assassinating public figures. By 1973, following another regime change, the guerrillas and the radicalized Peronist labor movement and youth had become powerful enough to convince the military that only Perón’s return could bring peace and stability. The military government of General Alejandro Lanusse called elections in which Perón’s party, but not the aging icon himself, could participate. Perón stand-­in Héctor Cámpora was elected and resigned, and Perón then was elected president in September 1973 with 62 percent of the vote. The former president’s return to power, however, did little to quell the guerrilla violence and general instability. His death less than a year later left his widow and vice president, Isabel Perón, in nominal charge. The next two years witnessed a sharp increase in guerrilla actions and right-­wing armed response led by the Alianza Anticomunista Argentina, resulting in an alarming rise in the death toll. As violence escalated

14 Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy

and government power deteriorated, the threat of revolution in Argentina had become palpable by the mid-­1970s.

The Reactions To Latin America’s elites, substantial parts of the middle class, political conservatives of any social standing, and the armed forces, the rise of the Cuban-­inspired wave of revolution appeared to threaten their way of life, even their survival. With revolution residing in the Chilean presidential palace and threatening in the streets of Argentina, these groups in both countries were placed on the defensive. They had observed the leveling aspects of the Cuban Revolution, the exodus of Cuba’s elites, stripped of their properties and money, and the establishment of a communist dictatorship. They had seen the dismantling of Cuba’s national army and its replacement by Castro’s rebel army. Allende’s aggressive campaign of expropriation caused wealthy Chileans to see a replay of Cuba in their country, and as they lost their cherished rural estates and, along with them, control of the rural vote that was critical to the survival of conservative political influence, they may have felt themselves to be “on the verge of extinction.”8 In Argentina, two decades of instability and several years of heightened radicalization and guerrilla warfare made the victory of the revolutionaries seem a distinct possibility and with that, outcomes similar to those in Cuba and Chile. In both countries the elites looked back nostalgically to the days when oligarchies ruled virtually uncontested, when the masses were disenfranchised and docile, prior to the social conflict and political battles that ensued at the time of World War I. Tired of dealing with the fallout of the Cuban Revolution in their countries, some came to embrace a final solution to the problems of Marxism and subversion. The instrument for that was military rule, and the methodology, though most supporters of the military regimes would deny advocating it, would be state terrorism. To U.S. administrations of the 1960s, the spread of fidelismo in the hemisphere opened a new and dangerous theater in the Cold War. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy launched the Alliance for Progress, a sweeping but ultimately ineffectual program designed to promote economic development, social justice, and political democracy as antidotes to Cuban-­ style revolution. The United States applied escalating pressures on Cuba to curtail its ability to export revolution, establishing the trade embargo that persists today and persuading the Organization of American States

State Terrorism in the Southern Cone 15

(OAS) in 1962 to expel Cuba and, two years later, to require member states to cut all diplomatic, commercial, and travel ties with the island. But the United States ultimately relied on the military option to stem the revolutionary tide.9 The United States increased military aid and instructed and equipped elite units of the Latin American militaries for counterinsurgency warfare against the guerrillas; the highest-­profile case of counterinsurgency versus guerrilla occurred in Bolivia, where newly formed army ranger units defeated and captured Che Guevara in 1967. The United States also instructed the Latin American officer corps in national security doctrine, or the concept that the enemy was not Cuban troops or the army across the border but Marxists and other “subversives” within each country’s society. National security doctrine underpinned the militaries’ wars against the left during the wave of reaction against the forces of revolution. The Latin American armed forces traditionally, and in many cases by constitutional mandate, played an important role in their countries’ political life. In times of crisis, they were expected to save the patria by taking power and solving the problems underlying the crises. When the Great Depression hit, for example, almost every country came under military rule when the civilian governments proved unable to manage the social and political fallout of economic collapse. So as the wave of revolutionary activity unleashed by the Cuban Revolution threatened to destabilize governments, the military took power in a half-­dozen countries between 1960 and 1963. As officers studied national security doctrine at the School of the Americas in the Panama Canal Zone and at specialized schools in the United States, they increasingly came to embrace the idea that their enemies were Marxists and others categorized broadly as “subversives” within their own countries. It was a short step from understanding the internal threat to fighting it, with arms. Moreover, fighting subversives would provide the combat experience militaries desired but that in Latin America, with its low incidence of international wars, was rarely available on the traditional battlefield. As an officer put it, national security doctrine was “a hope for the . . . army. It was destined to fill the void produced by the almost complete disappearance of possibilities of war between our country and some of its neighbors.”10 A 1962 Argentine army report revealed the effectiveness of the inter-­ American course on counterrevolutionary warfare: “These joint studies . . . bring out clearly that the principal enemy of our civilization and way of life is to be found in the very heart of our national communities. The

16 Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy

enemy is tremendously dangerous. We are not attacked from outside . . . but subtly undermined through all channels of the social organization.”11 Across the Andes, the Chilean military, reflecting its adherence to constitutional rule and its apolitical tradition, did not publicize its views on national security doctrine, but at least one group, the officers who would establish and run Pinochet’s secret police, the DINA, clearly embraced the doctrine and prepared to apply it. Pinochet himself, a late but enthusiastic convert, expressed his understanding of the doctrine when he called Marxism “permanent aggression at the service of Soviet imperialism [that] gives rise to an unconventional war in which territorial invasion is replaced by attempts to take over states from within.” To defeat this threat, he concluded, “it is necessary to place power in the armed forces, since only they have the organization and means to counter it.”12

State Terrorism in Chile The Chilean and Argentine state terrorist regimes shared fundamental objectives and values. Both countries’ militaries went far beyond dealing with the immediate threats that motivated their seizures of power. Having deposed Allende and the UP government in Chile and having reduced the urban guerrillas essentially to nuisance status in Argentina, the militaries turned to addressing what they considered the root causes of the revolutionary challenges that had emerged from the Cuban Revolution: Marxism, subversion, and in the Argentine case radicalized Peronism. In pursuit of a solution to these threats, the regimes sought to physically eradicate the left, permanently root out Marxism, and destroy the political systems that allowed these groups to operate and flourish. They employed brutal methods of repression involving secret detention centers, extensive torture, murder, and disappearance. They initially refused to set deadlines for cleansing and transforming their countries’ political systems so that when their mission was accomplished they could eventually return government to civilian hands. Both regimes viewed themselves as heroic combatants against godless Marxists and subversives in defense of the traditional values of family, religion, and fatherland, and they glorified their actions as saving the patria. They aspired to create neoliberal, free market economies, with differing results. The two regimes cooperated, along with several other like-­minded South American governments, in Operation Condor—an armed international anti-­left alliance. Despite the Chilean military’s history of nonintervention in politics—

State Terrorism in the Southern Cone 17

a tradition that set it apart from most other Latin American militaries— few Chileans were surprised by the September 11, 1973, coup, given the extreme polarization, the hardship imposed by the gremios’ strikes, and the rise of violence. However, Chileans’ expectation that the military would follow the standard Latin American coup script of deposing the government with little or no violence, exiling some of its leading personnel, stabilizing the country, and overseeing elections to restore civilian governance after a year or two was a serious miscalculation.13 The coup was a shockingly bloody affair. When President Allende refused to leave the historic presidential palace, La Moneda, the air force strafed and bombed it, burning this symbol of Chilean democracy. After ordering all his staff to leave, Allende died of a self-­inflicted gunshot— a death generally considered to be murder by the military. On the evening of September 11 the newly formed military junta decreed a state of siege befitting “a state or time of war,” and the air force representative declared it the military’s duty to extirpate the “Marxist cancer.” The junta closed the Congress, dissolved political parties, purged union and university leadership and public-­sector employees, established strict censorship, and banned elections in voluntary associations, thereby eliminating most potential sources of opposition to its rule. The military purged pro-­ Allende officers and threatened the careers of those who did not identify with the unfolding mission of cleansing Chile of all traces of Marxism and subversion. It quickly became evident that the military expected to hold power indefinitely and use any means necessary to accomplish that mission. Allende collaborators and supporters, whose associations and sentiments had been perfectly legal until the moment of the coup, overnight became ex post facto criminals and enemies of the state. The junta issued orders for hundreds of persons associated with the UP government to turn themselves in; many complied to clear their names, having done nothing criminal, and were never seen again. Huge roundups of government supporters ensued, filling soccer stadiums, military installations, navy ships, and other improvised detention sites where hundreds were tortured and killed. Hastily assembled military tribunals sentenced dozens of enemies of the new state to death. In rural areas, former landowners settled scores with their former peons who had received hacienda lands through agrarian reform. Despite the imposition of censorship, photos and reports managed to circulate internationally depicting lines of prisoners chained together, bodies lying in streets and floating in rivers, and a grim General Pinochet

18 Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy

looking sinister in dark glasses. While the Nixon administration embraced the new regime, the United Nations, international human rights organizations, and governments from around the world condemned the coup and the extreme violence that accompanied it. Between September 11 and the end of 1973, more than 1,800 were killed or disappeared by agents of the new government and vigilantes, while thousands more went into exile to save their lives. By the dictatorship’s end, at least 3,200 people had been killed or disappeared, 38,000 tortured, and some 200,000 forced into exile. Between early 1974 and the end of 1976 the military regime consolidated power. The primary instrument for eradicating the left was the DINA, a secret police composed of military, police, and civilians that operated without constraints and replaced the ad hoc and very public violence that characterized the four months following the coup. The DINA originated in an extreme faction of the army that enthusiastically embraced national security doctrine and countersubversive warfare, and it was run by General Manuel Contreras. Pinochet used his close relationship with Contreras and the DINA to maneuver within fifteen months from head of the junta to president of the republic, establishing a highly personal dictatorship and dominating the junta that continued to exist through the end of the dictatorship. The DINA established secret detention centers where leftists were tortured, often under the supervision of medical doctors, and sometimes killed; Villa Grimaldi, a confiscated estate on the outskirts of Santiago, was the largest and most notorious of the DINA’s sites. The DINA’s priority targets were the underground units of Communist and Socialist parties and the MIR, which, although lacking any fighting capacity, had been established at the time of the coup to retain the parties’ presence in the country in the face of the murder and forced exile of their leaders and militants. By 1976 the last remnants of the left underground had been decimated, and Pinochet’s control over the country was absolute and uncontested. While focusing on domestic enemies of the state, the DINA also extended its reach abroad through its collaboration with other repressive South American regimes in the international anti-­left Operation Condor. The outlines of the new Chile designed by the military and its civilian collaborators began to be revealed in the junta’s March 1974 “declaration of principles.” The new government, the document declared, “does not fear or hesitate to declare itself anti-­Marxist.” It would hold power indefinitely “because the task of reconstructing the country morally, institutionally, and materially requires profound and prolonged action.”

State Terrorism in the Southern Cone 19

To accomplish the multifaceted reconstruction, “it is absolutely necessary to change the mentality of Chileans” by replacing Marxism and its credo of class struggle with the values of family, class harmony, conservative Catholicism, and Chilean nationalism.14 On the economic front the regime embraced a radical restructuring of the state-­directed economy, opting for the neoliberal, free market approach taught by Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago and turning economic policy over to Friedman’s Chilean students, the “Chicago Boys.” The regime’s halcyon years were 1977 through 1981. After severely contracting from the Chicago Boys’ radical measures, the economy began to boom and the massive unemployment declined. With the underground opposition decimated, the repression was relaxed but not eliminated. Despite the dedicated anti-­Pinochet activism of exiles spread throughout the world, international opposition to the regime was largely rhetorical. The 1976 election of President Jimmy Carter, who embraced human rights as a determinant of foreign policy, ended the strong U.S. support the regime had enjoyed under Nixon and Henry Kissinger; but by making superficial changes, including replacing the notorious DINA with a nearly identical secret police under a different name, Pinochet avoided serious confrontation with the new administration. In 1980 he unveiled a new constitution, the culmination of seven years’ work, that confirmed his dictatorial powers for at least eight more years and configured a “protected democracy” for a remote post-­Pinochet Chile. In late 1981 the superheated Chilean economy began to falter as bankruptcies multiplied and unemployment again swelled. Spontaneous protests in the Santiago poblaciones (slums) soon gave way to demonstrations organized by the outlawed opposition parties, while political leaders forged alliances and pushed to force Pinochet out of office before his eight-­year term expired. The appearance of the first open opposition since 1973 was met with heightened repression, but the antiregime movement was able to wring a few important concessions from the dictator. In response to a failed 1986 assassination attempt on Pinochet perpetrated by a Communist spinoff group, the regime unleashed more severe repression that caused the mobilized opposition to abandon its quest to overthrow Pinochet and to focus instead on defeating him on his own terms: at the ballot box. The new constitution required a plebiscite at the end of Pinochet’s eight years on giving him or a designated successor another eight-­year term. As 1988 approached, the other state terrorist regimes in the region—Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil—had ended, and President Ronald

20 Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy

Reagan’s initial support had waned over concerns that a rigged vote such as Pinochet had conducted twice during the dictatorship might reignite the opposition movement and result in a new leftist government. Many of Pinochet’s supporters, moreover, had come to realize that most of the formerly Marxist left had embraced European-­style social democracy and was no threat to the Chicago Boys’ economic model. For these reasons, Pinochet was forced to conduct a relatively fair election, although he harassed the opposition in a variety of ways. A broad alliance of sixteen center and left parties formed the Concertación de Partidos por el NO (Alliance of Parties for the NO), campaigned vigorously, and defeated the dictator by a margin of 55 to 43 percent. Pinochet had to be restrained by fellow junta members and supporters from canceling the result. Despite the electoral loss, the military tightly controlled the transition to civilian government. The 1980 constitution dictated that given the outcome of the plebiscite, an election should be held in 1989 and a president and Congress inaugurated on March 11, 1990, sixteen and a half years to the day after the coup that derailed Chilean democracy. Christian Democrat Patricio Aylwin, supported by the same coalition that had defeated Pinochet and been relabeled the Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia (Coalition of Parties for Democracy), won 55 percent of the vote against two right-­wing candidates. The Concertación also won control of the Chamber of Deputies, but owing to both an electoral code that skewed the vote in favor of the right and nine senators appointed by Pinochet in the forty-­seven-­member Senate, the Concertación faced certain rejection of any laws not acceptable to the right and to Pinochet himself, who had extended his commandership of the army for eight years, to 1998. This was the protected democracy that Pinochet bequeathed Chile.

State Terrorism in Argentina As in Chile, state terrorism in Argentina was a response to the threat of revolution and a means of eliminating the problems of Marxism and subversion. Accustomed to frequent coups and military governments, many Argentines welcomed the March 24, 1976, military takeover as a reprieve from escalating violence and an ineffectual government. The leaders of the new junta, army commander General Jorge Rafael Videla and navy commander Admiral Emilio Massera, initially appeared to be moderates who saved the patria from the violence and disorder that had characterized

State Terrorism in the Southern Cone 21

the inept presidency of Isabel Perón. The Buenos Aires Herald captured the prevailing sentiment: “The entire nation responded with relief. . . . This was not just another coup, but a rescue operation.”15 But in explaining the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional (Process of National Reorganization), as the commanders named their regime, Videla said somewhat ominously that the coup signified “the final closing of a historical cycle and the opening of a new one.”16 And even as they made their initial pronouncements to their compatriots, the commanders unleashed a lethal assault on civil society that quickly enveloped Argentina in fear and terror.17 At the time the military took power, the urban guerrillas had been substantially weakened. In January 1976, some two months prior to the coup, General Videla had written that the guerrillas were “absolutely impotent,” that they had “little fighting capability,” and that they were unable to “reach a military level,” although they remained capable of bombings, kidnappings, and assassinations.18 At no time after the coup were they capable of holding territory or overthrowing the government, and their ranks continued to be thinned. Yet the “dirty war” continued as the military used an increasingly fictitious war against the guerrillas as cover for a reign of terror to eliminate the revolutionary threat allegedly posed by Marxists and subversives, their supporters, and anyone who might fall under their influence. The Argentine military, however, did not follow its trans-­Andean counterpart in designing a sanitized and safe political system for a future civilian government. In Chile the coup plot was hatched at the last minute, and the man who would rule the country was a late convert. As a result, coordination was faulty, factions within the military were initially divided over the course to follow, and the severe repression during the first months of military governance was public until the DINA took it underground. In Argentina, the military commanders agreed in advance of the coup to install state terrorism to eradicate the left. Like the Chileans, they closed the Congress, appointed military governors, imposed censorship, and purged unions, universities, the courts, and other potential sources of opposition. But they had learned from the Chilean experience that open, uncontrolled state terrorism carried a price in the form of international condemnation; thus the Argentine military’s methodology of choice for destroying the left was the disappearance. The regime arbitrarily detained, tortured, exiled, and murdered individuals whose bodies were recovered, but the Argentine dirty war became synonymous with disappearances. The regime made the term “disappear” a sinister transitive verb. Since there were neither arrest records

22 Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy

nor corpses, the government enjoyed plausible deniability. Disappearance also served to intensify and prolong the general state of terror and discourage challenges to the regime. As long as one’s family member was missing rather than certified as dead, the family was neutralized, afraid that speaking out or taking action would cause its loved one’s death. In Chile state terrorism was largely directed at leaders and militants of the Communist and Socialist parties and the MIR, and most nonaffiliated people were not targeted for the most heinous human rights violations. In Argentina, broad segments of the population were subject to murder and disappearance, as definitions of subversives and enemies of the state were quite elastic. To Videla, subversives were those who embraced “ideas contrary to our western, Christian civilization,” and General Reynaldo Bignone considered them both “anti-­fatherland” and “agents of the anti-­ Christ.”19 Having dehumanized its victims, the dictatorship recognized no legal or moral constraints on its power in the war against the subversives. In the words of Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Pascarelli, “The fight in which we are engaged does not recognize moral limits; it is conducted beyond good or evil.”20 General Ibérico Saint Jean, military governor of Buenos Aires Province, once articulated his strategic understanding of the dirty war: “First we will kill all the subversives, then we will kill their collaborators, then . . . their sympathizers, then . . . those who remain indifferent; and, finally, we will kill the timid.” General Luciano Menéndez put his approach to ridding the country of subversion in quantitative terms: “We are going to have to kill 50,000 people: 25,000 subversives, 20,000 sympathizers, and we will make 5,000 mistakes.”21 Saint Jean and Menéndez’s ambitious plans may have overstated the actual reach of state terrorism in Argentina, but they offer chilling insights into the thinking that undergirded the dirty war. Under military rule Argentina was divided into large zones, smaller subzones, and minor areas. Under general orders from the top, zone, subzone, and area commanders set up task groups of between a half dozen and a dozen members of the military and police that operated semi-­ autonomously. A disappearance began with an abduction, most commonly but not always from the victim’s domicile. Abducted persons were not taken to police stations, where their detention would be a matter of public record, but to one of more than four hundred secret detention centers set up around the country whose existence could be and was consistently denied. Upon arrival at the facility, prisoners were assigned numbers and taken to torture chambers where they faced up to a week or more of physi-

State Terrorism in the Southern Cone 23

cal and psychological torture, as in the Chilean DINA’s facilities. After the periods of intense torture, victims were moved to holding areas where they normally were handcuffed and shackled in spaces so tiny they were call tubos, or tubes, and where physical and psychological abuse and degradation continued. Pregnant women were removed from the tubos as their delivery times approached. After giving birth they were separated from their babies and either killed or returned to holding areas for later disposal. The infants born in captivity were given, along with false documentation, to military families and others favored by the regime. Jews suffered disproportionately because of their overrepresentation in some of the occupations and professions the military considered hotbeds of subversion and because of the virulent anti-­Semitism within the military and the right in general. Jews accounted for less than 2 percent of the national population but 10 percent of the disappeared. According to much evidence, they suffered even greater humiliation and dehumanization than Gentiles. Prisoners were graded based on the perceived degrees of threat they might pose: “potentially dangerous,” “dangerous,” or “extremely dangerous.” Some of the so-­called potentially dangerous were sent to public prisons or freed, while others, the majority, normally faced death. The most common execution methods following the extended torture included not only being shot but also being dropped alive and drugged into the ocean from aircraft; in all cases, great pains were taken to prevent the bodies from being found. After a few bodies washed up on the Uruguayan side of the Río de la Plata, death flights went farther out over the ocean. The exact number of disappeared persons will never be known. The truth commission established after the return of democracy documented 8,960 disappearances, and subsequent additions have raised the official toll to more than 10,000. Human rights organizations estimate that 30,000 persons were disappeared. Victims included people of both sexes, all ages, a variety of occupations, and at least a dozen disabled persons, some completely paralyzed. In addition to those deemed subversives, some people were disappeared for money, as corrupt repressors forced the wealthy to sign over their homes, businesses, automobiles, and any other thing of value before being killed. The military expected to hold power indefinitely, but the regime began to unravel after four years. In 1980 the Inter-­American Commission on Human Rights conducted an on-­site investigation of disappearances, and its damning report, banned in Argentina but circulated clandestinely, demonstrated convincingly that the missing people were indeed victims

24 Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy

of a government conspiracy. A severe economic crisis followed in 1981 and with it the beginnings of overt opposition. Acting on a prior agreement, the junta dominated by Videla and Massera stepped aside in 1981, just as the Proceso began to unravel, giving way to two short-­lived successor juntas. To rally support for its faltering government, the third junta in 1982 invaded the Malvinas/Falkland Islands, claimed by Argentina but long occupied by Britain. The brief war was a disaster for Argentina; it had the opposite of the intended effect and quickly eroded any lingering support for the Proceso. Having proved itself inept at governing, managing the economy, and fighting a war, the military began a retreat to the barracks. The last of four governing juntas published a “final document” justifying its actions as patriotic service that saved the country from Marxists and subversives and granted itself amnesty. It then oversaw an election in which Raúl Alfonsín of the moderate Unión Cívica Radical (Radical Party), who promised to prosecute human rights violators, handily defeated Peronist candidate Italo Luder, who expressed support for the military’s self-­amnesty. Alfonsín and a new Congress took office on December 10, 1983, after nearly eight years of state terrorism. The state terrorist regimes in Chile and Argentina were the most extreme South American examples of the wave of repression that engulfed the region in response to the climate of revolution that spread from Cuba. Although they shared fundamental goals and characteristics, the two differed in significant ways. While causing significant collateral damage, the repression in Chile was more targeted and controlled than in Argentina; the Argentine high command, by decentralizing the execution of disappearances and murders, allowed individual task group leaders the leeway to settle personal scores and steal goods and property as well as to capture, torture, and murder “subversives” and their supporters. Given Argentina’s long experience with military rule, its military leaders paid little heed to planning an eventual return to civilian governance. Its defeat in war and hasty retreat from power with no blueprint for a transition left the Argentine military initially facing a civilian government and a human rights movement that vigorously pursued justice for the military’s human rights violations. Recognizing the anomaly of military rule in Chile, by contrast, the Chilean military not only institutionalized its rule but designed a future postmilitary Chile that would be safe to hand over to civilians. As a result of its planning, the Chilean military conducted a smooth transition to a civilian government that was initially unable to challenge the impunity left in place by the Pinochet dictatorship.

CHAPTER 2

The Construction of Impunity

Intrinsic to the transitions from dictatorships to democratically elected governments in Chile and Argentina, as in the other Latin American countries that experienced high degrees of repression, was the challenge of dealing with the human rights violations of the recent past. The governments that succeeded the military or military-­dominated regimes faced difficult choices. Victims of human rights violations, their families, and the human rights movements that had developed during the dictatorships demanded that repressors be held accountable for their actions, while the militaries, claiming that they had done their patriotic duty in defeating Marxism and subversion, demanded respect and gratitude. How far could the civilian authorities push the militaries in the pursuit of justice without generating a reaction that might endanger the fledgling democracies? Would human rights advocates accept anything less than justice in the courts? Would society at large prefer to forget and move on? These were some of the thorny questions facing the new governments in Argentina and Chile. Although the quest for justice in Argentina was temporarily successful, as the decade of the 1990s opened it appeared that these questions had been resolved definitively in favor of the former repressors in both countries. Human rights advocates persisted in pursuing justice in Argentina and changed course in Chile from fighting the dictatorship to seeking justice for its victims, but facing formidable obstacles, their efforts seemed unlikely to succeed. While impunity thus reigned in Argentina and Chile, the paths that had led to the systematic denial of justice in the two countries were sharply different.

26 Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy

In Argentina, Impunity Constructed under Democracy Disgraced by revelations of massive human rights violations, economic mismanagement, and ignominious defeat in the 1982 Malvinas/Falklands War, the military government convoked and presided over presidential and congressional elections on October 30, 1983, to launch Argentina’s transition to democracy. As the first Latin American country to emerge from a regime of extreme state terrorism, Argentina faced the challenges of transition without a blueprint. In the words of the new civilian president, Raúl Alfonsín, “We were aware that it was an unprecedented historical situation.”1 Moreover, Argentina’s past half century of dictatorships alternating with weak civilian governments was testimony to the fragility of the country’s democratic culture and a reminder of the daunting task facing the new administration. As Alfonsín put it, “It was not a matter of reconstructing a system that was functioning well until it was interrupted by authoritarianism, but of establishing new foundations for an authentic democratic system.”2 Despite the obstacles and lack of guidelines, the Alfonsín administration immediately launched a series of restorative, nonjudicial measures of transitional justice; in so doing, it set precedents that would be followed around the world in the coming decades.3 Alfonsín’s approach to transitional justice was designed to balance the demands of the human rights movement and a substantial part of the Argentine population with the military’s potential for reaction against perceived persecution. Despite its humiliation, the military was capable of disrupting the delicate process of constructing democracy with an arsenal of potential actions such as openly challenging governmental and judicial authority, staging rebellions, and threatening or even carrying out another coup. The political climate initially favored the demands of the human rights groups, but from the beginning, Alfonsín’s policies were designed to avoid unnecessarily provoking the military and putting the country’s nascent democracy in peril.4 Within days of his December 10, 1983, inauguration, Alfonsín met with human rights organizations and submitted legislation to rescind the military’s amnesty decree, which became the first law passed by the new congress; he began freeing political prisoners and drafted bills to strengthen the human rights trampled under military rule. Believing that uncovering truth about the military’s nearly eight years in power was a necessary precondition to justice and reconciliation, Alfonsín established the modern world’s first successful truth commission, the Comisión Nacional sobre

The Construction of Impunity 27

la Desaparición de Personas (CONADEP, National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons). While the military protested the commission’s formation, the president’s approach to CONADEP reflected his commitment to balance. On one hand, he selected the commission’s members because of their “firm attitude toward the defense of human rights”;5 on the other, he imposed serious limitations on the search for truth. He ordered the military to cooperate with the investigations but gave CONADEP no subpoena powers. He gave the commission just 180 days to finish its work. And while disappearance was clearly the most egregious of the human rights violations employed by the military, CONADEP’s purview excluded other widespread grave human rights violations committed between 1976 and 1983, including arbitrary detention, forced exile, torture, rape, baby stealing, and extrajudicial execution not involving disappearance.6 The commissioners elected the distinguished writer Ernesto Sábato as their president, hired staff, and began their work before the end of 1983. CONADEP opened offices in several cities to take testimony and urged the thousands who remained in exile to testify in Argentine consulates. Commission members and staff inspected a number of locations where secret detention centers had functioned, interviewed some 1,500 survivors of the centers, and visited mass burial sites. CONADEP employed a rigorous methodology, requiring incontrovertible proof of an individual’s disappearance at the hands of government agents for the person to be included in its tally. In response to their vigorous activity, CONADEP staff members were threatened, and several provincial offices were bombed.7 After receiving a three-­month extension, the commission delivered its report to the president and a summary of its findings to the media on September 20, 1984. In November it published its book-­length report under the dramatic title Nunca más (Never Again). Nunca más began with a clear allusion to the Holocaust: “Many of the episodes described here will be difficult to believe. That is because the men and women of our country have only known such horrors through chronicles from other latitudes.” It also included a condemnation by President Alfonsín of national security doctrine: “Thousands of persons were illegally deprived of their liberty, tortured, and killed as a result of the application of those methods of fighting inspired by the totalitarian Doctrine of National Security.”8 Nunca más quickly sold out and was reprinted several times to satisfy the public’s demand for knowledge of the terrorist state that had functioned largely sub rosa. Nunca más described in detail the various methods of abduction that

28 Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy

launched disappearances, some of the 340 secret detention centers it identified where victims were held and tortured, and methods of execution and disposal of bodies. It documented 8,960 disappeared persons, categorized them by age, gender, and occupation, and narrated the circumstances of selected victims’ abductions. Nunca más reported that, in addition to the relatively small number of guerrillas disappeared by the military, “there are thousands of victims who were never linked with such activity yet were subjected to horrific punishments because of their opposition to the military dictatorship, their participation in union or student struggles, for being recognized intellectuals who questioned state terrorism, or simply for being family members, friends, or for being included in the address book of someone considered subversive.”9 CONADEP research concluded that the number of disappeared was substantially higher than the 8,960 it was able to document, given the military’s refusal to cooperate, the brevity of the commission’s mandate, the lack of resources to reach the more remote areas of the country, and the inability of some victims’ relatives, particularly those of lower socioeconomic status, to overcome their fear and come forward to testify. More than an analysis of the disappearances and an accounting of the victims, Nunca más was also a counternarrative to the military’s official history of the 1976–1983 period. Through rigor in documentation and attention to detail, it provided concrete information that challenged the military’s secrecy, denial, and insistence that any deaths were the result of “excesses” in a just and patriotic war on subversion.10 For those who doubted the military version of the truth but did not grasp the overall pattern of repression, Nunca más provided an alternate understanding. And for those who supported the dirty war or had convinced themselves that it had not really happened, Nunca más raised doubts even if they did not read it. CONADEP was the first commission of its kind to complete its work and issue a report of its findings. As a result of the commission’s success in discovering and documenting the facts about disappearances and the dramatic impact that its report had in Argentina and beyond, CONADEP established the truth commission, in forms varying with local circumstances, as an essential part of transitional justice in countries going from repressive regimes to democracies and others seeking to heal divisions arising from serious domestic strife. The phrase nunca más would resonate around the world as the rallying cry for societies struggling for reconciliation following grave human rights violations. In the three decades following the establishment of CONADEP, at least thirty countries

The Construction of Impunity 29

formed truth commissions. In Latin America alone, Uruguay, Chile, El Salvador, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti, Panama, Peru, Paraguay, and eventually Brazil followed the Argentine precedent. Beyond Latin America, truth commissions were created in countries as disparate as the Solomon Islands, Sierra Leone, and Germany. The best known of these is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission established in South Africa after the collapse of apartheid. Argentina not only served as the inspiration and model for these truth commissions but also supplied personnel to advise many of them.11 A second element in the establishment of truth involved identifying the remains of thousands of disappeared persons. Beginning in 1982 and accelerating after the return of democracy, human remains were discovered in mass graves, in cemetery plots with markers bearing the designation “N/N” (no name), scattered on the ground in formerly secure areas, and in ash piles where the bodies had been incinerated. Recovery of some remains was impossible, such as those thrown into the ocean from death flights, and the silence of the perpetrators left the whereabouts of many of the disappeared a mystery. The monumental and gruesome task of identifying the remains that were recovered was facilitated by eminent U.S. forensic scientist Clyde Snow. Arriving in June 1984, Snow conducted exhumations and examinations, instructed his Argentine counterparts in the most advanced methodologies, and helped form the Equipo Argentino de Antropología Forense (Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team). As with the truth commission, the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team became the model for countries around the world that had experienced large-­scale murder and genocide. By 2012 the team had worked in forty countries on five continents, recovering and identifying remains and training local forensic scientists—a grim reminder of the barbarity of the contemporary world.12 The Argentine military had abandoned the halls of government hastily and in disgrace without being able to build effective defenses against potential prosecution in what an Argentine scholar called a “transition by collapse.”13 As a result, the successor government was able to go beyond the pioneering nonjudicial measures it had implemented, a situation unprecedented in Latin America and rare in the world. While the human rights movement sought to bring all alleged repressors of any rank to justice, Alfonsín’s approach was to try a limited number of presumed repressors in a short period in carefully orchestrated trials to minimize military backlash. The president’s plan centered on his concept of “due obedience” based on three degrees of responsibility: those who planned and oversaw

30 Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy

the repression, those who committed “excesses” in carrying out orders, and those who simply obeyed their superiors’ direct orders. Military men below the decision-­making ranks would benefit from a presumption that they had perceived their orders as legitimate. Thus in a bill he submitted to reform the Code of Military Justice, Alfonsín sought to exempt everyone outside the highest levels of responsibility from prosecution. In the Senate, however, a lawmaker—two of whose children disappeared—added a pivotal amendment. As enacted, Law 23.049 did not exempt from prosecution personnel of any rank implicated in “atrocious and aberrant acts,” which it defined as torture, rape, murder, and child stealing—all of these the stock in trade of state terrorism.14 The amendment to Law 23.049 was one of the developments that undermined Alfonsín’s plan for a Greek-­style set of cleansing trials of finite purview and duration. Another was CONADEP’s action in sending 1,087 criminal complaints, based on its investigations, to the courts. In addition, the cases filed by human rights organizations and individual victims and their families, and the judges’ willingness to accept and process the cases brought to them, left hundreds of military and police personnel subject to prosecution and began to raise tensions within the military. Despite the breaches in his plan, Alfsonín proceeded with the trial of the members of the first three juntas that ruled from 1976 to 1982. During most of 1985, Argentines were engrossed in “the trial of the century” as even more cases arrived at the courts.15 Coinciding with the work of CONADEP and the trial of the juntas, in a clear backlash against state terrorism Argentine civil society experienced a remarkable spread of human rights consciousness and culture. After their silence during the dictatorship, the media now provided extensive coverage of human rights issues. Large numbers of documentary and feature films were produced on human rights themes; the best known of these, The Official Story, explored the issue of babies stolen from their abducted and subsequently murdered mothers and adopted by regime-­ approved couples. Schools from primary level to university introduced human rights into their curricula. Schools, unions, political parties, municipalities, and provincial governments formed commissions to investigate human rights violations suffered by their constituents, commemorate the victims, and educate Argentines to prevent recurrences of repression. Several municipalities held unprecedented “ethical tribunals” to shame and protest the presence of known repressors including a medical doctor and a priest. These developments revealed broad support for the work of the human rights movement and for the causes of truth and justice.16

The Construction of Impunity 31

The trial of the juntas concluded in December 1985, and six months later more than 3,000 criminal charges had been filed by victims’ families, human rights organizations, and foreign governments against some 650 active and retired military personnel. As investigations and trials proceeded, military resistance stiffened. Officers frequently ignored the orders of civilian judges to cooperate in investigations or appear in court. Ranking officers made statements defending the dirty war and challenged civilian courts’ authority to try military men. Officers visited their jailed colleagues to show solidarity and staged ceremonies to honor military men fallen in the fight against “subversion.”17 The number of charges filed with the courts continued to grow, reaching an estimated six thousand by December 1986. Alfonsín’s plan to limit trials had clearly spun out of control. In the face of increasingly strident military challenges that threatened the government’s authority and even its survival, the president resolved to contain the proliferation of trials through a law of punto final (full stop), a statute of limitations that would set a deadline for filing new charges and reduce the tension that threatened his mission of consolidating democracy.18 The punto final proposal was widely unpopular; public opinion, the human rights organizations, and many of Alfonsín’s colleagues in the Radical Party opposed the concept and the bill. Nonetheless, the president ignored mass protests and media criticism, cited “reasons of state” for his decision, and invoked party discipline on dissident Radicals to quickly enact his bill. The punto final law of December 23, 1986, set a sixty-­day deadline for filing new charges. Many in the human rights movement were disheartened by the law that exempted so many alleged repressors from prosecution, but army commander General Héctor Ríos Ereñú embraced it, declaring that “the country will now be able to enter the long stage of profound reconciliation.”19 Merely a year after the juntas’ trial added Argentina to the exclusive club of countries that had brought former repressors to justice, the tide shifted toward impunity. Ríos Ereñú’s satisfaction with the punto final was not widely shared by his fellow officers, many of whom were enraged by hundreds of new charges filed before the statute of limitations took effect.20 Some among them resolved to stop the judicial process altogether. The next step toward that goal grew out of the Holy Week crisis of April 1987, which began with the refusal of Ernesto Barreiro, a torturer from La Perla detention center in Córdoba, to obey a judge’s order to appear in court for arraignment. While military defiance of civilian authority grew more common as the number of charges rose, in this instance it escalated into a rebellion by

32 Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy

hard-­liners at Argentina’s largest army base, the Campo de Mayo on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, who were known as carapintadas (painted faces) for the black camouflage they applied to their faces. To pressure the government to stop trials, the army command refused to quell the rebellion led by Lieutenant Colonel Aldo Rico. Answering the president’s call for a show of support for democracy and justice, hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated and thousands more surrounded the base itself. Alfonsín then dramatically arrived at the base by helicopter, held talks with the rebellious Rico, and declared victory. But the outcome was another major concession to impunity. In exchange for Rico ending the rebellion, Alfonsín submitted legislation to enact his original plan to exempt from prosecution all personnel below the command level.21 In the introduction to his “due obedience” bill Alfonsín wrote, “I know perfectly well that as a result of this law individuals who may have been the material authors of extremely grave crimes may go free. And I don’t like that.” But, he argued, “the criminal responsibility for human rights violations belongs to those who conceived the plan, with its aberrant methodology, and ordered it carried out.”22 Modifying due obedience as defined by the recently reformed Code of Military Justice, the new law enacted on June 4, 1987, established the legality of following almost all orders from superior officers by eliminating murder and torture from the list of “atrocious and aberrant acts,” narrowing the possible grounds for prosecution to theft, rape, and baby stealing. Alfonsín’s bill applied the redefined due obedience principle to personnel below the rank of colonel or its equivalent; however, under intense military pressure, the Congress reduced the pool of officers subject to prosecution to the chiefs of the security zones that the first junta had established and the heads of the security forces. The law cancelled the indictments and aborted the ongoing trials of hundreds of alleged repressors and left only about fifty subject to prosecution. The two laws established a de facto amnesty for all but a handful of the practitioners of state terrorism; however, two more Carapintada rebellions occurred in 1988, demonstrating the military’s continuing dissatisfaction and the fragility of Argentina’s new democracy.23 The 1989 presidential campaign unfolded during one of Argentina’s recurring economic crises, and the economy rather than human rights and civil-­military relations was the focus of debate. The crisis was so severe that Alfonsín turned over the presidency to his elected successor, Carlos Saúl Menem of the Partido Justicialista, or Peronist Party, six months before the end of his term. Menem, a leader of the Peronist congressional opposition in the late 1980s, had opposed the punto final and due obedi-

The Construction of Impunity 33

ence laws. As president, however, he would complete the construction of impunity begun under Alfonsín. Shortly after his inauguration, Menem announced his intention to issue pardons, setting off massive protests at home and widespread criticism abroad. Yet on October 8, 1989, he pardoned 213 military men convicted of dirty war crimes, misconduct in the Falklands/Malvinas War, or involvement in the three rebellions against the Alfonsín government. To make his case that the pardons would foster reconciliation, he also pardoned sixty-­four former guerrillas. Menem padded the list of pardoned “subversives” with the names of several disappeared persons to promote the fiction of even-­handedness.24 The following year Menem announced that he would pardon all remaining convicted military men, including the junta members. Opinion polls found overwhelming opposition to the pardons, and protesters again filled the streets and plazas. However, another orchestrated Carapintada rebellion broke out on December 3, raising the pressure for pardons. Citing the need for reconciliation and claiming moral authority from his own five years’ detention under the dictatorship, a few weeks later Menem pardoned all the former junta members as well as a number of ranking officers known for their brutality in the commission of human rights violations. He also pardoned the most prominent guerrilla leader, Mario Firmenich, and a few other civilians in an attempt to make his action appear equitable. Impunity trumped justice on December 29, 1990.25 Public statements following the pardons revealed the great divide separating Argentines. Eight human rights organizations issued a joint manifesto declaring, “We denounce as absolutely fallacious the pretension of reaching peace and civilized coexistence by denying the values upon which peace and coexistence are built: life, liberty, truth, justice—in sum, the complete respect for human rights.” The pardon, it continued, “is an affront to the universal conscience.”26 The same day, newly freed general and former president Jorge Rafael Videla released a public letter confirming his unchanged view of the Proceso. The pardoned officers, he said, “defended the nation against subversive aggression [and] prevented the establishment of a totalitarian regime.” He demanded “the vindication of the army and the restoration of military honor” and expressed his solidarity “with those who mourn the dead, wounded, and mutilated fallen in defense of the fatherland.” Videla revealed his notion of reconciliation by expressing sympathy for those killed or wounded—but not disappeared— in defense of “mistaken ideas.”27 His statement presaged the dominant narrative of the next several years. Argentina, then, reached a state of full impunity only after seven years

34 Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy

of tense contestation. During the first three years of democracy, a government tried and convicted the leading repressors of the previous regime for only the second time since the Nuremburg and Tokyo trials and pioneered the truth commission and forensic team that became standard instruments of transitional justice around the globe. The remarkable florescence of democratic and human rights culture in Argentine society was another prominent feature of those years. It was the failure to contain the trials to a few men and a few months—as done in Greece and as planned by Alfonsín—that fueled the military’s assault on justice. As the numbers of investigations, indictments, and trials soared, the military reacted and in the five years following the trial of the juntas not only reversed the justice accomplished but succeeded in establishing impunity and leaving the human rights movement in the wilderness without a compass. Yet while the effervescence of 1983–1986—the truth commission, the trials, the spread of a new consciousness in civil society—went essentially dormant after the second round of Menem’s pardons, the spark smoldered on, awaiting a dose of fuel to reignite the flame.

In Chile, Impunity Bequeathed Christian Democrat President Patricio Aylwin and a new Congress took office on March 11, 1990.28 In contrast to President Raúl Alfonsín and his administration, who six years earlier had been forced to invent the entire process, Aylwin and his allies could draw on the experiences of Argentina as well as two other neighboring countries as they navigated the complex and multifaceted questions of transitional justice. After the return of civilian government in Argentina, the Uruguayan (1973–1984) and Brazilian (1964–1985) dictatorships ended in rapid succession. In contrast to Argentina’s, the Uruguayan and Brazilian transitions were relatively quiet affairs, consistent with the historical pattern of impunity and burying the past. This was due in part to differences in the severity and extent of repression in those two countries. While their dictatorships had developed the mechanisms of state terrorism, they had applied them much more selectively than the Argentine and Chilean regimes did; the Uruguayan and Brazilian regimes employed widespread torture but murdered and disappeared relatively few. As a result, large, mobilized human rights movements did not develop in Uruguay and Brazil. Moreover, the militaries ceded power in pacted transitions conditioned on the understanding that prosecutions would not occur; in Brazil, that understanding was underpinned by a 1979 amnesty law that the military granted itself.29

The Construction of Impunity 35

Nonetheless, a threat of judicial action did arise in Uruguay, and in response the military in 1986 intimidated the Congress into enacting a law prohibiting prosecution for human rights violations during the dictatorship. In a 1989 plebiscite on the ex post facto amnesty, voters upheld the prohibition by a margin of 53 to 41 percent. In Brazil no significant threat of legal action arose, and the transition unfolded without major incident, although Catholic clergy established an extraofficial truth commission that investigated torture during the dictatorship and presented its findings in 1985 in the book Brasil: Nunca mais. Uruguay and Brazil, then, offered vastly different patterns of transition from repressive to democratic regimes from the Argentine model.30 In Chile the powerful human rights movement pushed for measures of truth and justice along the lines of those adopted in Argentina. To varying degrees, the parties of the Concertación endorsed that quest. While the Christian Democrats supported the goals of the human rights movement, the parties to their left in the coalition—the Partido Socialista (Socialist Party) and an offshoot of it, the Partido por la Democracia (PPD, Party for Democracy)—tended to be more committed to securing justice after the intense persecution they suffered during the dictatorship. However, the conditions that had allowed the prosecution of human rights violators in Argentina did not exist in Chile. In Argentina the armed forces returned to the barracks in disgrace after the Falklands/Malvinas fiasco and in the midst of an economic crisis. Having lost legitimacy both as a governing body and a fighting force, the military government issued an amnesty and a “final document” justifying the dirty war; it then surrendered power, leaving the initiative to the Alfonsín government. In Chile the challenge for the human rights movement was to pursue truth and justice within a “protected democracy” designed to guarantee military impunity. The military was proud of saving Chile from Marxism and creating an economy that many considered a model for Latin America. Far from cowering in the barracks, the Chilean military was assertive about its service to the country and active in exerting its extensive power in the political arena. Thus the possibility of achieving justice was far more limited in Chile than in Argentina’s early years of restored democracy. Pinochet had begun constructing a shield of impunity for the military, police, civilian collaborators, and himself a dozen years before the dictatorship’s end. The first step, an amnesty decree-­law of April 1978 followed the implementation of changes designed to improve the regime’s image without fundamentally altering the policies and practices it had followed since assuming power five years earlier. The changes resulted in part from pressures from regime supporters who sought to rectify the

36 Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy

international pariah status that Chile had earned as a result of its human rights practices. Pressure came also from the U.S. government. In September 1976 the DINA assassinated prominent Allende loyalist and outspoken Pinochet critic Orlando Letelier, along with his American secretary, Ronni Moffitt, on Embassy Row in Washington, D.C. Six weeks later the United States elected a president who would make the observance of human rights a central element of his foreign policy. His commitment to human rights, combined with the DINA’s transgression, led Jimmy Carter to apply strong pressure on the Pinochet regime to undertake reforms. The message, delivered by Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, was to dissolve the DINA, end the state of siege that had been in place since the coup, and move toward reestablishing civilian government.31 Anticipating the pressure that Carter would bring to bear, Pinochet released more than three hundred political prisoners shortly after the U.S. election; in June 1977, he announced that the regime held no more political prisoners—conveniently overlooking those held in DINA secret detention centers. He abolished the DINA in August 1977 and replaced it with the more benignly named Centro Nacional de Informaciones (CNI, National Information Center), which, he announced, would be exclusively an informational agency. On March 10, 1978, he lifted the state of siege that was imposed the day of the coup. Both concessions were cosmetic, as the CNI continued the DINA’s work with a new director, and the “state of exception” that replaced the state of siege differed only in detail.32 The regime could well afford these image-­enhancing moves because in December 1976 the DINA had destroyed the last of the left’s underground resistance, and by the following year the new economic model was producing results that would soon be termed “the Chilean miracle.” Thus by early 1978, with the military in total control and the revamped economy on the rise, Pinochet could anticipate smooth sailing ahead. Buoyed by these successes and anticipating that the regime’s dirty work was essentially done, Pinochet declared that “the internal commotion has been overcome” and decreed an amnesty to legally and symbolically close the book on the previous four and a half years of state terrorism.33 Decree-­law 2.191 of April 19, 1978, granted amnesty to the authors of and accessories to crimes committed throughout the duration of the state of siege—from September 11, 1973, through March 10, 1978. It applied to crimes by agents of the state and, to appear equitable, to crimes committed against the state. To avoid further eroding relations with the United States, the Letelier assassination was not amnestied.34 Pinochet’s amnesty forgave and prevented prosecution for four and a half years of grave human rights violations, the bloodiest period of the dictatorship.

The Construction of Impunity 37

The second element of the shield of impunity and the culmination of the regime’s makeover was a new constitution. Shortly after the coup Pinochet assigned legal scholars to study potential reforms of the suspended 1925 constitution, and the idea of an entirely new constitution quickly took root.35 The document that eventually emerged reflected the dictator’s determination to recast Chile thoroughly and permanently by replacing Chile’s liberal democratic political system, which had allowed Marxist parties to participate and eventually elect a president in 1970, with a new political order, Pinochet’s “protected democracy.” After years of preparation, Pinochet unveiled his proposed constitution in 1980 and submitted it to a closely controlled plebiscite on the seventh anniversary of the coup. In the run-­up to the vote, the government conducted an intense propaganda campaign while opponents of the constitution were allowed a single public forum without television coverage. The plebiscite was conducted without an electoral registry, which the military had burned shortly after seizing power. The “Constitution of Liberty,” approved by an announced 67 percent of the vote, confirmed military rule, extended Pinochet’s immense powers for eight more years, and laid out a timetable for a return to elected government. It also required a new plebiscite within eight years on the question of extending Pinochet’s or a designated successor’s rule for eight additional years. Following the plebiscite, with or without Pinochet as president, a set of governmental institutions—the “protected democracy”—would be established. Featuring the trappings of democracy, the constitution was riddled with so-­called authoritarian enclaves designed to prevent the resurrection of the left, preserve the free market, and assure impunity for Pinochet and the military.36 At the heart of the authoritarian enclaves was the military’s direct and powerful role in the new postdictatorial political order. A primary source of military political power was the Consejo de Seguridad Nacional (National Security Council), which was charged with advising the president on matters of security, an elastic concept that could include almost any issue. Its members were the three military commanders, the head of the Carabineros, the president, and three other civilians. The National Security Council was a well-­conceived and frequently used tool for allowing the military commanders to bully future presidents and keep impunity intact; in the words of an observer, “The abstract idea of the military as guardians of national security attained a highly tangible form.”37 Another source of military power was the composition of the Senate. Nine of the Senate’s thirty-­five members were to be designated or appointed directly or indirectly by Pinochet for eight-­year terms. Four of these positions were reserved for former commanders of the army,

38 Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy

navy, air force, and Carabineros, one from each branch. The presence of the former commanders not only provided a strong voice and vote for upholding impunity but, along with the other five designated senators and the electoral code (described below), guaranteed a conservative, pro-­ impunity majority in the Senate and veto power over any objectionable legislation enacted by the Chamber of Deputies. The constitution asserted military authority in yet another way. While the president appointed the commanders of the army, navy, air force, and Carabineros, the constitution prevented their removal from office during their four-­year terms. And the president’s choice of commanders was limited to a slate of the five most senior officers in each branch.38 Beyond empowering the military, the new constitution protected impunity in other ways. The Tribunal Constitucional (Constitutional Tribunal), whose mandate was to assure the constitutionality of bills introduced in Congress, was another key authoritarian enclave. It was empowered to make unappealable decisions on the constitutionality of bills at any stage of the legislative process. By virtue of its composition, the Constitutional Tribunal was certain to declare unconstitutional any legislation that might threaten the shield of impunity.39 The appointment process for positions in key governmental institutions bolstered impunity. The president appointed all judges, from the Supreme Court to the lowest level, from slates proposed by the Supreme Court; thus the judiciary could be counted on to uphold impunity. Members of the National Security Council likewise were appointed directly or indirectly by Pinochet; in addition to the four military commanders, two of the civilian members were Supreme Court appointees, one was named by the Senate, and one by the president. And in the case of the Constitutional Tribunal, the Supreme Court appointed three of its own members, the National Security Council appointed two, the Senate one, and the president one. This incestuous relationship among powerful governmental bodies meant that at the onset of civilian government, all these critical institutions would be staffed by Pinochet appointees.40 Pinochet’s advisers also inserted an ad hominem article into the constitution to ensure Pinochet’s personal impunity well into the future. Article 45 declared that any person who had served as president for a minimum of six years would receive a lifetime appointment to the Senate and, with that, the immunity from prosecution granted all sitting members of Congress. Thus at the time of his choosing, Pinochet would join the appointed and elected Senators, including four of his military colleagues, in legislating and in blocking any threatening legislation that might be enacted by the Chamber of Deputies while enjoying his lifelong impunity.

The Construction of Impunity 39

The constitution was designed to be amendment-­proof. When fully implemented with the eventual installation of a civilian government, the extremely stringent requirements for amendments would essentially prevent change. Thus following Pinochet’s defeat in the October 1988 plebiscite, in order to reduce the exaggerated authoritarianism built into the constitution, the opposition Concertación, in alliance with the more moderate-­right party, Renovación Nacional (RN), began to pressure the government to negotiate amendments prior to the installation of civilian government in March 1990. Pinochet was pushed to negotiate by his more moderate supporters who realized that in the context of the worldwide wave of democratization, very pronounced throughout Latin America, the constitution’s blatantly antidemocratic character would cast the country in an unfavorable light. Many among the moderates also felt the constitution was an unworkable compromise between authoritarianism and democracy. Further, the constitution had created an extremely powerful presidency on the assumption that Pinochet would remain in office after 1988; but with the anticipated victory of the opposition Concertación in the upcoming presidential and congressional elections, conservatives saw an opportunity to weaken presidential powers by amendments. Moreover, given the circumstances of its adoption—a plebiscite conducted without an electoral registry, real debate, or independent verification—the constitution lacked the imprimatur of a valid popular endorsement; by voting in a fairly conducted plebiscite on amendments, the Concertación and its supporters would be conferring the legitimacy the constitution lacked. Hence after months of negotiations, fifty-­four amendments were overwhelmingly approved in a plebiscite on July 30, 1989.41 The amendments reduced the constitution’s undemocratic features minimally by raising the number of elected senators from twenty-­six to thirty-­eight while retaining the nine appointed members, easing restrictions on political parties, and curbing some presidential powers. The effort to make the constitution more easily amendable likewise bore some fruit. Originally, amendment requirements varied according to the importance of the articles to the maintenance of the status quo. The most essential articles required approval by two-­thirds in both houses in two successive congresses and by the president; the least controversial required three-­ fifths in each chamber. But even after these provisions were modified in the 1989 amendments, it remained impossible to rid the constitution of its authoritarian enclaves without the collaboration of the right-­controlled Senate.42 The final stage in the construction of impunity transpired between

40 Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy

the October 1988 plebiscite and the inauguration of President Aylwin in March 1990. Aware of the Argentine military’s travails in the early Alfonsín years, Pinochet used these seventeen months to issue decree-­ laws known as the leyes de amarre (tie-­up laws) and to appoint loyalists to powerful positions to strengthen his and the military’s impunity and restrict the powers of the civilian government that would succeed him. The dictatorship had drawn up an electoral code in anticipation of the congressional elections that were to be held in 1989 regardless of the outcome of the plebiscite. Following the 1988 loss, Pinochet had the code tightened to assure electoral success for the right. Although Chile’s was not a federal system, the code strongly overrepresented rural districts, where large landowners had regained control over land and labor and thus over the rural vote after restoration of the estates dismantled by Frei’s and Allende’s agrarian reforms.43 In addition, the d’Hondt electoral system of binomial districts overrepresented the right in the Congress by requiring the party or coalition that won the first seat to take two-­thirds of the vote to win the second seat in the district. Doing so distorted the popular vote in favor of right-­wing parties and made it difficult for the Concertación to win both seats even in working-­class districts that traditionally voted left.44 Another key ley de amarre was the organic constitutional law of the armed forces, which Pinochet enacted by decree just days before Aylwin’s inauguration and which made the Chilean military essentially autonomous—a military state within the state. The military was the guarantor of the “institutional order of the Republic.” The military budget was only partially controlled by the president and Congress; at a minimum, each year’s allocation would replicate the previous year’s, adjusted to the consumer price index, while a 1985 decree-­law guaranteed that 10 percent of the sales revenue of the state’s copper conglomerate went directly to the military.45 The inner workings of the military, including education and training, most promotions, retirements, and justice, were well insulated against civilian intrusion. The laws regulating the military as well as elections and other important bodies and functions were designated “organic constitutional laws,” which were more difficult than ordinary laws to amend.46 A January 1989 decree-­law waived for the military and police the obligation of public entities to deliver their documents to the national archive. Another tie-­up law granted security of tenure to government employees, ensuring that Pinochet appointees would continue to run the public administration. And just six weeks before the newly elected Congress was

The Construction of Impunity 41

seated, Pinochet dictated a law preventing it from investigating his government or charging him and his appointees with corruption or treason.47 Pinochet did even more to cement impunity during the seventeen months between the plebiscite and Aylwin’s inauguration. He extended his commandership of the army for another eight years, to March 1998, and he could not be removed by either of the two presidents who would hold office during that period. He shuffled the army command to place die-­hard loyalists in the most powerful positions. He also moved at least 2,000 CNI personnel into army intelligence, placing them under his command. This gave him a shadow, extralegal secret police that enhanced the powers of intimidation that he would use liberally in dealing with successor governments while placing those operatives of state terrorism under the protection of military justice. Evidence of the CNI’s potentially criminal activities was destroyed, and its secret detention sites were remodeled or bulldozed. Pinochet stacked the Supreme Court by offering cash bonuses to justices over the age of seventy-­five for retiring; the seven who stepped down were replaced by younger hard-­liners upon whom he could rely to uphold the amnesty law and to limit prosecutions for crimes not covered by the amnesty, that is, those committed after March 10, 1978.48 The protected democracy designed by Pinochet’s advisers worked as intended. Direct military representation in government as well as the Constitutional Tribunal, the electoral system, obstacles to amending the constitution, the legislative structure, and Pinochet’s continuing command of the army made it impossible to enact any laws impinging on military impunity or to repeal the 1978 amnesty law, eliminate the designated senators, reform the electoral or military code, or dismantle the authoritarian security and press laws the regime left in place without the unlikely collaboration of rightist senators. The failure of several attempted reforms during the early years of civilian government confirmed the effectiveness of Pinochet’s shield of impunity.49 Perhaps surprisingly, the layers of protection designed to prevent prosecution for human rights violations did not include a new amnesty law covering the entire Pinochet dictatorship. Although human rights violations subsided after 1976 and perpetrators were granted amnesty through March 10, 1978, the regime resorted to severe repression between 1982 and 1986 to counter the rise of an active opposition triggered by the severe economic recession that began in late 1981. Pinochet and the junta discussed a new law to extend the amnesty to the end of the dictatorship in March 1990, but given the existence of two active insurgent groups whose members Pinochet refused to consider granting amnesty, it was difficult

42 Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy

to frame a law that would remotely appear even-­handed. Pinochet and his advisers may also have demurred at admitting that the repression after March 1978 reached the level of criminal acts out of concern for tarnishing Pinochet’s and the military’s image at a time when, from their perspective, they were bestowing the gifts of a (protected) democracy and a dynamic economy upon the Chilean people in an orderly, institutionalized fashion. As to acts committed after March 10, 1978, that might have been subject to prosecution, Pinochet apparently felt that he had erected sufficient guarantees to deflect any threat of judicial action.50 Having fine-­t uned the political system and the shield of impunity during his last months in office, Pinochet was well satisfied with the results. Consciously or unconsciously quoting Generalísimo Francisco Franco, who had congratulated himself for assuring the continuation of his regime after his death, Pinochet declared that everything was atado y bien atado— tied up and well tied up.51 Franco’s optimism turned out to be unfounded, as his regime was liquidated within three years. In Chile, President Aylwin and the new Congress inherited a set of institutions that from early in his dictatorship Pinochet had deemed the appropriate model for Chile and that proved somewhat more durable than the system Franco imagined would outlive him. In the common view, beginning in 1990, the Chilean political system amounted to “Pinochet without Pinochet”—a validation of the general’s optimistic pronouncement.52 By 1990, having followed very different paths, former repressors in Argentina and Chile had achieved solid, seemingly permanent impunity under elected civilian governments. While advocates of justice despaired, the commanders and the hands-­on practitioners of state terrorism could bask in the glory of having saved their patrias from Marxism and subversion, free from worry about accountability for their actions. They enjoyed their impunity, ignorant of storm clouds on the distant horizon that would grow more threatening until, a decade later, increasing numbers would find themselves facing trials for human rights violations committed during the dictatorships.

CHAPTER 3

Human Rights Advocacy

Forceful and persistent human rights advocacy was central to the erosion and collapse of impunity in Chile and Argentina. From tentative, improvised beginnings in the early stages of the state terrorist regimes, vigorous institutionalized human rights movements developed to attempt to reduce the severity and frequency of human rights violations, aid victims and their families, and document the violations that occurred. Complementing the domestic human rights movements was the international human rights lobby, a shifting constellation of actors including intergovernmental agencies, nongovernmental agencies (NGOs), governments, and individuals dedicated to the prevention of human rights violations and to bringing former repressors to justice. After the restoration of civilian government, the human rights movements in the two countries initially followed different paths. At the end of the dirty war in 1983, the Argentine movement played a pivotal role in the pursuit of truth and justice; but following the 1985 trial of the juntas, the military reaction put the human rights organizations on the defensive, and after the punto final and due obedience laws and Menem’s 1989 and 1990 pardons, they became essentially marginalized. In Chile the seemingly impenetrable shield of impunity that Pinochet had designed, combined with a sharp decline in international funding for human rights organizations, discouraged all but the most dedicated advocates. Thus much of the decade of the 1990s brought frustration and discouragement for human rights advocates in both countries, but, aided by the intervention of an increasingly potent international human rights lobby, when conditions changed late in the decade the groundwork that the movements had laid over the years began to bear fruit.

44 Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy

The Human Rights Movement in Chile The four months following the coup in Chile were characterized by open, unvarnished state terrorism, making apparent the urgent need for a defense of human rights. With virtually all the institutions of civil society disbanded or under military control, the human rights movement developed under the auspices of the only organizations capable of retaining a degree of autonomy, the churches. The dominant Roman Catholic Church became the most visible defender of human rights, but denominations representing small numbers of Chileans—Lutheran, Methodist, and other Protestant churches, the Greek Orthodox Church, and the Jewish community—also played important roles.1 Within weeks, the churches formed the Comité Nacional de Ayuda a los Refugiados (CONAR, National Committee for Aid to Refugees), also known as Committee 1, to help the thousands of leftists being hunted down to find safe havens. CONAR worked with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Red Cross, and the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration to get the persecuted into embassies and then to arrange safe conduct and passage to countries willing to accept them as refugees. Some four thousand safe conducts had been issued and another five thousand were pending by the end of October. On October 6 the churches founded Committee 2, the Comité de Cooperación para la Paz en Chile (COPACHI, Committee of Cooperation for Peace in Chile), to provide material, legal, and spiritual assistance to the persecuted and the growing numbers of unemployed and impoverished. Despite being labeled Marxist and subjected to constant regime harassment, the church-­based Committees 1 and 2 functioned for nineteen and twenty-­seven months, respectively, during the period of the most violent repression. The original ad hoc human rights groups gave rise to the two organizations that would become the core of the Chilean human rights movement. The ecumenical Fundación de Ayuda Social de las Iglesias Cristianas (FASIC, Social Aid Foundation of the Christian Churches) was founded in April 1975 and continues its work today. Under extreme pressure from the regime, the Catholic Church dissolved COPACHI at the end of 1975 and replaced it on January 1, 1976, with the Vicaría de la Solidaridad (Vicariate of Solidarity), a ministry of the Archbishopric of Santiago. In addition to these organizations and those founded later, numerous progressive religious orders and individual priests and nuns ministered to the people of the shantytowns and poor rural areas, doing every-

Human Rights Advocacy 45

thing possible to shelter them from the dual onslaught of repression and hunger, often at grave risk to their personal safety.2 The Vicaría de la Solidaridad was the most visible defender of human rights. The Chilean Catholic Church’s commitment to the defense of human rights reflected the liberalization of the hierarchy, a long process driven by domestic concerns beginning in the 1930s and by the reorientation of the universal church after 1958 under Popes John XIII and Paul VI. The Second General Conference of Latin American Bishops in Medellín, Colombia, in 1968 was a decisive event in the rise of a more active, compassionate church committed to serving the poor. While the hierarchy did not embrace liberation theology in its more progressive formulations, Chile’s bishops, not without dissent, adopted fairly progressive views on social issues by the late 1960s.3 The Vicaría de la Solidaridad was able to survive and conduct important work despite the government’s hostility to its very existence for two reasons: legally it was not an autonomous agency but an integral unit of the Archdiocese of Santiago; and Cardinal Archbishop Raúl Silva Henríquez, its founder and patron, was an astute and compassionate churchman who considered the defense of human rights a logical extension of his commitment to Chile’s poor and downtrodden. By virtue of the church’s power and prestige, the Vicaría was able to create space for its activities in defense of human rights.4 Without directly challenging military rule, the Vicaría pragmatically sought to ameliorate the regime’s worst human rights abuses, placing a high value on each torture session averted, each political prisoner freed, and each life saved. Operating in a dozen provincial dioceses as well as Santiago, it offered relief to impoverished slum dwellers and unemployed workers. The Vicaría provided a range of material, spiritual, psychological, and legal services to victims of state terrorism and their families and offered education and training in the meaning and promotion of human rights. Lawyers working with the Vicaría filed thousands of habeas corpus and other legal briefs on behalf of victims of repression. Although the courts rejected all but a handful of habeas corpus writs, the filings may have contributed to better treatment and earlier release for some detainees while creating a voluminous archive that would prove invaluable to investigations and eventually to prosecutions following the dictatorship’s end.5 The Vicaría de la Solidaridad’s bimonthly bulletin Solidaridad describing its activities provided information for international human rights efforts. To conduct its multifarious activities in support of human rights and survival, the archbishopric relied on funding from abroad, most of it

46 Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy

from western Europe and North America; between 1974 and 1979 alone, foreign sources supplied more than $56 million.6 The archbishopric promoted human rights indirectly in other ways. The Vicaría de la Solidaridad was a training ground for a large cadre of lawyers who served on its staff for varying periods and who, after leaving the organization, would continue to practice human rights law.7 In 1975 Cardinal Silva Henríquez established the Academia de Humanismo Cristiano (Academy of Christian Humanism), an institution that offered shelter and employment to dozens of purged university professors and other displaced intellectuals; under the church’s protection, the academy was able to conduct discourse and debate about the country’s past and its future. Operating within the strict limits of the regime’s tolerance for dissent while pushing the boundaries, the academy kept intellectual life alive. While the theme of human rights was not the primary focus of most of the scholars’ work, respect for human rights was at the center of the post-­Pinochet country that the academy’s personnel worked to design. Following the church’s lead, dozens of other institutes or think tanks appeared. These organizations, largely supported by foreign sources including European foundations and governments and U.S. foundations, collectively generated ideas and plans for democratic political culture, institutions, and law that would reduce the possibility of a repetition of the human rights catastrophe that Chile suffered under military rule.8 FASIC complemented the work of the Vicaría de la Solidaridad. FASIC maintained a lower profile than the Vicaría owing to its greater vulnerability. Denied legal status throughout the dictatorship, it functioned as a branch of the Methodist Church and received funding from the World Council of Churches and numerous other international sources. In addition to general human rights advocacy and aid to the poor, FASIC developed several specialized programs, among them family reunification to help families of exiles regroup abroad, services for children of the repressed, counseling for torture victims and families of the murdered and disappeared, and advocacy for political prisoners. Beginning in 1983 it played an important role in the effort to end Pinochet’s ban on exiles’ return.9 The religious-­based organizations, particularly the Vicaría de la Solidaridad, fostered the creation of specialized human rights organizations, sheltered them insofar as possible from regime persecution, and provided them moral and material support. Some groups focused on human rights in general and others on human rights education. Several were organizations of family members of victims of specific types of human rights viola-

Human Rights Advocacy 47

tions; the first of these, founded in 1975, was the Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos (AFDD, Group of Families of the Detained and Disappeared), whose mission was to determine the whereabouts of the hundreds of individuals who had been arrested and subsequently vanished. The AFDD was the most activist of the organizations, often defying the regime’s ban on public gatherings and protests. The women of AFDD became known for producing arpilleras, weavings on burlap cloth depicting aspects of the regime’s human rights violations; these were both a form of protest and a means of raising funds.10 Among the many other human rights organizations were the Agrupación de Familiares de Presos Políticos (Group of Families of Political Prisoners, 1976), Agrupación de Familiares de Ejecutados Políticos (AFEP, Group of Families of Those Executed for Political Reasons, 1978), Comité Pro Retorno de Exiliados (Committee for the Return of Exiles, 1978), Protección a la Infancia Dañada por los Estados de Emergencia (PIDEE, Protection of Children Harmed by States of Emergency, 1979), Comité de Defensa de los Derechos del Pueblo (CODEPU, Committee for the Defense of the People’s Rights, 1980), and Comisión Nacional Contra la Tortura (National Commission against Torture, 1983). Given their causes and memberships, these organizations were identified with the outlawed left. The human rights movement attained a more mainstream status when prominent Christian Democrats under the leadership of Jaime Castillo Velasco established the Comisión Chilena de Derechos Humanos (CCHDH, Chilean Human Rights Commission) in 1978, a general advocacy group that developed a large and diverse membership. By the end of the military regime there were fifteen freestanding general and specialized human rights organizations functioning in Chile and more than thirty subsidiary groups.11 The dictatorship spared no effort to minimize the impact of the human rights movement. It limited media coverage of human rights issues and organizations through censorship backed by intimidation. It denounced human rights activists as traitors and tools of an international Marxist campaign against Chile and vilified them as those who “sling mud at the fatherland, and join in the foreign conspiracy.”12 When groups challenged the ban on public demonstrations, they were forcefully dispersed; when arrested, group members normally were tortured. Regime operatives broke into the organizations’ offices, destroyed their files, and threatened, beat, and in a few cases murdered human rights activists. Despite being repressed, the human rights movement survived and grew. Its actions likely prevented even more massive human rights violations than

48 Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy

those perpetrated and, over time, contributed to eroding the omnipotence of military power.13

The Human Rights Movement in Argentina Three small human rights organizations had been established in Argentina prior to the 1976 coup. The Liga Argentina por los Derechos del Hombre (Argentine League for the Rights of Man), founded in 1937, was dedicated to defending communists from government persecution. In response to the escalation of political violence in the mid-­1970s, human rights advocates created two more organizations. The Servicio Paz y Justicia (SERPAJ, Peace and Justice Service), founded in 1974, was a branch of a religious-­based ecumenical international group whose primary focus was social justice for the poor. The Asamblea Permanente por los Derechos Humanos (APDH, Permanent Assembly for Human Rights), established three months before the coup, specialized in legal action and documentation of human rights violations, which had been rising dramatically since Juan Perón’s death in 1974. These organizations, however, were unprepared for the onslaught of state terrorism.14 Unlike its trans-­A ndean counterpart, the Argentine left could not rely on the Catholic Church to stand up for human rights. Indeed, with little dissent, the Argentine Conference of Bishops collaborated in the dirty war. Bishop Victorio Bonamín reflected the views of many of his colleagues in calling the dirty war “a struggle to defend morality, human dignity, and ultimately a struggle to defend God.”15 The church hierarchy’s embrace of state terrorism derived from its conservative tradition and its firm opposition to Marxism and Peronism. Most Argentine seminaries taught the most conservative strain of Catholicism that underpinned lay organizations such as Opus Dei and Francisco Franco’s Spanish dictatorship. In addition, the church enjoyed a privileged position as Argentina’s official religion and a substantial state subsidy for salaries and for conducting Catholic education. Military vicars, or chaplains, who were imbedded in the military institutions and thus identified with the views and missions of their martial comrades, also influenced church attitudes toward the war on the left. At the onset of the Proceso, Archbishop Adolfo Tortolo, president of the Argentine Conference of Bishops, was also head of the military vicariate.16 Mirroring the broader Argentine society, the church began to experience dissidence within its ranks by the early 1970s. A significant number

Human Rights Advocacy 49

of priests embraced liberation theology and became “third world priests” who worked with the poor, while the Argentine hierarchy was hardly affected by the renovating currents of the 1960s and 1970s and considered the progressives a challenge to the bishops’ authority and to the status quo. Thus when the military declared war on subversion, the religious hierarchy not only failed to defend human rights—it stood by while the dictatorship killed thousands of Argentines, among them numerous progressive laypeople and priests as well as two bishops.17 The complicity of the church went beyond its passivity in the face of state terrorism. A number of priests, particularly military vicars, were actively involved in the repression. Priests regularly blessed the crews who dropped prisoners from military airplanes into the ocean, assuring them that they had administered “a Christian death.”18 A former soldier testified that a priest consoled him following the murder of three detainees by saying that the killing “was necessary, that it was a patriotic act, and that God knew that it was for the good of the country.”19 The same priest, Vicar Christian von Wernich, was sentenced to life in prison in October 2007 for forty-­t wo abductions, thirty-­one counts of torture, and seven murders.20 Despite the absence of church support, several new human rights organizations appeared in Argentina within a year and a half of the coup. Dissident priests who rejected the hierarchy’s stance on human rights founded the Movimiento Ecuménico por los Derechos Humanos (Ecumenical Movement for Human Rights) in 1976. As in Chile, family members of victims began establishing organizations specific to the crimes perpetrated against their loved ones. The first of these was the Familiares de Desaparecidos y Detenidos por Razones Políticas (Family Members of the Disappeared and Detained for Political Reasons), founded in September 1976.21 The best known of the new human rights organizations was the Madres de Plaza de Mayo (Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo). On April 30, 1977, thirteen months after the coup, fourteen mothers of disappeared persons met in the Plaza de Mayo facing the presidential palace, the Casa Rosada, with the intention of petitioning junta leader and president Videla for information about their missing children. The women had initially met during their grim and desperate routine of searching for their children in police stations, hospitals, and morgues. These brave and determined women surmounted their fears and launched a movement that gradually grew into the hundreds and became one of the world’s best-­known human rights organizations.22

50 Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy

The Madres soon developed a routine of symbolic protest: wearing white scarves made to look like baby diapers to symbolize their children as well as their condition as mothers, they marched around the obelisk in the Plaza de Mayo at 3:30 on Thursday afternoons. They carried placards with the names and photographs of their children and the question, Dónde están? (Where are they?). One Madre explained the photographs: “Because people didn’t believe, it was necessary to use photos to show that our children existed.”23 The testimony of a woman’s first Thursday afternoon march captures both the Madres’ agony and their solidarity: “Like all new arrivals, they asked me who my ‘disappeared person’ was and for how long he or she had been gone. My answer was broken by sobs: ‘a daughter and my son-­in-­law . . . four months ago.’ . . . [Then] I heard their replies: ‘Three of my children a year ago’; ‘Me, a daughter, an invalid, eight months ago.’”24 The regime attempted to trivialize and marginalize the Madres by branding them the locas (crazy ones) of the Plaza de Mayo and depicting them as part of an “anti-­A rgentine campaign” that underlay any questioning of the human rights situation. Soldiers and police broke up their marches, beat and arrested them, and disappeared several members, including three of the founders, as well as more of their children. The Madres persisted despite the danger; their ranks grew, and they established chapters in at least a dozen cities, support groups abroad, and connections with foreign media. They occasionally sent delegations abroad to meet with political leaders and support groups. The Madres met briefly with Pope John Paul II during his 1980 visit to Brazil. That year also the Madres received the People’s Peace Prize, an alternative recognition for nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize.25 Women whose live or unborn grandchildren had been disappeared along with their daughters or daughters-­in-­law, and sometimes their sons or sons-­in-­law as well, founded another key human rights organization, the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo) in October 1977. Recognizing that their daughters and daughters-­in-­law were probably dead, the women focused on searching for their potentially surviving grandchildren who, in many cases, had been given to military or right-­wing families for adoption. The Abuelas became one of the most active and widely recognized organizations in the expanding universe of Argentine human rights organizations.26 Another important addition to that universe was the Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS, Center for Legal and Social Studies), an organization dedicated to legal action and documentation. CELS was

Human Rights Advocacy 51

founded in 1979 by lawyer Emilio Mignone, whose daughter had been disappeared. Having worked at the Organization of American States (OAS) in Washington, D.C., during the 1960s, Mignone used his international connections to promote cooperation among domestic and international human rights advocates. CELS conducted research, issued publications, and provided legal aid to families of the disappeared. As did the Vicaría in Chile, CELS attracted a number of volunteer lawyers who pushed the limits of regime tolerance by filing thousands of writs of habeas corpus; although only one writ was accepted during the Proceso, the practice of submitting them resulted in a vast archive of documentation that along with information supplied by the APDH provided evidence for investigations and trials following the dictatorship’s end.27 The military regime remained unfazed by the growing pressures for improving human rights. Two years into the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional, a large segment of the population supported or at least tolerated the government and its mission. Argentines were enjoying an economic boomlet, and the guerrillas’ defeat had restored tranquility except among those considered subversives, whom the regime continued to exterminate. The Madison Avenue public relations giant Burson Marsteller, hired by the junta six months after the coup, planted favorable information about Argentina in world media to offset growing suspicions about the human rights situation. Despite its unflagging efforts, the human rights movement was unable to curtail the severity of the repression on its own.28

International Human Rights Advocacy As of September 11, 1973, human rights in Chile were the subject of global concern as news and images of the extreme brutality of the repression circulated worldwide. Within days, Amnesty International and the International Commission of Jurists requested UN intervention to save lives, the International Red Cross sent an inspection team, and UN and European refugee agencies arrived to protect and evacuate Allende supporters. In October the executive secretary of the Inter-­American Commission on Human Rights, a delegation from Amnesty International, and several other groups of lawyers and human rights advocates made visits to inspect the human rights situation before the military regime cut off access. After much pressuring, the military government allowed the Inter-­American Commission on Human Rights to visit in July and August 1974; during the visit its personnel received 575 denunciations of human rights violations.

52 Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy

Although denied permission for a subsequent visit, the Inter-­American Commission produced critical reports in 1976 and 1977 based on information received and interviews with exiles. In response to this negative publicity, the junta established the Dirección de Información Exterior (Foreign Information Directorate), which like its Argentine counterpart contracted with U.S. public relations firms to acquire favorable coverage in foreign media.29 The international response to Chilean state terrorism was so powerful that it brought about profound changes in international human rights advocacy. The reaction was based in part on the nature of the overthrown government. Allende was popular in many quarters, and his experimental democratic road to socialism was widely admired. The brutality of the repression in a country with a long history of democratic governance as well as the death of Allende galvanized people, organizations, and governments around the world.30 The Chilean coup and repression essentially created the human rights movement in the United States. While the Nixon administration embraced the new regime and renewed aid and loans it had cut to undermine Allende, the U.S. Congress discussed human rights in Chile within a week of the coup, held full-­scale hearings in December 1973, and later adopted guidelines on human rights in U.S. foreign policy that would inform President Jimmy Carter’s policies. Membership in the U.S. section of Amnesty International grew from three thousand to fifty thousand from 1974 through 1976. An influential new voice for defending human rights in Latin America, the Washington Office on Latin America, was founded in 1974, and a coalition of groups established the Human Rights Working Group in January 1976.31 By 1977, after the establishment of the Argentine state terrorist regime heightened concern about human rights in Latin America, an observer noted that human rights organizations focused on Latin America had become “one of the largest, most active, and most visible foreign policy lobbying forces in Washington.”32 The following year, the U.S.-­based Human Rights Watch and the influential journal Human Rights Quarterly were founded. The European response to state terrorism in Chile was even stronger than that in the United States. While the U.S. government supported the new regime from the day of the coup, several western European governments opened their embassies to shelter the persecuted and arrange safe conduct and asylum for thousands of people branded as enemies of the state. Europeans formed hundreds of solidarity committees and collaborated with the large numbers of exiles who soon arrived on their shores in

Human Rights Advocacy 53

an attempt to undermine the dictatorship from afar. Several governments, political parties, and NGOs financially supported the work of the Vicaría and other human rights organizations, think tanks, and exiles to restore democracy and human rights, and some governments pressured the military regime directly and through international agencies. The European reaction to the Chilean and later the Argentine situation contributed importantly to the development of an activist international human rights lobby.33 The Chilean coup and its aftermath also changed the way the UN dealt with human rights. Member states’ reluctance to allow outside interference concerning the treatment of their own citizens compelled the UN before 1973 to employ arcane, confidential procedures that typically produced little or no publicity about governments’ human rights violations and no corrective action. The UN consistently condemned only two governments for gross human rights violations: South Africa for apartheid and Israel for treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories. Governments that routinely violated their citizens’ human rights for political reasons, such as the dictatorship of Suharto in Indonesia (1965–1998), the colonels in Greece (1967–1974), and in Latin America the regime of Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay (1954–1989), François (Papa Doc) Duvalier in Haiti (1957–1971), and others, had escaped serious scrutiny and sanctions.34 This hands-­off posture changed with the Chilean situation when for the first time the UN recognized arbitrary mass detention, torture, and murder as gross human rights violations and sidestepped its rules to make the repression in Chile a very public issue. In 1974 the UN Human Rights Commission invited Hortensia Bussi, Salvador Allende’s widow, to address it and established the Ad Hoc Working Group on Chile; the same year, the General Assembly issued the first of what would become annual condemnations of the dictatorship. In 1975 it issued the UN’s first declaration against torture in response to the Chilean situation. Three years later the Human Rights Commission established a special trust fund for Chilean victims of torture and sent a delegation to Chile to conduct its first-­ever on-­site investigation. Following that visit, the UN replaced its working group with a special rapporteur, a position it renewed until 1990. In another precedent-­setting action it appointed a rapporteur to investigate disappearances in Chile. The UN’s active involvement with human rights in Chile not only set precedents for the organization’s future course but helped keep Chile in the international spotlight for the duration of the dictatorship.35

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The international human rights organizations’ initial response to the Argentine junta was muted in comparison to their reaction to the Pinochet regime for several reasons. While Chile had a long democratic tradition, Argentina, by contrast, having experienced nine successful military coups between 1930 and 1976, was accustomed to military rule; the 1976 coup had overthrown an incompetent, corrupt, unpopular regime; and the Argentine military’s tactic of disappearance, combined with the presence of a serious though waning urban guerrilla war, made reality difficult to decipher and disclaimers plausible. The Argentine foreign ministry used assiduous diplomatic maneuvering to keep the UN Human Rights Commission at bay, in marked contrast to the Pinochet regime’s failure in that area. These factors, combined with the collaboration of church, judiciary, and media, initially shielded Argentina from the full force of the emerging international human rights lobby. Argentina’s relations with the USSR were also a factor. The two countries had a profitable trade relationship, and Argentina’s Communist Party was minuscule while Chile’s was Latin America’s most powerful outside of Cuba. Thus the Soviet Union had little stake in Argentine politics compared to Chilean politics. As a result, the USSR did not marshal its allies, and in contrast to the reaction against Chile, an anti-­A rgentine bloc did not develop in the UN.36 Despite their less hostile reaction, the international human rights NGOs took note of the Argentine situation, increased their monitoring, and released damning reports. The governments of Spain, Italy, and several other countries protested the disappearance of their citizens, while the burgeoning Argentine exile population spread news about human rights violations. The UN General Assembly issued a statement of concern about disappearances in 1978 without naming specific countries.37 The most decisive international pressure on the Argentine junta to moderate its human rights violations came from an unlikely source: the U.S. government. President Jimmy Carter sharply reversed the Nixon administration’s stance on human rights and its support of repressive regimes. Carter was inaugurated ten months after the coup and made Argentina a priority test of his human rights–based foreign policy. He dispatched high-­level personnel to Argentina including Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who delivered to President Videla a list of 7,500 names of persons reported to have disappeared. The U.S. Congress prohibited military sales, aid, and loans to Argentina, and the Carter administration consistently voted against Argentine requests for loans from international financial institutions.38 In 1978 Carter changed course and approved funding for a major dam

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project that was a high priority for the junta; the quid pro quo was the Argentine government’s authorization of an on-­site visit by the Inter-­ American Commission on Human Rights. Prior to the visit the junta destroyed documents, moved prisoners, closed some secret detention centers, and warned the human rights organizations against collaborating with the commission. During two weeks in September 1979 the commission’s delegation met with government officials and a variety of interest groups and visited several legal prisons—but, of course, not the secret detention centers. The delegation announced through the media that it would hear denunciations of individual cases of human rights violations; despite the pervasive climate of fear in the country, 4,153 people in four cities availed themselves of this opportunity, filing 5,580 complaints. Banned in Argentina, the commission’s highly damning report was smuggled in and widely circulated; it had the desired results of decreased repression and a virtual halt to disappearances while raising the profile of the commission.39 Its intervention in Argentina underscored the relevance of the Inter-­ American Commission on Human Rights. Founded by the OAS in 1960, a year after Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba, it was initially considered, in the words of a member, an “anti-­communist gentlemen’s club.”40 Like the UN, it began to change with the Chilean coup. In the report on its 1974 on-­site visit to Chile, the commission not only described conditions but called for the perpetrators of human rights violations to be tried “by regular judicial officials of Chile in accordance with the relevant provisions of Chilean law,” a notion clearly ahead of its time.41 With financial and moral support from the Carter administration and members committed to strengthening human rights, the commission in the 1970s became more than the “club” of the previous decade. In response primarily to state terrorism in Chile and Argentina, the commission’s active caseload rose dramatically from some fifty cases in early 1973 to more than seven thousand in 1980. The commission formed the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearance in 1980. In the same year, the OAS reflected a growing commitment to human rights by creating the Inter-­American Institute of Human Rights to educate judges and law enforcement personnel on human rights and particularly by establishing the Inter-­American Court of Human Rights in San José, Costa Rica.42 The heightened international attention to human rights originated with the Chilean coup and intensified with revelations from Argentina, and other developments deepened the resolve of international human rights advocates to push for enforcement powers. Among these events were the Khmer Rouge genocide of some two million people in Cam-

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bodia, the brutal civil and international wars in Africa, the murderous scorched-­earth practice in El Salvador, and the genocide of Mayan Indians in Guatemala. These and other atrocities led to a proliferation of international human rights treaties and the strengthening of the international human rights lobby.

Human Rights Advocacy under Civilian Governments With the transitions to democracy, the human rights movements’ agendas changed from ending human rights violations and the dictatorships themselves to seeking justice for the crimes of the past. In Argentina the substantial progress made toward justice after 1983 was reversed from 1986 to 1990. With the establishment of impunity in Argentina and the continuation of impunity under civilian government in Chile, the human rights movements faced similar challenges in their quest for accountability. The greatest of these was the widely held sense that achieving justice in the courts was all but impossible. In Argentina there was no apparent legal remedy to the presidential pardons, and Menem’s commitment to burying the past and his authoritarian rule seemed to assure that the punto final and due obedience laws would not be repealed. In Chile the 1978 amnesty law and the judiciary Pinochet left in place appeared to permanently close the door to accountability. Moreover, the militaries continued to exercise power, usually behind the scenes in Argentina and openly and legally in Chile, and they were firmly committed to preserving their impunity. A common view in Chile, Argentina, and abroad was that the human rights movements had been formed to fight human rights violations and aid the victims. With the dictatorships’ end and no path to justice discernible in either country, the movements’ role was unclear. Most of the foreign funding agents, apparently believing that the human rights organizations’ mission had been accomplished, reduced or terminated their financial support.43 Public indifference and the lasting fear that state terrorism instills were other problems facing the human rights movements. Despite the widespread human rights violations, the great majority of both countries’ citizens did not have family members or close friends killed or disappeared, and most had not been arrested or tortured; thus they had no personal stake in the pursuit of justice. Rural and small-­town people and the poor, with notable exceptions such as the AFDD in Chile and some of the Madres and Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, were often

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neutralized by the continuing fear resulting from state terrorism; even if they had been victimized or lost family members or friends, they tended to grieve in silence rather than actively embrace the cause of justice. With the passage of time and the onset of “issue fatigue,” large segments of the populations could even turn against the human rights movements, whose demands and shrill voices were unwelcome reminders of times best forgotten and obstacles to the easy solution of closing the book on a difficult period and getting on with individual lives and national priorities.44 The human rights movements faced other challenges as well. Substantial numbers of citizens in both countries had supported the repression out of the conviction that the perceived threats to their way of life posed by Cuban-­inspired leftists fully justified a war on subversion; rather than supporting the struggle against impunity, they were grateful to the militaries for having saved the countries from Marxism. Pluralistic politics sometimes conflicted with justice; even the political parties most sympathetic to victims and intent on holding the former repressors accountable had multiple agendas, justice being one among them. And lacking the common enemy that had united them under state terrorism, the human rights movements and individual organizations sometimes split over goals and strategy, thereby losing their cohesiveness and diluting their voices. The Madres de Plaza de Mayo, for example, split in 1986 over strategies for pursuing their cause under civilian government; the dissident group became the Madres de Plaza de Mayo–Línea Fundadora (Founding Line). In Chile the human rights movement experienced serious internal tensions over participation in the Mesa de Diálogo (Roundtable), a panel formed in 1999 to resolve the issue of the disappeared.45 The restoration of civilian government in Argentina in December 1983 found the domestic human rights movement poised to push for both truth and justice. The Madres and Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, CELS, and other organizations comprising the movement pressured the Alfonsín administration for the maximum investigation and prosecution of the military regime’s operatives. The human rights movement criticized the creation of CONADEP, preferring that Congress, with its subpoena powers and greater resources, conduct the investigations into the crimes committed under military rule. Many in the movement objected to Alfonsín’s plan to accomplish justice through exemplary trials of selected military leaders to bring closure to the period of state terrorism. They supported the 1985 trial of the juntas while also favoring unfettered and open-­ended prosecutions of all human rights violators—intellectual authors and commanders as well as torturers and members of the “task groups” that captured indi-

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viduals who subsequently disappeared. Ironically, the human rights movement’s very success—the six thousand cases brought to the courts by the end of 1986—triggered the military reaction that resulted in the punto final and due obedience laws and Menem’s pardons, undoing the justice done and creating a seemingly impenetrable barrier to future justice.46 Following the second round of pardons and the establishment of impunity, President Menem responded to the hard-­line Madres’ relentless opposition to the pardons with a campaign of repression designed to break the organization. The Madres persisted in the face of death threats, destruction of their office and files, and a lawsuit against their leader. The Abuelas pursued their labor of identifying abducted babies, and CELS and APDH worked to find legal remedies to the reigning impunity. Yet the subject of justice for human rights crimes essentially disappeared from the news and the public consciousness. Besides the seemingly insurmountable obstacle to justice posed by pardons that could not be undone by legislation, Menem fortified impunity by expanding the Supreme Court and packing it with cronies. Meanwhile, an economic boom enhanced the president’s popularity and diverted attention from the issue of justice.47 Other factors were at work as well in the human rights movement’s decline. Prospects for justice received a blow in January 1989, prior to the first round of pardons, when a previously unknown guerrilla group called Movimiento Todos por la Patria (All for the Fatherland Movement) attacked La Tablada army base, outside of Buenos Aires, leaving at least forty dead and one hundred injured. This stark reminder of 1970s guerrilla violence, combined with the revelation that the group’s leader was a lawyer who had worked for CELS, revived the military’s and the right’s old suspicions of links between human rights organizations and leftist terrorism. A Buenos Aires Herald editorial stated, “La Tablada proved what they [the right] had said [all] along: that the human rights movement was but a cover-­up for obscure subversive conspiracies and their members were bloodthirsty terrorists in disguise. . . . It will now be much more difficult for those of us who believe no person under any circumstance can be justifiably tortured or murdered to make our point.”48 The La Tablada incident deeply affected public opinion to the detriment of the human rights movement and the cause of justice. Having dashed hopes for justice, the Menem government offered reparations for victims of human rights violations and their families. This resulted from pressure by the Inter-­American Court of Human Rights to settle cases brought to it as well as from Menem’s view that reparations would aid in his quest to bury the past. Reparations went first to some

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eleven thousand former political prisoners and those released from prison on condition of going into exile. Only in 1994 did the surviving family members of the disappeared or murdered receive an offer of reparations. Reparations for the disappeared was a very controversial issue. The original Madres group adamantly opposed financial compensation, arguing that “what must be remedied with justice cannot be remedied with money. No one is going to put a price on the lives of our children.”49 Menem’s reparations program not only divided the human rights movement but further embedded the sense of finality that had settled in with the pardons, strengthening the common view that the past was over, that there was no sense in continuing a useless struggle to overcome impunity.50 In Chile the human rights movement suffered a major decline in international funding as well as in membership, activism, and public support in the years following the return of civilian government. An observer noted that the human rights organizations “have been weak, underfunded, and minimally staffed; they have garnered low levels of popular enthusiasm and been practically invisible as agenda setters or influential voices in Chilean society.”51 Novelist Isabel Allende, the late president’s cousin, confirmed the marginalization of the human rights issue during a 1994 visit to her homeland. “Everyone in Chile,” she wrote, was “long accustomed to the idea that he [Pinochet] was untouchable.” Therefore, “except for the victims of repression, their families, and a few organizations that kept a watch out for human rights violations, no one spoke the words disappeared or torture aloud.”52 While most Chileans did not actively support the human rights movement, there was nonetheless a reservoir of passive support for its goals. Opinion polls conducted in July and August 1995 found strong majority support for investigations of and even prosecutions for human rights violations.53 A primary factor in the decline of the Chilean human rights movement was the very daunting nature of the task it faced. Although President Aylwin campaigned on the revocation of the 1978 amnesty law, continuing military power and the nature of the protected democracy made that impossible. Aylwin considered rerooting and nurturing Chile’s renascent democracy his first priority, and he asserted that directly challenging the military would jeopardize his chances of succeeding. He summed up his approach by promising to pursue justice en la medida de lo posible (to the extent possible), a phrase that disappointed human rights activists. Thus he submitted no bill to overturn the amnesty and discouraged his coalition partners in Congress from doing so.54 The most influential of Chile’s human rights organizations, the Vicaría

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de la Solidaridad, ceased its advocacy work in 1992 and became the Fundación de Documentación y Archivo de la Vicaría de la Solidaridad (FUNVISOL, Foundation of Documentation and Archive of the Vicaría de la Solidaridad), an archive and research center valuable to human rights lawyers and victims and their families for its large collection of legal documents and personal testimonies. FASIC and CODEPU took over the Vicaría de la Solidaridad’s legal caseload, but with their own funding problems they were unable to represent all the clients they inherited. The AFDD lost its home in the Vicaría and moved to FASIC headquarters before obtaining its own space eight years later. The Comisión Chilena de Derechos Humanos, a major component of the movement, closed its regional offices and worked with a reduced staff in Santiago. Other organizations entered periods of decline and contracted, splintered, or went out of existence.55 With the path to justice in the courts blocked, the Aylwin administration turned energetically to nonjudicial measures of restorative transitional justice: a truth commission, memorials, acts designed to restore victims’ dignity, and a program of material reparations. These actions may have moved segments of Chilean society toward closure as intended, but to the most aggrieved group of victims, the families of the disappeared, they offered little or no solace. As the hard-­line Madres in Argentina did not waver in demanding justice for their disappeared children, the AFDD and other organizations of victims’ families demanded both truth and justice for the nearly 1,200 Chileans who remained disappeared past the end of the dictatorship. In the face of Aylwin’s refusal to challenge the amnesty law, AFDD president Viviana Díaz expressed her and the organization’s disillusionment: “We hoped that with its [the dictatorship’s] end and the arrival of democracy, everything would be easier for us. We thought we would find our family members and that justice would be done.”56 The AFDD returned to its confrontational tactics now free of the constraints of dictatorship. It held vigils, demonstrations, and marches, including simultaneous treks in 1992 from the northern and southern extremities of the country, Arica and Punta Arenas, to Santiago.57 The AFDD failed to persuade Aylwin and the Congress to contest the amnesty law but was instrumental in the rejection of two bills to establish an Argentine-­style punto final, or statute of limitations, for cases of disappearance. In 1993, at a time of unusually high tension between the government and the military, Aylwin made a bid to close the very contentious issue of the disappeared and thus reduce the level of civil-­military conflict. He submitted a bill, dubbed “the Aylwin Law,” to expedite judicial investi-

Human Rights Advocacy 61

gations into the disappeared and guarantee the anonymity of those implicated in the cases. Once the facts were established, the cases would be closed and the perpetrators exonerated in accordance with the 1978 amnesty law. Families of the disappeared would presumably be consoled with knowledge of the circumstances of their loved ones’ deaths and perhaps some remains to bury.58 Incensed at the attempt to permanently close the door to justice for their disappeared family members, the AFDD, supported by other human rights organizations including CODEPU, held demonstrations and hunger strikes, and protesters chained themselves to the congressional building in Valparaíso. The AFDD’s objections resonated especially with the Socialist Party and Partido por la Democracia members of the Concertación majority in the Chamber of Deputies, legislators who had suffered heavy repression under the dictatorship. Facing the human rights organizations’ opposition and that of an essential element of his coalition, Aylwin withdrew his bill after a month.59 In 1995 Aylwin’s successor, President Eduardo Frei Ruiz-­Tagle, introduced another measure that human rights advocates interpreted as a punto final, this time offering amnesty in exchange for information on the disappeared and institutional reforms to democratize the political system. Again the AFDD and allied organizations were prominent in the defeat of a bill that would put justice permanently out of reach. Largely because of their energetic and successful opposition, the two attempts to trade truth for justice failed.60 Thus a few years later, when changed circumstances opened the door to prosecutions, Chilean human rights advocates did not have to face the daunting challenge of asking judges to undo dozens or hundreds of individual amnesties that would have been legally granted to repressors if Aylwin’s or Frei’s initiatives had prospered. Though weakened to the point of marginalization after 1990, the Chilean and Argentine human rights movements persisted. Despite declining numbers and funding, the weakening of some organizations, and the demise of others, the movements retained sufficient membership, organization, support, and resolve to keep the issue of justice alive when impunity appeared unassailable. They were abetted in this endeavor by an ever more activist and powerful international human rights lobby. The culture of respect for human rights that the movements had promoted during the struggle against state terrorism, though hardly discernible during the early period of entrenched impunity, would survive to resurface following the occurrence of precipitating events in both countries.

CHAPTER 4

The Changing Legal Environment, Domestic and International

One of the primary reasons for the erosion and eventual collapse of impunity in Chile and Argentina was the profound change in the legal environment, both domestic and international, between the mid-­1970s and the early 2000s. Under state terrorism, the Chilean and Argentine judiciaries played critical roles in enabling the repression. Early in the new millennium, however, the tables turned, and both countries’ judiciaries were setting international precedents by indicting, trying, convicting, and sentencing the same human rights violators whose crimes they earlier ignored or justified. During the state terrorist regimes the domestic legal environments were shaped and controlled by the dictatorships. The judiciaries collaborated in the regimes’ agendas of repression, consistently rebuffing human rights organizations’ and lawyers’ attempts to defend individuals and groups against state agents. Upon the restoration of democracy in 1983 the legal environment in Argentina changed dramatically as judges embraced democracy and the new climate of human rights promotion. After the enactment of the punto final and due obedience laws and Menem’s pardons, the legal environment changed again, given the seeming futility of trying to overcome the obstacles to prosecuting former repressors. The legal environment in Chile, by contrast, changed very little following restoration of civilian government because of steps Pinochet had taken to construct impunity. Human rights lawyers and organizations pressed insistently for prosecution of human rights violators, but the Chilean judiciary continued to act as it had throughout the dictatorship, strictly enforcing the 1978 amnesty law and upholding impunity in a variety of other ways. Thus advocates of justice in Argentina and Chile were thwarted as the 1990s began and would remain so through most of the decade.

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Frustrated by the overwhelming obstacles to justice, lawyers and human rights organizations began to consider ways to introduce international human rights law and jurisprudence into their domestic legal systems. At the time of the institutionalization of state terrorism—1973 in Chile, 1976 in Argentina—international human rights were more concept than reality. The covenant that would commit governments to protect the basic rights spelled out in the 1948 American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, the foundational OAS document on human rights, had not obtained sufficient ratifications to enter into force. Ironically, the UN covenant enabling the civil and political rights specified in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights took effect on March 23, 1976— the day before the Argentine coup. The UN and inter-­American monitoring agencies were incomplete or dormant, while the primary human rights NGO, Amnesty International, was relatively new and untested. By the 1990s a growing number of intergovernmental agencies, NGOs, and other actors had coalesced into an increasingly effective international human rights lobby. International human rights law had expanded exponentially with the adoption of new treaties, covenants, and protocols, and jurisprudence had been transformed from essentially passive to activist as two new principles became more widely accepted in the 1990s: the invalidity of amnesties for crimes against humanity and universal jurisdiction over the same crimes. For Chilean and Argentine advocates of justice facing deeply entrenched impunity, international law appeared to hold greater promise than domestic law.

The Judiciaries under State Terrorism The collaboration of the judiciary greatly facilitated the assault on human rights under the Pinochet regime. Although it suppressed or took control of nearly all potentially independent institutions of government and civil society, the military left the court system intact, affirming early in the dictatorship that “the powers of the judicial branch [remain] fully in force.”1 Despite the regime’s proclamation of judicial independence, two aspects of the legal environment gave the DINA and its collaborators free rein. Under the state of siege, the military justice system expanded its authority and purview, infringing on the civilian courts’ normal jurisdiction, and the civilian courts turned a blind eye to the suppression of human rights.2 From the Chilean Supreme Court down, judges consistently refused to intervene to stop the repression perpetrated by state agents. When pre-

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sented with habeas corpus petitions related to disappearances, upon which the law required them to act within twenty-­four hours, judges simply accepted the word of security forces that the individual named in the writ was not under detention; when the authorities admitted to having the individual under arrest, judges accepted the official version of events, approving the arrest. Of the nearly nine thousand habeas corpus petitions filed by the Catholic Vicaría de la Solidaridad, only a handful were accepted, most of them after 1984. When confronted with incontrovertible evidence of crimes, such as the case of fifteen campesinos’ bodies found in an abandoned mine at Lonquén in 1978, judges declared themselves incompetent and referred the cases to military justice, with predictable results. The Chilean National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation, established under the civilian government that succeeded Pinochet, condemned the judiciary for “the weakness and lack of vigor on the part of many judges in fully carrying out their obligation to assure that the essential rights of persons are truly respected.”3 Several factors led Chilean judges, heirs to a well-­respected legal tradition with a solid reputation for integrity and a history of independence from political pressures, to aid the regime in suppressing human rights. The Supreme Court had been involved in bitter battles with Allende over executive powers and property rights; as a result, most justices welcomed the coup and willingly cooperated with the military. The Supreme Court controlled the career prospects of lower-­court judges in a rigidly hierarchical and authoritarian system, a relationship that throttled dissent at the lower levels. Legal training in Chile emphasized literal interpretation of the law, and having embraced the military junta as the legitimate government, judges did not question the decree-­laws the military government issued; the adoption of Pinochet’s constitution in 1980 erased any lingering doubts about the validity of governance by decree. Finally, in the words of a repentant former prosecutor for the dictatorship, “The country was full of hatred. We all became part of it.”4 During the 1976–1983 Proceso, the Argentine courts’ behavior was similar to that of their Chilean counterparts. While the Chilean judiciary had not served under authoritarian governments since a brief spell in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Argentines had experienced nine successful military coups between 1930 and 1976 and been subject to states of emergency for half of that period. Even civilian governments including that of Juan D. Perón (1946–1955) employed repressive methods that suppressed human rights.5 Thus the courts became accustomed to working under de facto authoritarian regimes and to the widespread practice

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of human rights abuses such as police violence and torture. Nonetheless, upon seizing power the junta snuffed out potential judicial dissidence by removing justices of Argentina’s Supreme Court, as well as judges in some federal appellate and provincial superior courts, and requiring continuing and newly appointed judges “to swear loyalty to the laws and objectives of the ‘Proceso’ led by the military junta.”6 The purge of the judiciary enabled the military government to operate without legal constraints. Thus it was able to arbitrarily arrest and torture unknown thousands of people and carry out its preferred method of eliminating opponents and potential dissidents, the disappearance, at will. Like those in Chile, Argentine judges also denied almost all writs of habeas corpus, declared themselves incompetent in many cases, and acquiesced in the expansion of the realm of military justice. While the Pinochet regime typically harassed human rights lawyers, occasionally meting out harsher treatment, the Argentine regime did not hesitate to eliminate them. A lawyers association estimated that 23 were killed outright, 109 disappeared, and unknown numbers imprisoned and driven into exile. The dangers to lawyers made it extremely difficult for families to secure legal representation except through the human rights organizations. The unfolding realization that the legal system shielded the practitioners of state terrorism, that there was absolutely no recourse in the law, exacerbated the sense of fear and dread that enveloped Argentine society. Nunca más indicted the judiciary for failing to protect citizens: “The judiciary, which should have acted as a brake on the prevailing absolutism, became in fact a simulacrum of the judicial function.”7

Argentina under Restored Democracy Upon the restoration of civilian government in late 1983, President Al‑ fonsín immediately moved to reform the legal system. He introduced legislation to abolish the death penalty, make torture a capital offense, and strengthen habeas corpus. Recognizing the growing importance of international human rights law and its lobby, he moved to secure ratification of several UN and inter-­American treaties and conventions.8 Despite a record of compliance with the dictatorship, a substantial part of the Argentine judiciary adapted quickly to the demands of the newly installed democracy and of public opinion. The about-­face was facilitated by the first act of the reconstituted Argentine Congress: the repeal of the military government’s self-­amnesty. As a result, in contrast to their

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Chilean counterparts, Argentine judges faced no legal impediment to investigating and prosecuting cases of human rights violations. The atrocities brought to light by CONADEP and its book of horrors, Nunca más, as well as its transmission of more than a thousand criminal cases to the courts, the escalating demands of the human rights movement for justice, and the rise of human rights consciousness and culture throughout civil society in reaction to the Proceso brought pressure on judges to act. A desire to make amends for their prior behavior and to affirm judicial independence in the new democracy also motivated judges to change their stripes.9 A keen observer of Argentine politics writes that judges were “fearful of going down in history as those responsible for the impunity of the authors of extremely grave human rights violations in the most tragic period in Argentine history.”10 There was perhaps no greater stimulus to the transformation of the Argentine legal environment than the trial of the juntas, which Alfonsín announced as one of his first initiatives. This involved the generals and admirals who constituted the first three juntas that ruled from 1976 to 1982; members of the fourth junta who had orchestrated the election that returned Argentina to civilian governance were not prosecuted. The trial of the juntas was the centerpiece of Alfonsín’s plan to conduct exemplary trials limited to ranking officers in positions of command in order to, in his words, break Argentina’s “historic cycle of impunity.” Prosecuting the thousands of military and police personnel involved in the repression, Alfonsín later reflected, “would have placed the whole process of transition at serious risk.”11 He also said that in the interest of prudence the entire judicial process should be as brief as possible. Given the gravity of the recent human rights violations, leaving military justice in charge of all alleged crimes committed by military personnel was unacceptable to the public and the president. Yet following his balanced approach, Alfonsín wanted to offer the military an opportunity to clean its own house. The compromise was to leave jurisdiction in the first instance in the ranking military court, the Consejo Supremo (Supreme Council), while establishing an automatic appeal of military decisions in civilian courts. By the February 1984 law that reformed military justice, the Supreme Council was given 180 days to complete each trial; if it failed to meet this requirement or engaged in “negligence or unjustifiable delay,” the case would automatically move to a federal appellate court. Thus in all cases initiated under military justice, civilian courts would have the final say.12 The Supreme Council’s trial of the three juntas proceeded slowly and

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erratically until late September 1984, when the court announced that it had no grounds for trying the junta members because the orders they had issued in the “war against subversion” were “unobjectionable.” Delivered one day after CONADEP submitted its report to the president and released a summary to the media with compelling evidence of massive, institutionalized human rights violations, the court’s defiant proclamation of impunity caused a major public reaction while revealing the dismal failure of Alfonsín’s policy of allowing the military to reclaim its institutional legitimacy by dealing with its own human rights crimes.13 The civilian trial began in the Buenos Aires federal appellate court in April 1985. Journalists, human rights activists, and academics from around the world joined the Argentine audience attending or watching on television “the trial of the century,” as it was billed. The generals and admirals were charged with more than seven hundred cases of illegal detention, torture, and murder, and the court heard seventy-­eight days of testimony from more than eight hundred witnesses for the prosecution and the defense.14 The defense produced ranking military officers and prominent civilians who testified that, contrary to most assessments, the guerrillas posed a high degree of threat at the time of the coup. The juntas’ lawyers cited an October 6, 1975, executive decree issued by interim president Italo Luder, who briefly replaced Isabel Perón during an illness. Luder’s decree authorizing the military to carry out the “operations that may be necessary” to defeat subversion, the defense argued, provided a legal basis for all its actions. Defense attorneys claimed that rather than prosecution, the military deserved gratitude for defeating the Marxists and making Argentina’s new democracy possible. They portrayed human rights violations as collateral damage of a real but unconventional war on subversion, and they consistently impugned the prosecution’s witnesses by tying them to the guerrillas. Admiral Emilio Massera’s statement reflected his unchanged view of the dirty war: “I did not come here to defend myself. No one has to defend himself for having won a just war, and the war against terrorism was a just war.”15 The prosecution selected family members of the disappeared, survivors of the secret detention centers, and witnesses to the crimes to describe in detail some of the most shocking of the military’s human rights violations. Among the detention center survivors was Iris Etelvina Pereyra de Avellaneda, who had been abducted with her fourteen-­year-­old son in suburban Buenos Aires. In the detention center where they were taken, she was forced to listen to her son’s torture, which ended in a “terrifying

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silence.” In another center where she was subsequently held, the guards forced her to cry “Viva Hitler” in order to use the toilet. Upon her release after twenty-­seven months of captivity and torture, she learned that her son’s body, hands and feet bound and neck broken, had been found floating off the coast of Uruguay a month after their abduction. Psychologist Haydée García de Candeloro was abducted with her husband and five other labor lawyers in Mar del Plata in what was known as the “Night of the Neckties.” Treatment in the detention centers, she testified, was intended to “undermine the prisoner, destroy his identity systematically.” She heard her husband’s death cry from an adjoining room. Pablo Díaz testified about one of the most notorious of Argentina’s disappearances, the “Night of the Pencils,” in which seven high school students in La Plata were abducted after protesting the elimination of reduced student fares on the city’s buses. Díaz was the only survivor.16 Prosecutors argued that the evidence proved a criminal plan at the junta level and that the state of war alleged by the defense was a fabrication. Further, the military would be guilty of violating the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war if the alleged war had occurred. Chief prosecutor Julio César Strassera argued in his summation, “Either there was no war, as I believe, and we have before us common criminals; or there was—and we have before us war criminals.” He concluded with the phrase “Nunca más.”17 On December 9, 1985, the panel of six judges ruled unanimously that the methods of repression used during the dictatorship—abduction, torture in secret detention centers, murder, disappearance—had been selected in a conscious decision by the military leadership and carried out under its orders. Having established the methodology of repression, the judges found, the commanders gave their subordinates discretion to determine the final fate of the victims: to be released, delivered to the legal prison system, or killed. The outcomes ranged from life imprisonment for General Jorge Rafael Videla and Admiral Emilio Massera of the first junta (March 1976–March 1981), the primary architects and managers of the dirty war, to acquittal for four of the nine. Although disappointed by the acquittals and later setbacks, some in the human rights movement saw the trial as a major blow to impunity.18 The trial of the juntas delivered justice that was unimaginable only two years earlier, but it also jeopardized Alfonsín’s plan for limited, cleansing trials. The court’s finding of discretion in the conduct of the repression undermined the strategy of limiting trials to the upper military ranks. Having seen evidence of extensive crimes carried out by subordinates,

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the court ordered investigations of more than one hundred military and police personnel. These decisions coming from the trial of the juntas, coupled with the “atrocious and aberrant acts” amendment to the Code of Military Justice and CONADEP’s massive submission of cases to the courts, opened the floodgates. Moreover, the trial along with Nunca más saturated the public with information about the most horrific crimes, with what the assistant prosecutor called “the force of the facts,” encouraging individuals and human rights organizations to file more charges and judges who earlier collaborated in state terrorism to process them. The Argentine legal system, which allowed individuals to take criminal charges directly to the courts and compelled judges to investigate all meritorious ones, facilitated the flow of cases to the courts. As a result, Alfonsín’s attempt to contain human rights trials was completely subverted.19 Reaction to passage of the punto final law in December 1986 provides another look into the transformation of the legal environment after the dictatorship’s end. With summer vacations beginning, the timing of the punto final law could not have not been worse for justice advocates. Rising to the challenge, human rights organizations, lawyers, and many judges suspended their holidays and worked feverishly before the sixty day deadline expired, filing some four hundred new cases against more than three hundred members of the military, including at least fifty generals and admirals who constituted, in the words of a scholar, “the elite of the 1976 coup.”20 The response to the punto final law was the high point of judicial activism in the aftermath of Argentina’s democratic restoration. While the cases filed before the deadline continued to make their way through the courts, the military reaction grew stronger, resulting in the Easter Week crisis and, in June 1987, the due obedience law that reduced the pool of prosecutable military and police to around fifty. With Menem’s 1989 and 1990 pardons, lawyers and judges faced an apparently impenetrable wall of impunity, and human rights advocacy in the courts essentially ceased as the legal environment underwent another transition.21

Embracing International Human Rights In Chile, public discussion of international human rights law as a potential remedy began in earnest by the mid-­1980s. In addition to seeking an improved human rights climate under the future democratic government, some advocates began to contemplate the possibility, however remote, of

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holding the practitioners of state terrorism accountable for their crimes. With the path to justice blocked by the 1978 amnesty law, the 1980 constitution, and the conservative courts, lawyers and legal scholars began examining the alternative of turning to international law, jurisprudence, and agencies. The antiregime mobilization of 1982–1986 forced Pinochet to make a few concessions, among them loosening censorship and ending the requirement, for all but those considered most dangerous, that exiles receive permission to return home. This mild opening allowed for a more vigorous discussion of human rights than before and added returned exiles to the conversation. Taking advantage of the enhanced room to maneuver, the Academia de Humanismo Cristiano became a major center for the discussion of international human rights law and jurisprudence. Its Programa de Derechos Humanos (Human Rights Program) held an international conference in 1985 and the following year launched a journal, Revista Chilena de Derechos Humanos, a prominent theme of which was the introduction of international law into the domestic courts. The Chilean Bar Association (Colegio de Abogados), under the presidency of future truth commission head Raúl Rettig, joined the call in 1986 for the application of international norms in domestic courts.22 In postdictatorial Argentina the pursuit of justice was initially successful within the framework of domestic law. But with passage of the punto final and due obedience laws, followed by Menem’s pardons, domestic law appeared to offer no prospect of overturning impunity. Thus after 1990 Argentine human rights organizations turned to international human rights law and jurisprudence for remedies. In one of its first tests of the OAS human rights system, CELS, aided by Americas Watch, petitioned the Inter-­American Commission on Human Rights in 1991 over the punto final and due obedience laws and Menem’s pardons; the commission ruled the following year that they were incompatible with the American Convention on Human Rights. However, with Menem in the presidency and the Supreme Court packed, the ruling had no immediate effect.23 Human rights advocates in both countries were able to advance the cause of applying international law to domestic human rights cases as the result of constitutional reforms. This happened first in Chile, where following Pinochet’s loss in the 1988 plebiscite the opposition sought to liberalize his authoritarian, undemocratic 1980 constitution. Working with the more moderate-­right Renovación Nacional (RN, National Renovation) party, Concertación negotiators focused on political matters, including the powers of the executive, the makeup of Congress, and the regulation of political parties. Human rights advocates, meanwhile, quietly pushed

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for an addition to Article 5, which as written required the state to “respect and promote” the rights enumerated in the constitution. Accepted by the Concertación-­RN technical commission and subsequently by the Pinochet government, the amendment to Article 5 added the clause “as well as the international treaties ratified by Chile that are in force.” Thus among the fifty-­four amendments approved in a July 1989 plebiscite were thirteen words that obligated Chile to incorporate international human rights law in domestic courts. The Chilean judiciary initially rebuffed attempts to apply international law as well as rulings of the inter-­American human rights machinery, but advocates had created a tool that would prove useful over time in the struggle against impunity.24 Like those in Chile five years earlier, human rights advocates in Argentina were able to exploit an opening provided by negotiations over constitutional amendments. Intent on running for a second term despite a constitutional prohibition, Menem engaged the opposition Radicals in negotiations that led to the December 1993 Pacto de Olivos, a wide-­ ranging series of proposals for constitutional amendments that were enacted the following year. Among them were provisions for presidential reelection, shortening the term from six to four years, weakening presidential powers, and increasing judicial independence. Also enacted was a section on human rights, absent in the original constitution.25 Reflecting the Radical Party’s position, the continuing influence of the human rights movement, and suspicions about Menem’s commitment to human rights, the amendments on human rights went further than in Chile. Section 75, Article 22 explicitly established the primacy of international treaties and conventions over domestic law and gave “constitutional hierarchy” to nine international human rights instruments that Argentina had ratified, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its enabling covenants, the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and its covenant, and the UN conventions against torture and genocide. The same amended article empowered Congress, by a two-­thirds vote, to bestow constitutional status on human rights treaties and conventions ratified in the future, allowing one of the conventions inspired by the dirty war—the Inter-­American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons—to attain constitutional hierarchy in 1997.26

The International Human Rights Lobby in the 1990s The international human rights embraced by Chilean and Argentine hu‑ man rights advocates had undergone extensive change since the onset of

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state terrorism in the two countries. Among human rights NGOs, two were particularly active in the Southern Cone. Amnesty International, founded in London in 1961, continued to expand after the stimulus it received from the 1973 Chilean coup. Its membership grew, it opened branches in additional countries, and it issued annual reports on human rights throughout the world and special reports on countries experiencing particularly severe repression, including Argentina in 1976 and Chile in 1985. Amnesty International also secured the release of numerous imprisoned individuals through its “prisoners of conscience” program. Human Rights Watch, founded in 1978 in New York primarily to monitor the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, spun off Americas Watch in 1981 as state terrorism spread from South to Central America. Americas Watch monitored, issued reports, and lobbied governments and intergovernmental human rights agencies to take action in cases of severe repression. Americas Watch was subsumed under Human Rights Watch in 1988. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch were important actors in the quest for justice in the 1990s.27 Besides Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and smaller international human rights organizations, several NGOs whose missions were not exclusively human rights entered the field; prominent among these was the Ford Foundation. The 1973 Chilean coup and repression had the effect of “transforming the foundation into a philanthropy with human rights at its core, rather than on its margins.”28 During the dictatorships, the foundation funded major human rights organizations in Chile and Argentina including the Vicaría de la Solidaridad, the Comisión Chilena de Derechos Humanos, and CELS while also offering grants to international organizations including the Washington Office on Latin America and Americas Watch. With the return of civilian governments, it continued funding, now in support of efforts to achieve justice. In Chile the Ford Foundation subsidized the establishment of the Vicaría de la Solidaridad’s archive to make the vast collection of documents available to human rights organizations and lawyers. In Argentina it funded the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team and supported CELS’s efforts to transform the 1994 constitutional amendments into reality.29 Between the 1970s and the 1990s, both the UN and the inter-­American legal frameworks for human rights had been expanded and refined. A number of major international human rights treaties and covenants obtained sufficient ratifications to enter into force, among them the UN’s International Covenants on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights and on Civil and Political Rights in 1976; the American Convention on Human Rights

The Changing Legal Environment 73

in 1978; the Inter-­American Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture and the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, both adopted in 1987 largely in response to repression in Chile and Argentina; and in 1996 the Inter-­ American Convention on the Forced Disappearance of Persons, also a response to Argentina and Chile. Numerous amendments and optional protocols were adopted as well to strengthen these and other major treaties.30 OAS member countries agreed to the body of rights enumerated in the American Convention on Human Rights and had the option of recognizing the competence of the Inter-­American Commission on Human Rights and the jurisdiction of the Inter-­American Court of Human Rights. The Argentine and Chilean dictatorships, of course, ignored the convention, but both countries ratified it after the restoration of civilian government. Moreover, both recognized the competence of the Inter-­American Commission and the jurisdiction of the Inter-­American Court. In so doing, they agreed to accept and implement the commission’s recommendations and the court’s binding rulings on bringing their national policies and laws into conformity with the provisions of the American Convention. While there were no real penalties for noncompliance, the commission’s and the court’s increasingly frequent decisions provided leverage and moral support for Chilean and Argentine human rights advocates and put pressure on the domestic courts to overturn impunity.31 Beyond adding treaties and conventions, the inter-­American human rights system became more active, creative, and assertive through the 1980s and 1990s. With its 1985–1986 annual report, the commission began arguing that amnesties for severe human rights violations were invalid. In a landmark 1990 decision the court ruled in the case of Velásquez Rodríguez et al. that the Honduran government had a duty to punish those responsible for forced disappearances in that country. By the early 1990s, in response to individual petitions from several countries, the commission was consistently ruling that amnesties in any form could not be invoked to prevent investigations and prosecutions. In 1994 the court held that it is an international duty to investigate and punish human rights violators and therefore that the international community is responsible for enforcing accountability.32 After the Chilean coup and repression jolted it out of somnolence, the UN continued to intensify its work on human rights. The General Assembly condemned Chile annually through the end of the dictatorship. It sponsored a number of international treaties and covenants, including instruments to address torture and forced disappearance, while extend-

74 Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy

ing human rights protections to enumerated populations such as children, women, and migrant workers and their families. In order to underscore its stronger commitment to human rights, the UN in 1993 created the position of High Commissioner for Human Rights. In the same year the UN for the first time entered the realm of enforcement of human rights by taking the unprecedented step of creating the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, an action seen as “a turning point in the campaign against impunity.”33 It followed in 1994 with a similar criminal tribunal for Rwanda and added others later as circumstances required. Finally, in July 1998, three months before the senator General Pinochet made his momentous London trip, the UN adopted the Rome Treaty, which would lead to the opening of the International Criminal Court five years later.34

Judicial Reform Judicial reform was a prominent development in Latin America and indeed in much of the world during the 1980s and 1990s. An international “rule of law” movement comprised of developed-­country agencies and NGOs offered technical aid to governments willing to modernize their judicial systems to make them more efficient and transparent in the interest of international and domestic capital as well as in fighting crime. In Latin America, reform was promoted also to foster judicial independence from the executive branch in reaction to the widespread repression of the 1970s and 1980s that the judiciaries were unable or unwilling to stop, and in the interest of pursuing justice for past human rights violations.35 In Argentina the 1994 constitutional amendments that resulted from the Pacto de Olivos included reforms of judicial structure and practice with the purpose of reducing executive power over the judiciary. The amendments spelled out several key reforms, including these: raising the requirement for Senate approval of the president’s Supreme Court nominees from a majority to two-­thirds; creation of a judicial council (consejo de la magistratura) to initiate the selection of lower-­court judges; establishment of an impeachment jury ( jurado de enjuiciamiento) to replace Congress in the discipline and removal of lower-­court judges; and enhancement of the independence of the Attorney General’s Office (Ministerio Público).36 Despite agreeing to judicial reform in exchange for reelectability, President Menem, following his pronounced authoritarian tendencies,

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thwarted implementation of the mandated changes. In 1990 he took advantage of his Peronist congressional majority to expand the Argentine Supreme Court from five to nine justices and pack it with mostly unqualified personal friends; two sitting justices quit in protest, allowing Menem to appoint two more and giving him the so-­called automatic Menemist majority. He also harassed independent-­minded judges at lower levels, effectively bending the courts to his will. Thus after the 1994 constitutional amendments, Menem was equipped to delay or block implementation of judicial reform through the end of his term in 1999. However, a mild resurgence of independent judicial behavior in the late 1990s demonstrated that the judicial activism of the early years of restored democracy was not completely extinguished and resulted in 1998 rulings that for the first time threatened the impunity in place since 1990.37 In Chile judicial reform was a high priority for the Aylwin administration; in contrast to postdictatorial Argentina, where the judiciary proved malleable and adjusted rapidly to the demands of democracy, judicial behavior in postdictatorial Chile was characterized by continuity rather than change. The Concertación campaign platform for the 1989 election included overturning the 1978 amnesty law but, packed with hard-­ line Pinochet appointees, the Supreme Court on August 24, 1990, five and a half months after Aylwin’s inauguration, unanimously upheld the law and went further, ruling that the amnesty prevented not only prosecution but also investigation of cases brought to civilian courts. Most judges at all levels continued acting as they had under the dictatorship, dismissing cases or forwarding them to military courts that closed them. The only path to justice, then, was to reform the obstructionist judiciary, but given the veto power vested in the right-­dominated Senate with its nine Pinochet appointees, the challenge was monumental. The fate of a package of bills known as the Cumplido laws, submitted to Congress in 1991, confirmed the difficulty of legislating reform: after passing the Concertación-­controlled Chamber of Deputies, the bills were eviscerated in the Senate.38 Paralleling its efforts at judicial reform, the Aylwin administration used its authority to carry out significant measures of restorative, nonjudicial justice designed to challenge the truth created and left in place by the military and to dignify victims by restoring their humanity. The first of these was a second, “popular” inauguration that has been called an “exorcism” of the National Stadium, the home of important soccer matches that had been converted into the largest ad hoc detention, torture, and execution center in the weeks following the coup. With names of the disappeared

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flashing on the scoreboard and women of the AFDD dancing the cueca sola, an iconic Chilean folk dance—but with photographs substituting for the dead or disappeared male partners—this event symbolically recovered the violated space for ordinary Chileans. The government also built a memorial to the disappeared in the General Cemetery and converted the most infamous of the DINA’s detention and torture centers, Villa Grimaldi, to a peace park.39 One of Aylwin’s most important restorative, symbolic actions was orchestrating the funeral of President Salvador Allende, whom the military initially vilified and dehumanized, then attempted to erase from Chilean history. Following his suicide in the presidential palace on the day of the coup, the military hastily buried his body in a family plot in Viña del Mar without ceremony and discouraged visitation of the unmarked grave. On September 4, 1990, exactly twenty years after his election, Allende was given a funeral mass in the Santiago cathedral and, accompanied by a huge crowd, buried in the General Cemetery along with all but three of Chile’s deceased presidents. This gesture, with all the trappings of a state funeral except for military honors, which Pinochet refused to render, not only countered the military’s depiction of Allende’s presidency as a period of criminality and treason but restored Allende’s rightful place in Chilean history and retrospectively legitimized the attitudes and actions of the large minority of Chileans who had identified with his government.40 The centerpiece of Aylwin’s nonjudicial measures of transitional justice was the Comisión Nacional de Verdad y Reconciliación (National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation), commonly known as the Rettig Commission for the jurist who presided over it. Established by decree six weeks after Aylwin’s inauguration, the commission was based largely on the Argentine model, but reflecting the military’s continuing power, its membership was drawn from moderates of both left and right, including two who had served in the Pinochet government. Its purview was limited to deaths and disappearances. It lacked subpoena power, was prohibited from naming perpetrators, and had a six-­month period, extended to nine, to complete its work. Its report established 1,068 deaths and 957 disappearances at the hands of government agents “or persons at their service” and 164 deaths caused by “political violence.” These figures, the report indicated, were not complete. Besides identifying victims, the commission denounced judicial behavior during the dictatorship, offered a thorough analysis of the background to and working of the dictatorship, and made recommendations for dealing with past and preventing future human rights violations. It also forwarded to the courts information it had gathered on crimes that it had investigated.41

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Following the Rettig Commission’s recommendation, Aylwin introduced legislation to create a Corporación Nacional de Reparación y Reconciliación (National Corporation of Reparation and Reconciliation) to continue the truth commission’s work of accounting for deaths and disappearances as well as to establish and dispense material reparations to survivors of confirmed victims of human rights violations. Sensing that reparations might placate the affected families and hence dampen the quest for justice, much of the right supported creating and funding the corporation, which was established in January 1992. The new entity added 776 deaths and 123 disappearances to the numbers that the Rettig Commission had verified, reaching the total of 3,197. Victims’ survivors received monthly checks and health care benefits, and the children of those families were offered scholarships and exemption from military service.42 Another recommendation of the Rettig Commission was a thorough reform of the judiciary, including the incorporation of international human rights law into the domestic courts as required by the revised Article 5 of the constitution.43 Armed with the Rettig Commission’s report, Aylwin tested the Supreme Court’s stance on the amnesty law, not challenging the law’s validity but the court’s 1990 ban on investigations. “In my view,” he wrote, expounding what came to be called the Aylwin Doctrine, “the amnesty in force, which the government respects, cannot be an obstacle to the realization of a judicial investigation and the determination of responsibilities, especially in the cases of disappeared persons.”44 He called on the Supreme Court to investigate the cases that the Rettig Commission had submitted as well as the two hundred–some cases already brought by human rights organizations and individuals. He argued that the amnesty did not bar investigations of disappearances because until the body was found, the crime was ongoing; the perpetrator could be amnestied only after the body was discovered. Accepting this logic, at the end of 1992 the Supreme Court reversed its earlier decision to prohibit investigations; within a year, several hundred were under way. As military men suspected, this decision did not bode well for the durability of impunity.45 While Aylwin thus dented the armor of impunity by convincing the Supreme Court to allow investigations, it was his successor, Eduardo Frei Ruiz-­Tagle (1994–2000), who achieved substantive judicial reform that would be instrumental in ending impunity. Frei approached the justice system from a technical rather than a human rights perspective. In November 1996 he introduced a bill to “modernize” the justice system to meet the requirements of the “processes of political, economic, and social development that our country has experienced in recent decades.”46 Among these processes was the ascendance of foreign and large-­scale

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Chilean capitalists who considered the justice system inadequate for the protection of their investments and maximization of profits. A crime wave and charges of corruption within the Supreme Court also contributed to a rare instance of cooperation between government and opposition in Congress. Frei began by proposing to reform the criminal justice system. Given the supportive climate of public opinion, in August 1997 Congress enacted legislation to change the criminal justice procedure from a written and inquisitorial to an oral and accusatory system. It removed prosecutorial functions from the judges, placing them in a public prosecutor’s office within the Ministerio Público, thus eliminating the justices’ ability to slow down or bury investigations.47 The success of his initial reform and the cooperation between government and opposition that made it possible encouraged Frei and Minister of Justice Soledad Alvear to press for more comprehensive judicial reform, similar to that proposed earlier by Aylwin. The endorsement by the publisher of the influential newspaper El Mercurio, whose son was kidnapped by the Communist guerrilla group Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez, helped secure the right’s support for judicial reform. The law enacted in December 1997 expanded the Supreme Court from seventeen to twenty-­one members and established a mandatory retirement age of seventy-­five, which affected six judges immediately. Five of the justices were to come from outside the judiciary, ensuring that new ideas would be injected into the court’s deliberations. The Supreme Court was divided into specialized chambers in order to promote expertise and expedite the processing of cases. The requirement that Supreme Court justices be confirmed by a two-­thirds vote in the Senate eased doubts on the right. By 1998, after voluntary and forced retirements and the addition of four new positions, only four Pinochet appointees remained on the court.48 Even as the second reform bill made its way through Congress, the courts began showing signs of softening their position on impunity. In November 1997 the Supreme Court reversed a grant of amnesty for the first time, overriding a military court, and in the next several months ruled against closing several cases of disappearance, closed others, and applied the amnesty law in some cases. Breaking new ground, the Santiago Court of Appeals in January 1998 accepted the first criminal charge against Pinochet, in a case of disappearance.49 In a landmark decision in September 1998 in the case of Pedro Poblete Córdoba, a disappeared member of the MIR, the Supreme Court set precedent in two ways. First, it reversed its 1995 decision that overturned the Santiago Court of Appeals ruling that applied the Geneva Conventions on

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the conduct of war, which Chile had ratified in 1951. The Court of Appeals judges argued that since the junta declared the country at war on September 11, 1973, the military government was bound by the Geneva rules that prohibit torture, execution, and other inhumane treatment of prisoners and thus that its agents should be prosecuted. In the Poblete Córdoba case, the Supreme Court agreed that the Geneva Conventions did apply, privileging for the first time international law over the amnesty law on the basis of amended Article 5 of the constitution. Second, the Supreme Court, again setting a precedent, applied an argument that had been circulating since the mid-­1980s (one that Aylwin had made to the high court in 1991)—namely, that abduction is an ongoing crime until the victim’s body is found and that the amnesty law thus cannot be applied in open cases of disappeared persons. The high court’s ruling of secuestro calificado in the Poblete Córdoba case opened the door to further prosecutions of the authors of disappearances.50 Yet while the Poblete Córdoba case and other developments of the late 1990s revealed a significant change in the Chilean legal environment and presaged further transition, no case covered by the amnesty law had been prosecuted as of 1998. The first convictions for crimes committed between September 11, 1973, and March 10, 1978, and covered by Pinochet’s amnesty would not occur until 2002.51 One of the keys to ending impunity in Argentina and Chile was the transformation of the legal environment created by the state terrorist regimes. The environment changed immediately upon the restoration of democracy in Argentina, leading to the introduction of thousands of criminal complaints and numerous trials of alleged repressors. This climate favorable to justice was extinguished by the punto final and due obedience laws and Menem’s pardons, and Menem’s authoritarian rule reinforced the resulting impunity. In Chile after 1990, judges continued to uphold impunity until the 1997 judicial reform began to undermine their intransigence. Meanwhile, advocates of justice in both countries took steps to introduce the rapidly evolving international human rights law and jurisprudence into their national courts. As a result of the differing legal environments, when an explosion of demands for justice rocked Argentina in 1994–1996 and Chile in 1998, the Chilean judiciary responded quickly but inconsistently with actions favorable to justice, while the Argentine judiciary remained shackled by its subordination to an executive power committed to preserving impunity.

CHAPTER 5

Precipitating Events

The early 1990s was a period of discouragement and disillusionment for the Argentine and Chilean human rights movements and for victims of state terrorism and their families. Their efforts to obtain justice in the courts were futile, and they were ignored or rebuffed by many if not most of their compatriots who had grown tired of the reminders of a past they preferred to forget. Their impunity apparently assured, the former repressors were not only free but proud of having saved their countries from the threat of Marxism and subversion. Many availed themselves of public forums to reinforce their version of the history of the 1970s and 1980s. They routinely appeared at restaurants, sporting and cultural events, and mass. Many people saw their former torturers at these venues, on the streets, even in their apartment buildings. The same torturers and murderers and those who had commanded them casually traveled abroad on business and for pleasure. The former repressors’ flaunting of their impunity was an acid reminder of state terrorism that revictimized victims and their families after the physical violations of human rights had ceased.1 Beginning in the mid-­1990s, clusters of events in Argentina and Chile began to challenge the assumption that impunity was permanent. These events had profound impacts on the human rights movements, public opinion, the judiciaries, and the militaries, and they fueled vigorous assaults on the impunity that reigned in both countries. Because Argentina was under the authoritarian rule of Carlos Menem, a strong proponent of impunity who had packed the Supreme Court with like-­minded justices, these developments had only a minor impact in the short term, but in Chile they immediately caused a widening of the cracks that had appeared in the shield of impunity that the dictatorship had so carefully constructed.

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Anniversaries and Confessions in Argentina Anniversaries are junctures that activate memory and emotion. In Argentina a series of decade anniversaries of important events in the dirty war and the transition to democracy occurred in the mid-­1990s. These included the tenth anniversary of the publication of Nunca más in 1994, the tenth of the trial of the juntas in 1995, and in 1996 the twentieth anniversary of the military coup that installed state terrorism. Remembering these events reopened society’s wounds and memories, generated a new wave of commemoration of victims and events, and inspired action to create and preserve the memory of state terrorism. It also reenergized the human rights movement, which had been dispirited and weakened since the 1986 punto final and 1987 due obedience laws and essentially marginalized since Menem’s 1989 and 1990 pardons.2 The energy unleashed by the anniversaries was amplified by a predictable yet unanticipated event. It was predictable that the military’s code of silence would be broken at some time, but the timing of the rupture and the impact it had were not anticipated. On March 2, 1995, Horacio Verbitsky, Argentina’s most prominent investigative journalist, announced on his television program that he had interviewed retired naval officer Adolfo Scilingo and provided his audience some details revealed by Scilingo about operations at ESMA, the Naval Mechanics School known as the Argentine Auschwitz. A week later Scilingo himself appeared on Verbitsky’s show. His appearance and confession were not motivated by repentance for his actions in the dirty war; rather, he was resentful that the navy had forced his retirement.3 Scilingo’s revelations stunned Argentines and riveted them to their television sets and to Verbitsky’s account of his interviews with the former naval officer published serially in a newspaper and within months in book form as El vuelo (1995, The Flight). Scilingo confirmed, with the authority of firsthand experience and in greater and more gruesome detail, information that surfaced earlier in Nunca más and at the trial of the juntas. He indicated that weekly death flights from ESMA dropped between 1,500 and 2,000 prisoners into the Atlantic over a two-­year period, that prisoners selected to “fly” were told they were being “transferred” to rehabilitation camps and then drugged and pushed out alive, sometimes with their bellies slit to prevent their floating, and that navy vicars encouraged the flight crews and salved their consciences by assuring them that they were doing God’s work. Flight duty was rotated among all officers at ESMA in order to seal a blood pact of silence among them and to assure the secrecy

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of the operation. Scilingo participated in two flights that dropped thirty prisoners into the Atlantic. His worst memory was of an insufficiently drugged prisoner who clutched him, almost dragging him along into the ocean.4 The insights that Scilingo offered into the mentality that underpinned state terrorism were as chilling as the details of the ESMA death flights. To him, the reason for disposing of victims in secret was strategic: “What happened to the prisoners was not made known, in order to withhold information from the enemy and create uncertainty.” His belief in the justification for the dirty war was unshaken: “The orders we were receiving were extreme, but they made sense in the context of the war that was being fought—both those to arrest the enemy and those to eliminate the enemy. We were totally convinced of what we were doing; it would be a total lie if I told you I wouldn’t do it again under the same conditions.” To Scilingo, his and his colleagues’ work amounted to the ultimate patriotic sacrifice: “It was something you had to do. . . . It was something supreme that was done for the sake of the country. A supreme act.”5 Twelve years after the end of state terrorism, the military’s blood pact of silence was dramatically shattered.6 The impact of the chilling details, calmly related in matter-­of-­fact fashion by a man who appeared normal and rational, was reinforced by the medium of television. The exposé by an insider of the secret detention center at ESMA and the navy’s methods of murder affected many in the public who had paid little attention to the human rights issues and those who had grown weary of the shrill demands and Thursday-­afternoon marches of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo. For the military and its hard-­core supporters, Scilingo’s revelations made it much harder to cling to their denial of the horrors of the recent dictatorship.7 Scilingo’s confession motivated other hands-­on repressors to go public with their stories. One of these was former army sergeant Víctor Ibáñez, assigned to the Campo de Mayo base, who appeared on television in April 1995 to reveal that the army used death flights to dispose of approximately 2,300 persons, some of whom he named. Julio Simón, aka El Turco Julián, a well-­known torturer and reputed inventor of the rectóscopo (an anal torture device), in May offered a third televised confession. He stated that “anyone kidnapped was tortured” and that “the general norm was to kill everyone.” He said proudly, “What I did I did for my fatherland, my faith, and my religion. Of course I would do it again.”8 Others who came forward included the former director of La Perla detention camp and an obstetrician and gynecologist who performed torture and sold babies. Thus Argentines were inundated with gruesome revelations through television and radio, newspapers and magazines.9

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While the nation was shocked, families of the disappeared were devastated by the barrage of confessions. Marta Vásquez, whose daughter was disappeared, remembered: “It was incredible. Now we were certain about what had happened. My family members said, ‘Ah! You were right.’”10 Laura Bonaparte, a psychologist who had lost seven family members to disappearance, said, “What Scilingo showed me was that in the deepest recesses of my spirit, I still hoped. Hope was my secret, even from myself. It was terrible to discover and, I have to admit, terrible to let it go.” Housewife Sara Steimberg told an interviewer, “For eighteen years, we searched for our son. So that part of our struggle is over. This brings relief, a terrible relief.” Detention-­center survivor Mario Villani, who witnessed Julio Simón torturing a man to death, stated, “It’s not that I remember these things. I relive them.”11 Even before the torrent of confessions dried up, General Martín Balza, whom Menem had appointed army commander in 1991, broadcast a scathing indictment of the dirty war. In a televised address on April 26, 1995, Balza shocked his colleagues and the nation by first declaring that the turmoil of the time did not justify the armed forces’ 1976 seizure of power. He admitted that the army had killed people other than the guerrillas. He rejected the judges’ conclusion in the 1985 trial of the juntas that disappearance was explicit policy; he assumed responsibility, on behalf of his institution, for “the errors in the struggle among Argentines.” Balza’s choice of words was significant. Military officers frequently used the term “the errors that might have occurred” to deny deliberation and emphasize that any deaths were collateral damage.12 To the thousands of Argentines who lost family members to the repression Balza said, “I can only offer them respect, silence before their pain and the commitment of all my efforts to a future that does not repeat the past.” He then dismissed the principle of due obedience that had saved so many of his colleagues from prosecution: “Without euphemisms, I state clearly: Anyone who violates the National Constitution commits a crime, anyone who gives immoral orders commits a crime, anyone who carries out immoral orders commits a crime, whoever employs unjust, immoral means to achieve just ends commits a crime.”13 He followed up by ordering army personnel to anonymously divulge any knowledge they had of disappearances. This order fell on deaf ears, and the commanders of the navy, air force, and police remained silent. Ranking army personnel so resented Balza’s remarks that upon his retirement as army commander they expelled him from the officers association, the Círculo Militar.14 Although less than a formal apology, Balza’s speech was the first public acceptance of responsibility for human rights violations by a Latin

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American military leader, and it had a major impact on Argentines. Polled on whether the speech would foster reconciliation among Argentines, 69 percent of the respondents answered affirmatively and 17 percent negatively.15 CELS founder Emilio Mignone called Balza’s speech “extremely important”; while not entirely satisfactory, it was “a beginning” that “opens a dialogue.” Expressing what appeared to be a minority view, Hebe de Bonafini of the hard-­line Madres dismissed Balza as a “killer” and his statement as “hypocritical.”16 While the military reacted defensively to the spate of confessions and Balza’s speech, the human rights climate in Argentina underwent yet another change. Along with the anniversaries, Scilingo’s and the other confessions brought human rights issues back to the forefront following several years in the shadows. The frenetic pace of activity recalled the effervescence of the early years of democracy. Nunca más was republished in installments, selling 200,000 copies per week, and human rights themes were prominent in new books, films, and videos. The anniversaries prompted the erection of memorials, both permanent and temporary, in venues including art exhibits and drama and film presentations that were frequently attacked by opponents of justice.17 In the flurry of commemoration, families of the disappeared placed photographs of their missing loved ones in newspapers on the anniversaries of their disappearance; streets and plazas, sporting and cultural events were named or renamed for victims of the repression, and sites of particular significance in the dirty war were designated as public patrimony. Unions, university faculties, high schools, neighborhoods, and cities and towns erected plaques commemorating their disappeared and killed. Ceremonies marked the anniversaries of landmark events such as the Night of the Pencils and the abduction and disappearance of the founding Madres. Public schools expanded their human rights curricula, and some human rights organizations established internships to teach youths of the post-­dirty war generation about state terrorism and human rights.18 The city government of Buenos Aires in 1996 adopted a plan to build a museum of memory at ESMA, but two years later President Menem, true to his belief in reconciliation through amnesia, issued a decree ordering the demolition of the site and its replacement with a monument to national unity. The facility survived thanks to a strong reaction by the human rights movement and to a judge who overruled Menem’s order; recalling the “horrific things” that had taken place at ESMA, he designated the site as cultural patrimony that had to be preserved. However,

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the museum of memory was put into limbo. Meanwhile, construction began on the Parque de la Memoria (Park of Memory) on the shore of the Río de la Plata, the watery tomb of so many victims of the dirty war.19 Several provincial governments appointed commissions to establish museums of memory; the province of Buenos Aires formed a commission in 1999 and opened its museum in La Plata in 2002. Memoria Abierta (Open Memory), an organization sponsored by eight human rights groups, was founded in 2000. Loosely modeled on Holocaust commemoration and education organizations, Memoria Abierta embraced the mission of collecting, preserving, and disseminating documentation on state terrorism and human rights.20 The Scilingo effect and the serial anniversaries reenergized the human rights movement. Although the Madres de Plaza de Mayo split in 1986, both groups of Madres, driven by the promising climate of the mid-­1990s, redoubled their efforts and became more visible than they had been since the late 1980s. The Thursday afternoon protests in the Plaza de Mayo drew the largest crowds in years, and each organization sponsored an annual twenty-­four-­hour “march of resistance” that mobilized thousands of people. Each maintained a large membership, provincial branches, and substantial budget, and each communicated through newsletters, websites, and press conferences. The original Madres opened a café and bookstore near the National Congress and in 2001 established a popular university.21 Other human rights organizations likewise stepped up their efforts. The Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo pursued their mission of establishing the identities and locating the missing children of their disappeared children and by 2002 had located seventy-­three of the estimated five hundred children.22 Two human rights organizations specializing in legal work, CELS and APDH, focused on developing new legal strategies to challenge the punto final and due obedience laws and Menem’s pardons.23 The organization Hijos por la Identidad y la Justicia y contra el Olvido y el Silencio (Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice and against Forgetting and Silence) was founded in 1995. Known by its acronym, HIJOS (sons and daughters), the organization was formed by sons and daughters of men and women murdered or disappeared during the dictatorship. The preferred strategy of these activists in their teens and twenties was to attack the impunity of their parents’ killers directly and physically. They organized demonstrations called escraches (from the slang term escrachar, to uncover) that targeted the homes and neighborhoods of known repressors, from former junta leaders to torturers. Marching noisily with

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whistles, drums, and banners, HIJOS members arrived in a neighborhood, loudly denounced the repressor’s crimes, distributed flyers with the particulars of the crimes and the target’s photograph, and sometimes painted graffiti on the walls and sidewalks of the repressor’s home. Police often broke up the escraches, but the protests were effective in publicizing the repressors’ presence while shaming them and challenging their impunity. The HIJOS’ shaming reportedly drove some criminals to essentially withdraw from public life.24 HIJOS quickly became a central component of the human rights movement. It developed several provincial branches and eventually foreign affiliates. In order to ensure the continuation of their work, the aging Madres de Plaza de Mayo–Línea Fundadora carried out an important symbolic act with HIJOS in the Plaza de Mayo on December 5, 2002. Dozens of the Madres symbolically transferred their moral authority and their mission by removing the diaper-­inspired scarves they had worn for twenty-­five years and draping them around the necks of the youth, some of them their own grandchildren, sending the powerful message that the struggle for justice would outlive its original protagonists.25 The increasingly powerful and activist international human rights lobby also responded to the changed human rights climate in Argentina and became heavily engaged in the revived quest for justice. In 1995 CELS launched its program for the application of international human rights law in local courts, an initiative based on the recently amended constitution and developments in international human rights jurisprudence and partially funded by the Ford Foundation. This program involved educating and persuading judges to begin implementing a new, untested legal approach: applying Section 75, Article 22 of the constitution, which gave constitutional rank to international treaties and established their superiority over domestic law. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Commission of Jurists, the International Red Cross, and numerous other private international organizations monitored the Argentine situation, supplied research, and drafted briefs for the courts. A 1995 amicus curiae brief submitted by a coalition of international NGOs paved the way for the reopening of investigations of disappearances. The Inter-­American Human Rights Commission and Court likewise stepped up pressure on the Argentine courts.26 A number of foreign governments had earlier requested the extradition of repressors for the death or disappearance of their nationals. Some, including the notorious Alfredo Astiz, the alleged perpetrator of particularly odious crimes who was known as the blond angel of death, had been

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tried and sentenced in absentia in France but remained free in Argentina. Beginning in 1996 several countries became more aggressive in their demands. Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón ordered the extradition from Argentina of more than one hundred military men and police to testify in Madrid about some three hundred disappeared Spanish citizens. An Italian court began investigating the disappearance of dozens of Italians and Argentines of Italian origin, a case that culminated with the trial and conviction in absentia of seven army officers in 2000. Other countries followed the French, Spanish, and Italian lead in investigating and demanding extraditions. Despite the Argentine government’s refusal to honor any extradition requests through the 1990s, foreign intervention provided moral support to and enhanced the legitimacy of the domestic human rights movement.27 The serial anniversaries and the Scilingo effect transformed the human rights climate in Argentina. Together they re-­created the palpable culture of respect for human rights of the 1983–1986 period, reenergized the human rights movement, attracted international support, and renewed demands for investigations and trials of the hundreds of alleged repressors who escaped punishment or were pardoned. While justice remained beyond reach for several years after the 1994–1996 cluster of events, the energy and activity unleashed by those developments continued.

An Anniversary in Chile and an Arrest in London The year 1998 in Chile marked a quarter-­century since the military coup that overthrew Chilean democracy and launched sixteen and a half years of state terrorism. As occurred in Argentina with its three successive major anniversaries, the twenty-­fifth anniversary year of the bloody coup and Allende’s death heightened tensions, provoked conflict, evoked memory, and promoted commemoration. In the months leading up to September 11, the media and the publishing industry produced unprecedented numbers of chronicles, testimonies, and analyses of the previous twenty-­five years that focused Chileans on the past and, inevitably, on the present. But beginning some months before September 11, it was the trajectory of one man, Augusto C. Pinochet, that made headlines, reopened deep wounds and the chasm dividing Chileans, and revived the cause of justice.28 Pinochet was at the center of various controversies throughout 1998. On January 20 the Santiago Court of Appeals broke with precedent by accepting for the first time a criminal complaint against the former dicta-

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tor. The suit, brought by Communist Party leader Gladys Marín, named Pinochet in the abduction and disappearance of her husband and four fellow party members in 1976, during the period covered by the amnesty law. Seven weeks later, Pinochet completed his term as army commander, a position to which Salvador Allende had appointed him in August 1973. Blatantly ignoring the formal authority of the minister of defense, in a controversial move the army then honored him with the unprecedented title of commander-­in-­chief benemérito (distinguished, meritorious) in an elaborate retirement ceremony attended by thousands of supporters.29 Having served for more than six years as president, Pinochet, by the terms of his constitution, would become a senator-­for-­life.30 His swearing-­ in took place on March 11, 1998, at the new congressional building he had built in Valparaíso to erase the memory of democracy associated with the historic home of the National Congress in Santiago that he had shut down at the time of the coup; the ceremony polarized the country like no event since the end of the dictatorship. It set off mass protests outside the congressional building and throughout the country that resulted in numerous clashes with police, injuries, and arrests. Inside the chamber, some Concertación senators displayed large photographs of disappeared persons with the question many Chileans had in common with the Argentine Madres de Plaza de Mayo: “Donde están?” Where are they? A group of Concertación deputies sponsored a bill to impeach the new senator for “gravely compromising the honor and security of the nation” during his 1990–1998 term as army commander and thereby strip him of his newly acquired congressional immunity. President Frei Ruiz-­Tagle considered the move excessively provocative to the military and lobbied against it among his congressional allies. With considerable Christian Democratic opposition, the impeachment bill failed, rendering the inevitable Senate veto unnecessary and leaving the senator’s impunity intact.31 The next major controversy arose over the annual September 11 holiday. The Day of National Liberation, officially established in 1981, was extremely divisive. Every year since Allende’s reburial in Santiago’s General Cemetery in 1990, Socialist Party members gathered on September 11 at his tomb to pay homage to their fallen president. Others gathered at the monument to the disappeared in the same cemetery. Thousands of protesters across the country annually marched and clashed with police, most often resulting in injuries and deaths. Concertación legislators had tried for years to have the holiday abolished, but reacting to Pinochet’s presence in the Senate, they redoubled their efforts, which could not succeed without some right-­wing support. After rancorous debate, encouraged by the

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more moderate right, Pinochet—again the center of attention—agreed to the holiday’s replacement with a “day of national unity” to be observed in the first week of September beginning in 1999. Despite this concession, the last September 11 holiday was as agitated and bloody as usual; at least two demonstrators were killed and 180 arrested in Santiago alone.32 Tension had been building in Chile throughout 1998, but the last two and a half months of this pivotal year would be much more intense. As in Argentina, a foreseeable yet largely unanticipated event catapulted human rights to the front page and launched an assault on impunity. Pinochet’s doctors advised him to have surgery for a herniated disk, and he decided to seek a second opinion from a noted surgeon in London while vacationing in the city. On August 17 he turned in his expired passport and two days later received the diplomatic passport issued to members of Congress. His action alerted personnel of the Ministry of Foreign Relations to his intention of traveling. The minister, aware of criminal charges pending against Pinochet in Spanish courts, the aggressiveness of National Court Judge Baltasar Garzón, and Spain’s universal jurisdiction law, was concerned about the consequences for the country’s civil-­military relations and stability if Pinochet should encounter legal troubles while traveling. To minimize the risk, with President Frei’s approval, the minister invented a special diplomatic mission involving the purchase of armaments in Britain and had the new passport annotated accordingly. But having visited London in 1994, 1995, and 1997 without incident, Pinochet seemed unconcerned about the potential for legal problems and flew to London on September 21.33 Having learned of Pinochet’s travel plans, Joan Garcés, a Catalan who had been a close adviser to President Allende, notified Judge Garzón. He also traveled to London, where he met with Amnesty International officials to set a strategy for a possible British-­Spanish collaboration to detain Pinochet. Having pressed the British government to detain Pinochet during his visits in 1994 and 1995, to no avail, Amnesty International now informed the media and communicated with European governments to remind them of their duty to arrest Pinochet under the terms of the UN Convention against Torture should he appear in their jurisdiction. Meanwhile, Garzón began drawing up extradition papers for a possible arrest.34 For more than two weeks, Pinochet’s stay in London unfolded normally, as had his previous trips. He shopped with his wife and daughter, sat for an interview with Jon Lee Anderson for an article in the New Yorker, and took tea with his friend and former ally Margaret Thatcher. He entered the London Clinic on October 9 and had a successful surgery.

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During his recovery the conservative Santiago newspaper La Tercera commented on his condition and added that “any legal proceeding against the senator-­for-­life has not succeeded because as a parliamentarian he traveled with a diplomatic passport, which prevents any legal action against him.”35 La Tercera’s premature pronouncement reflected a growing recognition in Chile of the maturation and strengthening of the international human rights lobby while clearly underestimating the resourcefulness and tenacity of Judge Garzón. In an event that sent shock waves around the world, Pinochet was arrested in London on October 16, 1998, on an extradition warrant from Judge Garzón charging him with torture, murder, and hostage-­taking. Bound by an extradition treaty with Spain, British authorities held Pinochet in the clinic where he was recuperating, then under a comfortable house arrest in a rented villa, while sorting out the complexities of dealing with a former head of state and sitting senator claiming immunity on several grounds. The few who had anticipated the possibility of trouble had their fears confirmed, but even they may not have foreseen the impact that the arrest and its sequel would have.36 That impact was global. The arrest of such a high-­profile, heretofore untouchable, arrogantly self-­confident figure abruptly introduced the world to the new trends in jurisprudence and the heightened activism that had been transforming international human rights in the previous years. More than any other single development, including the tribunals in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the “Pinochet effect” woke the public as well as current and former repressors around the world to the new reality that universal jurisdiction and the invalidity of amnesties for crimes against humanity were no longer abstract principles but enforceable law.37 The senator’s arrest rocked Chile and ignited a national debate over human rights and justice that pitted pro- and anti-­Pinochet groups and individuals against each other in the streets and in the media and severely strained civil-­military relations. For the human rights movement and other advocates of justice, the arrest was a moral victory fully warranted by the Chilean judiciary’s consistent refusal to prosecute Pinochet and his associates in state terrorism. Pinochet’s supporters countered that his arrest amounted to unjustified foreign intervention in Chilean affairs and an affront to national sovereignty. A foreign observer in Chile reported, “Just two months ago, any talk of human rights, of political accountability for the dictatorship, was relegated to the margins of Chilean politics. . . . Now, there is no topic of national discussion except human rights and the past and future of Pinochet.”38

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Agitation over the arrest was not limited to Chile; the two sides also confronted each other wielding placards and insults outside Pinochet’s rented London chalet and the British courts. Attempting to influence British public opinion as well as the judges, thousands of exiles who remained in Europe after the dictatorship’s end made the pilgrimage to support Pinochet’s extradition, and some members of human rights organizations flew from Santiago to London for the same purpose. Hundreds of Pinochet supporters, including army commander General Ricardo Izurieta, flew to London to support their man. Others, referred to derisively as the “rent-­a-­mob,” were allegedly paid to go.39 With Pinochet’s arrest, the fear that prolonged state terrorism had instilled in many Chileans began to dissipate. In the words of the AFDD president, “With the arrest, people began to talk. The fear began to diminish.”40 Sociologist Tomás Moulián said the arrest “brought Pinochet back to earth and caused the loss of that aura of invincibility—a sort of symbolic death.”41 Novelist Isabel Allende, visiting Santiago from her California home at the time of Pinochet’s arrest, experienced the overnight change in Chileans’ perceptions of Pinochet and the military: “I witnessed how within the course of a week a Pandora’s box was opened and all the things that had been hidden beneath layers and layers of silence began to emerge. The fear that was still in the air diminished rapidly. The military lost prestige and power in a matter of days. The tacit agreement to bury the truth was over, thanks to the actions of that Spanish judge.”42 Army commander Izurieta, whom Frei had appointed because of his relatively clean record on human rights, proved to be a dogged defender of Pinochet. He used the setting of the National Security Council to press Frei to pursue every avenue to secure Pinochet’s release, demands seconded in public statements from ranking active and retired officers. Under intense military pressure and keenly aware of the potential for destabilizing the government, Frei took a hard line with the British and Spanish governments. He insisted on Pinochet’s release on the grounds of his diplomatic immunity as a senator, former head of state, and alleged diplomatic mission. Frei dismissed Judge Garzón’s claim of universal jurisdiction and proclaimed the Chilean judiciary capable of prosecuting Pinochet. He withdrew his ambassadors from Madrid and London and sent his foreign minister to both capitals. The government was unable to present a united front to the British and the Spanish, however, as several Socialist members of the Chamber of Deputies, including Allende’s daughter Isabel (cousin of the novelist of the same name), traveled to London to testify in favor of Garzón’s extradition warrant.43

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For Chileans at home and the thousands who did not return from exile, the arrest and court proceedings tapped deep veins of memory, much as the Scilingo and subsequent confessions did in Argentina. More than the truth commission’s report, the annual September 11 clashes, or Pinochet’s induction into the Senate, the London episode revived memories that victims and their families had tried to suppress or learned to endure. For Alicia Lira, whose husband was executed, news of Pinochet’s arrest was “a great joy, unforgettable, a great victory” because Pinochet was “the owner of our lives, of our fear.”44 Gabriela Zúñiga, whose husband had been disappeared, felt that the news precipitated a “collective catharsis.”45 For Marcela Prádenas, exiled in Madrid after multiple detentions and tortures, the most important outcome of the arrest and its sequel was that “the tyrant was universally exposed.” The down side, she said, was “having to think constantly about what happened to you, and some people go under.”46 Alicia Margarita Piña Allende, whose husband and two brothers-­in-­law were executed, pinpointed the importance of London: “Until the arrest, Chileans didn’t believe the mothers and wives of the murdered and disappeared. That was the great thing about that event.”47 Reflecting nearly five years later, Isabel Allende, the late president’s daughter and then-­president of the Chamber of Deputies, confirmed the transcendence of the arrest and court proceedings: “No one today doubts that the human rights violations [were] state policy, carried out by state agents, paid for by the state.”48 Pinochet’s arrest had such a powerful impact on Chileans’ memories of torture that FASIC, which had offered therapy for torture victims for more than twenty years, greatly expanded its service in Santiago and opened new therapy programs in Calama and Valdivia.49 Chile settled into a protracted political crisis as Pinochet’s extradition hearing in London dragged on. Individuals and human rights organizations brought growing numbers of criminal charges against Pinochet and other military personnel to the courts, while workers, students, and Pinochet opponents in general rallied, marched, and went on strike. Pinochet supporters countered by mounting demonstrations and the right parties abandoned Congress, once for two weeks, to protest their colleague’s continuing detention.50 The atmosphere became even tenser in July 1999 when Judge Juan Guzmán of the Santiago Court of Appeals indicted five officers who led the October 1973 Caravan of Death, which involved dozens of summary executions, for secuestro calificado, the ongoing crime of kidnapping disappeared persons whose bodies had not been found. The Supreme Court

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had embraced this interpretation of the limits to the amnesty law in the 1998 Poblete Córdoba case, but the application of the charge to such a high-­profile figure as General Sergio Arellano Stark, commander of the Caravan of Death and a close Pinochet confidant, was a bold step. In response to the judge’s action, Izurieta assembled his generals to study the issue and afterward announced the army’s concern about the indictment and the precedent it might set. Despite the gravity of the situation, the military launched no Pinochet-­style threats to democratic continuity; instead, it demanded a punto final law as it had earlier, and again it was rebuffed.51 In 1999 Chilean youths adopted their Argentine counterparts’ practice of public shaming, the escrache. On October 1 members of Acción Verdad y Justicia Hijos–Chile (Sons and Daughters for Truth and Justice Action– Chile), launched their first event, which they called a funa (an action that ruins something), by demonstrating noisily outside the Santiago clinic of a medical doctor who had allegedly engaged extensively in torture. They held the second funa in late October at the suburban Santiago home of a reputed DINA torturer; other funas followed not only in Santiago but also in Valparaíso and Arica and continued through the end of 2000.52 Despite the turmoil and polarization caused by the London events, some Chileans retained their sense of humor. When the right-­wing mayor of the wealthy Santiago municipality of Providencia prohibited his sanitation workers from collecting garbage from the Spanish embassy there, the mayor of one of Santiago’s poorest municipalities responded by dispatching a truck to collect the accumulating trash. The truck carried a banner reading, “We pick up your garbage because you are already picking up ours.”53 The barrage of news from London combined with new revelations of human rights violations in Chile placed the military leadership in a defensive position. Both Pinochet’s former personal pilot and the son of former DINA director Manuel Contreras revealed that exhumed bodies of executed prisoners as well as living people had been disposed of in the Pacific Ocean. Challenged by growing evidence of criminal behavior by the Pinochet regime, the military’s version of recent national history began to unravel. In an attempt to close ranks against the alternate truth that was emerging, the army conducted seminars on bases throughout Chile to reinforce the “correct” understanding of that history.54 In London, the court trying Pinochet’s case ruled that his claim of immunity from prosecution was valid but sent the case to the House of Lords, the highest court of appeal. The justices reversed the ruling but

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narrowed the extraditable charges to cases of torture committed after September 1988, when both Chile and Britain had ratified the UN torture convention. In response, Judge Garzón submitted thirty-­t wo additional torture complaints, including six cases that led to death, from Pinochet’s last year and a half in office. Meanwhile, Sweden, France, Switzerland, and other countries joined Spain in seeking Pinochet’s extradition. Despite the extreme humiliation of his arrest, in various statements Pinochet revealed his continuing arrogance and lack of repentance. He told the London Sunday Telegraph, “I am a political prisoner. . . . I’m absolutely innocent of all charges. . . . We saved the country from becoming a satellite of the Soviet Union.”55 The legal battles proceeded slowly in the context of mounting political and economic pressures for Pinochet’s release that included quiet lobbying by British and Spanish corporations with large investments in Chile. Ultimately, the British decision hinged not on substantive questions about Pinochet’s immunity or the principles of universal jurisdiction and the invalidity of amnesties for crimes against humanity but on medical examinations conducted to determine his fitness, at age eighty-­four, to stand trial. After 503 days of house arrest and numerous court appearances, British authorities released Pinochet on March 2, 2000, on the humanitarian grounds of his age and failing health. He flew home in a Chilean air-­force jet to an elaborate welcoming ceremony staged by the military commanders and attended by hundreds of supporters. After exiting the airplane in a pushed wheelchair, he raised his cane triumphantly and walked slowly but steadily across the tarmac, proud that he had fooled the British. A convoy of four helicopters took Pinochet to the military hospital, flying over the presidential palace en route; Frei vigorously protested the welcoming ceremony and the flight path.56 As in Argentina, the precipitating events in Chile catalyzed efforts to commemorate victims and events, promote human rights education and culture, and forge memory. In an action that would have been unthinkable before these events, President Ricardo Lagos, who succeeded Frei in March 2000, inaugurated a statue of Allende in the Plaza de la Constitución facing the Moneda in June 2000; funded by private donations, the statue was only the fourth presidential memorial at the historic seat of Chilean democracy. The Universidad de Chile’s law school founded a Center for Human Rights in 2001. The government and human rights organizations promoted several more projects to reinforce human rights consciousness.57 The thirtieth anniversary of the coup elicited further commemoration.

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On September 11, 2003, Lagos ceremonially opened a reconstructed door on the side of the Moneda at Morandé 80 that the military had sealed to erase the memory of presidential aides exiting through it to their deaths and Allende’s body being carried out of the burning Moneda through the same door. The next month, several ranking figures from Allende’s government and the UP coalition that supported it who were imprisoned for a year following the coup on Dawson Island in the Straits of Magellan made a symbolic return visit to the frigid site. The National Stadium was declared a national monument to highlight and preserve the memory of what transpired there in the 1973 terror, and the Estadio Chile was renamed Víctor Jara Stadium in honor of the folksinger murdered there. In November 2003 the minister of education decreed that all schools were required to exhibit the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Cities and towns throughout the country held ceremonies and erected monuments to the victims of state terrorism, and numerous streets and plazas were renamed to honor Salvador Allende.58 In Argentina a series of tenth and twentieth anniversaries of key events in the dirty war and the democratic transition, combined with the Scilingo confessions and ancillary developments, launched a reinvigorated assault on impunity. In Chile the twenty-­fifth anniversary year of the military coup and incidents directly involving Pinochet during 1998, especially his arrest and trial in London, accelerated the erosion of impunity that had begun with the 1997 judicial reforms. In both countries the human rights movements, thwarted after 1990, mounted new efforts to take advantage of the potential opening provided by the precipitating events, and the international human rights lobby weighed in vigorously. For many former practitioners of state terrorism, the pleasant anticipation of a lifetime of impunity would soon begin to fade before a new reality of subpoenas, courtrooms, and prison cells.

CHAPTER 6

The Eclipse of Impunity

The precipitating events that occurred from 1994 through 1996 in Argentina and in 1998 in Chile shook both countries to their cores. The anniversaries, the Scilingo and subsequent confessions, Balza’s speech, and Pinochet’s seating as senator-­for-­life and particularly his 1998 arrest in London reenergized the domestic human rights movements, increased public support for justice, and heightened the involvement of the international human rights lobby. Nonetheless, the precipitating events did not lead immediately to the end of impunity. In Chile progress was not linear; the pattern was not a sudden collapse but rather an erosion of impunity on a case-­by-­case basis. In Argentina most of the former repressors retained their impunity until a reformed Supreme Court invalidated the two laws that shielded all but the beneficiaries of Menem’s pardons from prosecution. Two primary obstacles confronted the mobilized advocates of justice. First, the legal foundations of impunity had to be undermined; new legal approaches had to be developed, and judges had to be willing to implement them to overcome the punto final and due obedience laws and Menem’s pardons in Argentina and Pinochet’s amnesty law in Chile. The second obstacle was the militaries’ unwavering opposition to accountability for human rights violations committed during the state terrorist regimes. Favoring the cause of justice, on the other hand, was the advance of democratic consolidation. The series of anniversaries and confessions in Argentina came more than a decade after that country’s transition to democracy, and the anniversary and incidents involving Pinochet occurred eight years after the inauguration of civilian government in Chile. By 1994–1996 and 1998, respectively, the passage of time and the weathering of several crises in civil-­military relations had produced a growing con-

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fidence in the endurance of civilian governance, reinforced by the ascendancy of the new pan-­Latin American culture of democracy that became explicit and binding in the 2001 OAS Democratic Charter.1 Moreover, by the time the precipitating events catalyzed challenges to impunity, increasing numbers of the perpetrators of major human rights violations had retired from the military, particularly in Argentina, moderating the impact of investigations and trials on the ranks of active service personnel and thus on military readiness. Yet the militaries would not yield their impunity easily, and each forward step on the legal front tested their willingness to submit to civilian courts. The narrative of the erosion of impunity was interwoven with that of a gradual military retreat from intransigent opposition to accountability. The military establishments initially resisted, then temporized, and eventually relented in their struggle to retain impunity. The year 2004 marked a watershed when under new leadership the military institutions of both countries publicly broke with their recent past, embraced a democratic future, and abandoned their concerted opposition to justice for former repressors within their ranks, whether active or retired. Finally, events in 2005 sealed the collapse of impunity after a decade and a half of challenge by the domestic and international human rights lobbies.2

The Erosion and Collapse of Impunity in Argentina Taking advantage of their weakened position following the Malvinas/ Falklands debacle, President Alfonsín took several steps to subordinate and further weaken the armed forces. In addition to amending the Code of Military Justice and putting the junta leaders on trial, Alfonsín retired more than half the senior officer corps and by the end of his term slashed the military budget from over a third of public expenditure late in the dictatorship to 18 percent and from 3.5 percent to 1.9 percent of gross domestic product. He reduced military salaries, cut the number of conscripts by more than half, and restructured the Ministry of Defense to strengthen civilian authority.3 The administration also attempted to reshape the culture that had underpinned the Proceso by reforming military education and terminating the military’s internal security role. This was a difficult challenge for Alfonsín given the resistance to civilian influence in what for decades had been an autonomous military domain. After three years of debate, Congress in 1988 passed the Law of Defense that limited the military’s role to

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external defense; however, enforcing the distinction between internal and external security proved difficult. Two later laws, the Internal Security Law (1992) and the National Intelligence Law (2001), further refined the boundaries between external and internal intelligence functions, but enforcement was spotty until Néstor Kirchner’s presidency (2003–2007).4 Military men resented what they considered reprisals against their institutions as well as the investigations, indictments, and trials to which they were subjected in the early post-­Proceso years. This perceived persecution gave rise to the Carapintada rebellions that laid bare the weakness of civilian authority and led to the punto final and due obedience laws. By the end of Alfonsín’s term in 1989, civilian control over the military was tentative at best, but it was evident that the military’s recent acts of insubordination had been based on professional grievances rather than a desire to break the democratic regime and recover political control of the country.5 President Menem’s pardons completed the establishment of impunity and reversed the justice done while appearing to close the door to justice in the future. While Menem thus tried to bury the past, he also attempted with considerable success to rein in the armed forces and subordinate them to civilian authority. He persuaded the army command to put down a fourth Carapintada uprising in December 1990, and he put the rebels on trial; their leader, Mohamed Alí Seineldín, received a life sentence, sending the message that military discipline had been restored. Building on Alfonsín’s work, Menem proclaimed the need for shared sacrifice within the framework of his own austerity budgets; Menem further cut military salaries and reduced the military budget to 10.6 percent of public expenditure and 1.3 percent of gross domestic product by 1993 while continuing to cut the number of army conscripts to a low of 17,000 in 1994. He abolished conscription that year in response to public outcry over the murder of a conscript on a military base. In doing so Menem fulfilled a promise that Alfonsín was unable to keep, to make Argentina’s armed forces all-­ volunteer institutions.6 While curtailing military power, Menem offered concessions such as approving promotions of known practitioners of state terrorism over the strenuous objections of the human rights movement, refusing extradition requests from several European countries, and allowing the military to recover some of its domestic intelligence role that Alfonsín had attempted to end. Menem charted a new course by engaging the armed forces in international missions beginning in 1990 when two Argentine navy ships joined the international blockade of Iraq during the Gulf War. There-

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after the military participated in numerous international peacekeeping operations, which provided it with a new mission and put it in close contact with military personnel from democratic countries where subordination to civilian authority was the rule. The Argentine military’s commitment to international peacekeeping was so firm that it established a special school to train its own as well as troops from the region in the methods peculiar to that mission.7 Alfonsín’s success in shrinking the military and Menem’s in continuing to reduce it while asserting civilian control benefited from a strong reaction against the Proceso. Unlike the numerous military administrations since 1930 and despite substantial civilian support for the dirty war, leaders of the 1976–1983 regime managed to offend almost all segments of Argentine society, from elites to working class, from left to right, owing to the unprecedented levels of repression, failed economic policies, and the ignominious outcome of the Malvinas/Falklands War. Even some of those elites and middle-­class persons who supported the war against the left had their economic interests jeopardized and in numerous cases their property stolen by corrupt operatives of the military regime. As a result, public-­opinion polls conducted in the 1980s and 1990s consistently revealed strong support for democracy and an implicit rejection of military rule regardless of economic or political conditions.8 Developments following the end of the Proceso, including the CONADEP report, the trial of the juntas, and the rise of human rights consciousness across civil society, appeared to have quenched the military’s thirst for political power. Thus as early as 1992, a hard-­line, unrepentant general and former repressor, General Luciano B. Menéndez, proclaimed that the days of military coups in Argentina were over. One of the 1994 constitutional amendments, agreed to by both major parties and approved by plebiscite, subjected authors of coups or attempted coups to the charge of treason and, if convicted, to life in prison without the possibility of a presidential pardon, substantially raising the potential cost of attempting to overthrow a government. By 2000, according to an authority on Latin American democracy, Argentina was one of only six countries in the region in which the military was firmly under civilian control.9 The military was apparently placated by Menem’s pardons and concessions and by its new international mission despite the president’s measures to reduce its power and subject it to civilian authority. As a result, the military had not been very visible in the political arena for several years when the precipitating events rocked Argentina beginning in 1994. However, the military’s posture changed with the renewal of demands for justice

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in the wake of the Scilingo revelations and army commander Balza’s controversial April 1995 speech denouncing the dirty war. Detecting an incipient threat to their impunity, many within the officer corps went on the offensive. In a public letter, seventy retired generals denounced Balza’s position and restated the standard military interpretation of the Proceso. In a televised appearance, Admiral Massera denounced CONADEP’s report Nunca más as a “novel by Sábato” (writer Ernesto Sábato, who had chaired CONADEP) and denied that any human rights had been violated at ESMA. In an effort to counter Balza’s assertions as well as the “truth” broadcast by the “Marxist” human rights movement, the Círculo Militar began work on a tribute to the military and police fallen in the “war against subversion.” The two-­volume publication included biographies of all 495 military and police killed between 1960 (the beginning of subversion, according to the military) and the final lethal action by leftists, the 1989 La Tablada attack, along with press accounts of the terrorist acts that killed them. The introduction lauded the military for fighting and winning “a just and necessary war” against “terrorist aggression planned abroad”—a war that “prevented the installation of an institutional regime . . . today advocated by Mrs. Bonafini” (president of the hard-­line Madres). The army also established a Museum of Subversion at its Campo de Mayo base but did not threaten a rebellion or coup.10 Meanwhile, energized by the Scilingo effect, the human rights organizations specializing in legal work, CELS and APDH, redoubled their efforts to develop legal strategies for achieving justice. They focused on a crime not covered by the 1987 due obedience law for which the beneficiaries of Menem’s pardons had neither been convicted nor pardoned: “appropriation of minors and substitution of identity,” or the practice of offering babies born to captive women to pro-­military families for adoption. Drawing on the Abuelas’ extensive research on missing children, human rights organizations began filing criminal charges in 1996, and two years later several ranking officers, including former junta leaders Videla and Massera, were detained. By 2000, more than one hundred baby abductions were under investigation.11 CELS’s initiative to introduce international human rights law into Argentine courts, the rapid evolution of international human rights jurisprudence, and heightened pressures from abroad soon opened new avenues for investigations and potential prosecutions. Citing a 1995 Inter-­ American Commission on Human Rights ruling in the case of Ecuadorian Manuel Bolaños, a federal court in La Plata ruled in 1998 that relatives of the disappeared had the “right to truth” about the fates of their family members, and it ordered investigations into all 1,800 inactive cases of dis-

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appearance in its jurisdiction. The following year, the Argentine government settled a case that Carmen Lapacó, the mother of a disappeared woman, had taken to the Inter-­American Commission on Human Rights. In the settlement, the government agreed to accept and guarantee the right to truth about the disappeared. These developments required hundreds of military men who had enjoyed a decade of complete impunity to testify about the disappeared.12 Although forceful, the military reaction to the revival of investigations was muted so long as General Balza remained army commander. Nonetheless, the military exerted intense pressure to derail a proposal for a new truth commission based on the right-­to-­t ruth principle. After Balza’s 1999 retirement military resistance sharpened. Balza’s successor, General Ricardo Brinzoni, publicly denied systematic baby abductions, calling the charges “persecution of the armed forces by the judicial branch.”13 In March 2000 the Supreme Council, the military high court, claimed jurisdiction over baby-­abduction cases but was rebuffed by civilian judges. Ranking officers visited jailed colleagues to show solidarity, and judges and the human rights movement were subjected to intimidation, threats, and office break-­ins. These actions created a less extreme version of the climate of military reaction from the 1985 trial of the juntas to Menem’s 1990 pardons. Menem’s successor, President Fernando de la Rúa (1999– 2001) of the Radical Party, pledged cooperation on human rights issues during his campaign but took a largely hands-­off approach to the military backlash. He continued Menem’s practices of promoting officers accused of human rights violations and denying European countries’ extradition requests for former repressors.14 In addition to new developments in the courts, the Argentine Congress was taking actions to weaken impunity by the late 1990s. In 1998 Congress repealed the punto final and due obedience laws and enacted a law to open CONADEP’s records to persons claiming human rights violations. However, the Menem-­packed Supreme Court ruled that the repeals were not retroactive and continued in other ways to resist pressures for justice.15 In a major turning point, federal Judge Gabriel Cavallo, citing international jurisprudence and the Inter-­American Commission’s and Court’s stance on the invalidity of amnesties, ruled the punto final and due obedience laws unconstitutional in March 2001. Other courts followed Cavallo’s groundbreaking decision, and the Buenos Aires Appeals Court upheld the rulings in November 2001. Meanwhile, international and Argentine human rights organizations intensified pressure on the recalcitrant Supreme Court to uphold the lower courts’ rulings.16 In December 2001 a severe economic, social, and political crisis rocked

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Argentina and upstaged the movement toward justice. An economic decline that began in the mid-­1990s culminated when the Argentine peso, pegged to the U.S. dollar since the early 1990s, lost two-­thirds of its value overnight. The government defaulted on international and domestic debts and froze bank accounts; unemployment mushroomed. Riots on December 20 and 21 resulted in the deaths of twenty-­five people and led President de la Rúa to resign. Argentina then had three interim presidents within two weeks, until Peronist Eduardo Duhalde managed to form a relatively stable interim government on January 2, 2002. In Argentina’s worst economic crisis since the global Great Depression, interest in justice for past human rights violations was eclipsed by very real, compelling concerns for day-­to-­day survival and for Argentina’s future.17 Despite the gravity of the economic crisis and the resulting political and social instability, the military did not step forward to save the patria. In the past, a collapse of such magnitude undoubtedly would have led the military to seize power to impose order and stabilize the country. Instead, each of the presidents who followed de la Rúa took office by the constitutionally prescribed rules of succession. Explaining the military’s inaction in the crisis, army commander Brinzoni confirmed General Menéndez’s 1992 statement, saying that “the military option was no longer possible . . . because both civilians and the military preferred it that way.” General Julio Hang said the armed forces were strictly military institutions lacking the capacity to deal with civilian issues.18 Whether reflecting military respect for civilian authority or reluctance to assume responsibility for surmounting such a severe crisis, or both, the survival of constitutional government was a milestone in democratic consolidation. Human rights advocates were pleased by the 2002 arrests of third junta leader General Leopoldo Galtieri and forty-­t wo others on charges of abduction, torture, and execution of twenty persons in 1980 and by the arrests’ potential for setting precedent. The April 2003 election likewise boded well for the defeat of impunity. Attempting a comeback, Carlos Menem finished first in a crowded field, while fellow Peronist Néstor Kirchner, the little-­known governor of the lightly populated Patagonian province of Santa Cruz, finished second, neither acquiring a majority of the votes. However, facing polls predicting his defeat in the run-­off election, Menem withdrew, leaving Kirchner as president-­elect with a strong Peronist majority in both houses of Congress.19 Kirchner hailed from the left wing of Peronism. He and his wife, Cristina Fernández, were persecuted during the Proceso. From his inauguration on May 25, 2003, the charisma and dynamism that Kirchner displayed

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gave rise to the term “the K factor,” and the president directed much of his energy toward ending impunity. In his first speech to Congress, he said, “I am part of a decimated generation,” and he indicated that his human rights policy would be based on “memory, truth, and justice.” Despite the overwhelming challenges of addressing massive unemployment, poverty, and the pressures brought by foreign and domestic creditors, Kirchner immediately began addressing impunity. Hosting the Madres in the presidential palace, he self-­identified as “a son of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo.” Saying that he wanted military commanders “committed to the future, not to the past,” Kirchner retired thirty-­one generals and fifteen admirals, approximately three quarters of the army’s and half of the navy’s and air force’s top brass, and appointed branch commanders born a generation after the Proceso leaders. He also purged the federal police. Looking to the unresolved issues of the dirty war, Kirchner pushed for the immediate annulment of the punto final and due obedience laws rather than awaiting a Supreme Court ruling for prosecutions to proceed. Congress complied in August 2003 with language indicating retroactivity. Kirchner changed his predecessors’ policy of prohibiting the extradition of Argentines accused of violating the human rights of foreign nationals.20 Kirchner quickly took aim at the Supreme Court; still dominated by Menem appointees, it was the last judicial impediment to overcoming impunity. Charging five of the nine justices with corruption, he was able to secure their resignations or removal. Kirchner also proposed and Congress enacted changes in the Supreme Court that made its deliberations and decision making more transparent, creating a climate favorable to additional progress on justice. Even while awaiting a Supreme Court decision on the punto final and due obedience laws, some judges began ruling that Menem’s pardons, as a form of amnesty, were unconstitutional. Not since Alfonsín’s first two years in office had the prospects for justice been so bright.21 Kirchner’s most dramatic actions against impunity for past human rights violations took place on March 24, 2004, the twenty-­eighth anniversary of the coup that launched the Proceso. In the morning, newly appointed army commander General Roberto Bendini, with the president, the cabinet, and ranking officers in attendance, removed the portraits of former junta leaders and presidents Videla and Bignone from the gallery of directors of the Colegio Militar (Military Academy). Kirchner proclaimed, “The removal of the portraits marks a clear decision of the entire country, the armed forces, the army, to end a lamentable period for our country. March 24 should become the living conscience of that which

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must never again (nunca más) happen.” Two generals—but only two—submitted their retirement papers in protest. One of them wrote to his fellow generals protesting “the actions that devalue the institution (the army) and require it to abandon a history full of grandeur, honor, and dignity.” Ex-­dictator Videla, under house arrest, called to congratulate the newly retired general for his “attitude.”22 In a ceremony at ESMA later the same day the portraits were removed, Kirchner moved a major goal of human rights advocates and the city of Buenos Aires toward reality by announcing that the naval facility, the Argentina Auschwitz Menem tried to raze, would be converted to a museum of memory. The ceremony began with speeches by a young woman and young man born in ESMA to mothers who were subsequently murdered. Referring to the massive and systematic human rights violations carried out at ESMA, Kirchner said, “I come to ask for forgiveness on behalf of the state for the shame of having remained silent about these atrocities during twenty years of democracy. And to those who committed these macabre and sinister acts, now we can call you what you are by name: you are murderers who have been repudiated by the people.” Former president Alfonsín was deeply offended by the “silent” remark; Kirchner called him to apologize. In conjunction with Kirchner’s remarks, new navy commander Admiral Jorge Godoy publicly acknowledged what everyone knew but the navy had consistently denied, that ESMA had housed a major secret detention center and the navy had practiced state terrorism.23 March 24, 2004, marked the apparent end of a seventy-­four-­year period in which the military was Argentina’s dominant political force, whether directly holding power or exercising it behind the scenes. While Alfonsín failed to achieve it, the convergence of many factors and the passage of time seemed to have ended what he had called Argentina’s “historic cycle of impunity.” The persistence of human rights advocacy, the work of Alfonsín and Menem to subordinate the military, judicial receptivity to new law and jurisprudence, the rise of an inter-­American culture of democracy, the vigorous and determined actions of President Kirchner, and the ascendance of a new generation of military leadership brought an end to the military’s resistance to justice and to its impunity. On June 14, 2005, the Supreme Court upheld the appellate court’s ruling that the punto final and due obedience laws were unconstitutional, at the same time validating the 2003 law that annulled the 1986 and 1987 laws. The vote of seven in favor, one opposed, and one abstention opened the way for the prosecution of hundreds of individuals for human rights crimes committed during the dirty war. Eleven Argentine human rights

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organizations released a statement that said, “The years of struggle have not been in vain. We are convinced that if we continue to persevere, we will succeed in putting every genocida [practitioner of genocide] where he belongs: in prison.”24 Menem’s pardons, the last shield for a few, immediately became the next target of the human rights movement. Even new army commander Bendini called on the Supreme Court to annul the pardons on the grounds that if they stood, personnel from the lower ranks would be subject to prosecution while many from the upper ranks would not.25 However, with precedents set in the lower courts and the Supreme Court reformed, annulment of the pardons was already under way.

The Decline and Demise of Impunity in Chile While Argentine civil-­military relations had changed substantially between the establishment of impunity in 1990 and the precipitating events of 1994–1996, the pattern in Chile was different. Given the military’s direct political power, its constitutionally sanctioned virtual autonomy, and Pinochet’s continuance as army commander, civil-­military relations changed little from Aylwin’s 1990 inauguration to the 1998 precipitating events. The few attempts to address the military’s continuing power through constitutional amendments were predictably unsuccessful.26 Pinochet was not subtle about limiting the power of the new protected democracy that he had designed. Prior to Aylwin’s election, he had warned against any attempt to repeal the amnesty law or to narrow the purview of military justice. He broadcast his interpretation of the unwritten terms of the transition: “The day they touch one of my men, the rule of law [estado de derecho] will be over.”27 On the coup anniversary in 1990, Pinochet declared that the army “would have not a moment of doubt in acting as before” should the circumstances of 1973 be repeated.28 He frequently reminded his foes of this position with public warnings and threats, sometimes delivered personally and often through retired officers and their organization. Symbolic actions and images in the media of a stern, uniformed Pinochet reinforced the verbal warnings. Reacting to the critical nature of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report, made public on March 4, 1991, Pinochet repeated his threat against prosecutions of military personnel: “The army of Chile solemnly declares that it will not accept being . . . accused for having saved the liberty and sovereignty of the fatherland.”29 While Aylwin pursued justice “to the extent possible,” Pinochet and

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the military worked to reinforce impunity in a number of ways. The soft approach involved preserving the military’s version of recent history that the dictatorship had implanted through the power of its propaganda machine, absolute control of the media and school curricula, and fear. Draconian press laws left over from the dictatorship and the self-­censorship practiced by the mass media, a habit learned under Pinochet that proved difficult to break, facilitated the military’s task. It was not until the twentieth anniversary of the coup in 1993 that the mainstream media for the first time explored the coup in depth, but even then the inquiry did not extend beyond the events surrounding September 11, 1973, to the ensuing dictatorship itself.30 Pinochet and the military constantly defended their legacy as victors in a real war against Marxism and subversion, and they were proud of having saved the patria. From their perspective, any questioning of that narrative amounted to an unpatriotic attack on the military’s prestige. In this vein, future army commander Ricardo Izurieta chided his fellow Chileans in a June 1990 speech: “Many of those who censure us . . . today can live peacefully in the country and fight for the perfection of democracy. This is thanks to the fact that those men at arms fought, exercised vigilance, ran risks, and suffered losses, which those who now benefit from our sacrifice never felt or suffered.”31 The dictatorship had established September 11, the date of the coup, as a ubiquitous reminder of its heroic mission and made that date a code for the country’s salvation. Streets and plazas were renamed to honor that momentous day, including a large part of the multilane avenue connecting the wealthy barrio alto with downtown Santiago. Through 1998 the September 11 holiday celebrated Chile’s “second national independence”—its liberation from the Marxists—replete with elaborate military ceremonies.32 Adding a new weapon to the arsenal without the government’s knowledge or authorization, Pinochet in 1990 proclaimed the “month of the army,” a period of parades, pronouncements, and self-­ congratulations extending from the August 20 birthday of nation founder Bernardo O’Higgins through the September 18 anniversary of independence to September 19, the traditional Day of the Army.33 Another means of keeping justice at bay was to constantly remind Chileans that the democracy Pinochet left in place, albeit flawed, was a gift that he could take back at any time. The army commander consistently showed his contempt for civilian government by ignoring his nominal superior, the minister of defense, and making decisions affecting the army and the country without consultation. He snubbed the president,

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often delivering his messages through a subordinate. As a daily reminder of his continuing power, Pinochet traveled wherever his business or pleasure took him in a motorcade that overshadowed the president’s; it consisted of three armored Mercedes-­Benzes carrying bodyguards, two other automobiles, and an ambulance carrying his personal physician.34 Pinochet reacted decisively whenever the government crossed the behavioral line that he had drawn. On December 19, 1990, nine months after surrendering the title of president, he showed his annoyance with a congressional investigation into his son’s allegedly corrupt financial dealings by moving all personnel under his command into their barracks and putting the army on a nationwide alert without informing the minister of defense. Occurring only sixteen days after the fourth Carapintada revolt in Argentina, this action, which the general called an exercise of security, readiness, and coordination, sparked fears of a coup and led Congress to quickly drop the offending investigation.35 In response to Aylwin’s demands for knowledge of the disappeared, the Supreme Court in 1992 ruled that cases of disappeared persons could be investigated while prosecution was still proscribed. As the investigations proceeded and the number of military personnel summoned to the courts grew, Pinochet’s patience wore thin. The commander was also perturbed by news of the revival of the investigation into his son’s financial dealings—the so-­called pinocheques affair. On May 28, 1993, while President Aylwin was visiting Europe, Pinochet put the army on alert without consulting the minister of defense and ordered troops in full battle dress to surround the presidential palace, causing renewed fears of a coup. The event became known as the Boinazo, for the soldiers’ black berets (boínas).36 Unable to remove Pinochet as army commander, Aylwin unsuccessfully demanded his resignation on several occasions. Aylwin did use his authority to approve or block promotions in order to force retirements, much to Pinochet’s annoyance. Pinochet’s view was that his decisions were final and that the president was merely a conduit between the army commander and the comptroller general, who reviewed documents for correctness and legality. Aylwin, on the other hand, relied on the language of the military code, which required a decreto supremo for promotions to the highest ranks, which only the president could issue. Even General Jorge Ballerino, Pinochet’s right-­hand man, was denied promotion to army vice-­commander in 1993.37 President Frei Ruiz-­ Tagle likewise faced challenges to exercising civilian authority over the military.38 The greatest of these prior to Pino-

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chet’s arrest in London involved former DINA commander Manuel Contreras and his deputy Pedro Espinoza; they were excluded from the amnesty law and convicted in November 1993 for the murders of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt in Washington, DC. After the Supreme Court upheld their convictions in May 1995, the two refused to surrender to the authorities. Taking refuge in various military facilities, Espinoza defied the Supreme Court for a month and Contreras for more than four months before surrendering to serve their sentences at Punta Peuco, a new, comfortable, military-­staffed prison built to house military personnel convicted of human rights crimes.39 Prior to the March 1998 expiration of Pinochet’s term as army chief, Frei used his constitutional authority to appoint the commanders as a means of inducing change in the military. Limited to selecting from a slate of the five most senior officers in each branch, Frei passed over the first four on the army’s list, including Pinochet’s preferred successor, and appointed the most junior and the youngest, General Ricardo Izurieta. Born in 1943, a generation after Pinochet, Izurieta was a captain in 1973, attained the rank of general in 1990, and was the least tainted by state terrorism of the five eligible officers. Signaling a break with his former commander’s policies, Izurieta forced more than two hundred officers suspected of major human rights violations into retirement.40 Despite the heightening of civil-­military tensions during the period of Pinochet’s detention in London, several developments suggested growing military accommodation to civilian governance. First, after electing two Christian Democratic presidents, the Concertación nominated Ricardo Lagos, a member of Salvador Allende’s Socialist Party, as its candidate for the 1999 election. Fears that a socialist candidacy for president could provoke a military reaction proved unfounded. Equally suggestive of change was the fact that Lagos’s opponent, the right-­wing candidate and former Pinochet collaborator Joaquín Lavín, distanced himself from the former dictator just as Lagos emphasized his own transformation since 1973. General Izurieta’s restrained reaction to Judge Guzmán’s July 1999 indictment of the principals in the Caravan of Death was another sign of changing times. And after Pinochet’s arrest in London the army’s journal, Memorial del Ejército, ceased publishing articles on the military’s role in politics, which had appeared frequently in the 1990s. These developments suggested a change of attitudes in the post-­Pinochet army as well as advances in democratic consolidation.41 Change was evident also in the Mesa de Diálogo (Roundtable), a group of religious, military, political, human rights, and professional figures tapped by the Frei government in 1999 to resolve the most conten-

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tious legacy of the dictatorship: the fates of nearly 1,200 disappeared persons who remained unaccounted for. The military as well as most human rights organizations had opposed the previous attempts at resolution, but in the tense atmosphere following Pinochet’s arrest, military men and some human rights advocates, over the objections of the AFDD and other groups of victims’ families, agreed for the first time to sit down together to resolve the viscerally divisive issue.42 In June 2000, a few months into Ricardo Lagos’s presidency, the Mesa de Diálogo called on all active and retired military with knowledge of disappearances to come forward anonymously; the information they divulged would be a “professional secret,” and churches, rather than the public venue of the courts, would receive the information in a discreet fashion for six months. The government would provide special judicial staff to expedite investigations based on that information, and the cases would be closed without the establishment of criminal liability. The military leadership supported the Mesa de Diálogo’s call for cooperation, but despite the promise of anonymity, the revival of demands for justice and the rapidly changing legal environment were intimidating to officers who until recently had taken their impunity for granted.43 The Mesa de Diálogo finished its work and released its report in January 2001, having tentatively resolved only 180 of the nearly 1,200 cases of disappearance. Thus for most families of the disappeared, the outcome of the exercise was the opposite of the closure it promised; it prolonged the uncertainty with which many had lived for nearly three decades. Some families of disappeared persons whose fates were discovered fared no better or even worse. In many of these cases the families received the horrifying news that their loved ones’ remains had been exhumed from mass graves and incinerated or dumped into the ocean to cover up evidence of orchestrated murders. The certainty that these families came away with was that they would never have bodies or even body parts to mourn and bury. In some instances, families received information on their loved ones only to be told different stories later. Despite the failure of the Mesa de Diálogo, its unanimous report broke new ground by acknowledging crimes perpetrated by military personnel and committing all parties, including the military, to “the firm decision not to permit their repetition.”44 Even the hard-­line AFDD acknowledged that something was accomplished: “The military has recognized for the first time in twenty-­seven years that it not only arrested, tortured, [and] murdered people, but also that it disappeared [them] using horrific practices of extermination.”45 Following the report’s release, a frustrated President Lagos demanded

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that the military provide more information, and a group of sons and daughters of disappeared parents sued the former military commanders for obstruction of justice. For the military, the outcome of the Mesa de Diálogo was a lost opportunity to begin making amends and restoring its standing and credibility. The parallel with the Argentine military’s rejection of Alfonsín’s offer to allow it to begin redeeming itself by prosecuting the former junta leaders is noteworthy and the results were similar; the Argentine military suffered consequences for its failure to cooperate, although the punto final and due obedience laws and Menem’s pardons delayed their day of reckoning, and the Chilean military would also pay a price for its intransigence. The Mesa de Diálogo started a process of expedited investigations that continued after the panel finished its work; the process soon assumed a dynamic of its own. Following the Mesa de Diálogo’s recommendation, the government expanded its investigating staff, appointing nine special judges dedicated exclusively to cases of disappearance and assigning them to the Ministry of the Interior’s human rights division. Fifty-­one other judges throughout the country were ordered to make cases of disappearance their priority, and the government enhanced the resources of the Medical Legal Service to expedite forensic investigations of remains. The administration repeatedly extended the special judges’ mandates, leading to more discoveries of hidden remains. Both active and retired officers again demanded a punto final law, but Lagos and the Concertación firmly rejected any nonjudicial approach to human rights crimes.46 In the twenty-­seven months between Pinochet’s arrest and the Mesa de Diálogo report, cracks began to appear in the wall of impunity. By implementing and extending the procedure that the Mesa de Diálogo recommended and insisting on the jurisdiction of the civilian courts, the government for the first time was able to seize the initiative but without directly controlling the process. Emboldened by Pinochet’s arrest, persuaded by the Chilean government’s rhetoric about being willing to prosecute the ex-­dictator, enabled by the 1997 judicial reform, and driven by a desire to redeem their tarnished reputations as accessories to state terrorism, the judges became more aggressive and creative. As the cases poured in and the international human rights lobby—the OAS, the UN, and the NGOs—applied pressure and provided encouragement and research, the courts initiated proceedings that less than two years earlier would have been unthinkable.47 Pinochet was charged in more than sixty criminal cases while in London and faced even more legal trouble after his return to Chile in March

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2000. Judge Juan Guzmán persuaded the Santiago Court of Appeals to lift Pinochet’s immunity from prosecution in the Caravan of Death case three months later; the following day, army commander Izurieta and 120 retired generals visited Pinochet at his home in a show of solidarity. The Supreme Court upheld the appellate court’s ruling in August, paving the way for a trial at a time when opinion polls showed that more than 70 percent of Chileans favored prosecution of the ex-­dictator.48 As his trial approached, Pinochet frequently defied court orders regarding fingerprinting, medical exams, and house arrest, causing concern among ranking army personnel that the general’s erratic and obstructionist behavior might further tarnish the institution’s reputation. Pinochet’s lawyers pushed for a London solution, and as the ultimate confrontation between impunity and justice loomed, the Santiago Court of Appeals “temporarily and partially” suspended the indictment in July 2001 on the grounds of mental incapacity. A year later, the Supreme Court cancelled the indictment to the dismay of the human rights movement and victims of state terrorism and their families. Pinochet then resigned his Senate seat, surrendering his congressional immunity from prosecution but, at least in theory, retaining his immunity as a former president. Critics argued that the Supreme Court ruling and the resignation were orchestrated to prevent a potentially insurmountable political crisis. By this time, Pinochet faced more than 250 charges, and dozens of military personnel had been indicted.49 In the midst of its deliberations on Pinochet, the Supreme Court in March 2001 struck a major blow to impunity by declining to rule on the validity of the 1978 amnesty law, tacitly inviting lower-­court judges to apply or not apply amnesty at their discretion. Reflecting some judges’ creativity, military personnel began facing charges not only for murder or secuestro calificado but also for crimes such as illicit association and, in the aftermath of the Mesa de Diálogo report, illegal exhumation. As cases of human rights violations multiplied, human rights lawyer Nelson Caucoto in August 2003 offered the opinion that the amnesty law had been “tacitly repealed.” Later that month President Lagos asked and answered rhetorically, “If I had the ability to revoke the amnesty, what would be the juridical effects? None.”50 In January 2002 President Lagos appointed fellow Socialist Party member Michelle Bachelet as his second minister of defense. She was the first woman to hold the position in any Latin American country; she was also the daughter of air force General Alberto Bachelet, an Allende supporter who died of torture at his colleagues’ hands following the coup. Michelle

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Bachelet herself had been detained, tortured at Villa Grimaldi, and exiled. Bachelet’s appointment, which clearly tested the state of civil-­military relations, elicited no public objection from the commanders who would report to her.51 Michelle Bachelet was elected president of Chile in 2006. Military responses to the erosion of impunity became even more measured under General Juan Emilio Cheyre, who succeeded Izurieta as army commander in March 2002. Cheyre, a twenty-­six-­year-­old lieutenant at the time of the coup, frequently voiced concern over the growing numbers of his men called to testify, indicted, and put on trial, but he expressed his views without the bluster and threats Pinochet had employed to keep justice at bay. Cheyre showed respect for the judiciary and pledged “absolute nonintervention” in judicial matters.52 Following the August 2002 conviction and sentencing of four generals and eight other officers for a high-­profile 1982 murder, Cheyre said, “We are interested in the truth, although it is painful. I believe it liberates and brings peace to the spirits.” This was “a crime that should never have been committed, that pains us and which we reject.”53 Under Cheyre, army personnel convicted of crimes were retired from service. The army commander even borrowed the evocative term from across the Andes in assuring his compatriots that the army would nunca más commit “excesses, crimes, and human rights violations.”54 Showing more signs of adapting to changing times, the military began engaging in both symbolic and material reparations. In September 2002 Cheyre sponsored a mass for Pinochet’s predecessor as army commander, General Carlos Prats, and his wife. DINA agents assassinated Prats, who supported the Allende government as coup threats mounted in 1973, and his wife in Buenos Aires in 1974. Attended by the couple’s daughters, the mass symbolically restored Prats’s rightful place in the army’s and the country’s history. In June 2003 the army, air force, and navy announced that personnel cashiered following the coup for not embracing the war on the left would receive indemnities for their severance and have their pensions restored.55 Developments in 2004 completed Pinochet’s marginalization and the military’s reevaluation of its past and its future. After being largely out of the public eye since the cancellation of his Caravan of Death trial, Pinochet began making news again in 2004. He gave an interview to a Miami television station that was widely replayed in Chile in which he appeared completely lucid; the Santiago Court of Appeals in May 2004 revoked his dementia status and thus his immunity from prosecution in the Operation Condor case. The Supreme Court concurred in August, and Pinochet was indicted in three major cases in the next two years.56

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In a major blow to the ex-­dictator, U.S. Senate investigators probing money laundering discovered in July 2004 that Washington, D.C.-­based Riggs Bank had hidden several million dollars in secret accounts for Pinochet and his family. The Riggs Bank revelations led to investigations in Chile for possible fraud and tax evasion; investigators found that Pinochet had hidden away some $27 million in illicit profits from kickbacks on arms sales and other schemes carried out during the dictatorship and his continuing commandership of the army. The financial scandal took a heavy toll on what remained of Pinochet’s standing, as the image of probity and selfless dedication to country that he had cultivated from the time of the coup evaporated. The financial scandal may have cost him more support on the right than the revelations about murder and disappearance and made him look more like an old-­fashioned, corrupt dictator than the savior of Chile.57 In November 2004 the Comisión Nacional sobre Prisión Política y Tortura (National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture, also known as the Valech Commission) issued its report. President Lagos had appointed the new truth commission the previous year to investigate human rights violations not examined by the Rettig Commission, whose purview was limited to deaths and disappearances. The Valech Commission received more than 35,000 testimonies in Chile and from exiles in forty foreign countries and determined that 27,255 persons had been imprisoned for political reasons and 94 percent of those were tortured.58 The commission recommended reparations for the victims including pensions and mental health care as well as other benefits; Congress enacted the reparations in December 2004. Addressing the Valech Commission report, Lagos asked, “How could we explain that ninety-­four percent of those arrested were tortured or that of the three thousand four hundred women who testified, practically all were subjected to some sort of sexual violence?”59 The report made clear that torture was policy under Pinochet, and the vast numbers of victims made it impossible to believe that Pinochet himself was unaware of the role of the DINA, the CNI, and the military branches’ and Carabineros’ intelligence services in the conduct of torture. These 2004 developments marked a turning point. Pinochet’s disgrace was profound. The eighty-­nine-­year-­old former dictator’s towering stature had shrunk and with it his ability to intimidate and instill fear. He had been unmasked as a thief as well as a murderer and became a pariah in the country that he claimed to have rescued from Marxist hordes. While valuing the economic and political results of his lengthy dictatorship, the political right, the business elites, and the military concluded that he was

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now a liability. Only a small cadre of loyalists stood with him. In the words of former navy commander Admiral Jorge Martínez Busch, “All of Chile has abandoned General Pinochet.”60 Meanwhile, impunity for other repressors continued to erode. By mid-­ 2004, more than three hundred active and retired military personnel including twenty-­one generals had been indicted, tried, or convicted for human rights crimes, most of them committed during the period covered by Pinochet’s amnesty law. Along with sensational headline cases involving the Caravan of Death, Operation Condor, and other murders and disappearances of prominent individuals were hundreds of cases involving rank-­and-­file leftist party members, campesinos, workers, and students. Some of the biggest names of the dictatorship had been tried along with obscure repressors with little or no name recognition. Dozens more who had been indicted in foreign countries or who faced international warrants had abandoned any hope of escape abroad after Pinochet’s encounter with universal jurisdiction.61 The chain of developments going back to the twenty-­fifth anniversary of the coup, followed by Pinochet’s arrest in London and indictments in Chile, the growing volume of trials, and the Riggs Bank scandal and culminating in the Valech Commission, led to a previously unimaginable mea culpa by army commander Cheyre. Days before the release of the Valech report in November 2004, he announced the elimination of the army’s intelligence battalion, a step both substantive and symbolic, and the introduction of human rights courses in the curriculum of military education. In language reminiscent of the Rettig Report, he admitted that the army had been in the grip of a Cold War mentality, “which accepted as legitimate all processes and methods of fighting to take and maintain power.” This Cold War mind-­set “made enemies of those who were merely adversaries and led to the reduction of respect for persons, their dignity, and their rights.” Human rights violations, he continued, “can never, for anyone, have an ethical justification.” In a dramatic conclusion, Cheyre announced, “The army of Chile has made the difficult and irreversible decision to assume institutional responsibility for all the punishable and morally unacceptable actions of the past.” The navy, air force, and Carabinero commanders followed with statements of their own, but none accepted institutional responsibility.62 But even as impunity continued to erode, a roadblock to further prog­ ress unexpectedly appeared. After numerous military demands for a punto final law had been rebuffed, the Supreme Court decided to impose a statute of limitations by its own authority. On January 25, 2005, the

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court announced that no more charges of human rights crimes committed under the dictatorship would be accepted after six months and that trials had to be started by July 25, 2005. The human rights movement, the Concertación, and even lower-­court judges objected vigorously; bending to the pressure, the high court rescinded the measure in May and allowed the flow of new cases to continue. But the Supreme Court’s action confirmed the tentative, nonlinear nature of the advance toward justice in Chile.63 At the time of Cheyre’s statement accepting responsibility for human rights violations, no institutional changes had occurred to alter the military’s direct political power or its virtual autonomy, in contrast to the profound reshaping of the Argentine military after the end of the Proceso. Yet, out from under the shadow of Pinochet, the Chilean military recast itself for the changing political environment. By the time Cheyre announced the army’s makeover, an authority on the topic writes, civil-­ military relations “were conducted as if the supremacy of the political power had already been formalized.”64 Early in the new millennium the military’s subordination to civilian authority was purely de facto; in 2005 civilian supremacy became de jure when the Concertación’s long-­held aspiration of removing the major authoritarian enclaves from the 1980 constitution was finally achieved—with the support of parties on the right and the approval of the military. A series of political developments after 1998 made constitutional reform possible. While the right parties had abandoned Pinochet after his disgrace, their continuing opposition to democratizing the constitution made them appear stuck in the dictatorship, potentially costing them electorally. The advantages the right derived from the authoritarian enclaves had diminished as Concertación appointees to the Senate, the National Security Council, and the Constitutional Tribunal replaced the original Pinochet appointees. At the conclusion of his term in 2006, Lagos would join Frei as senator-­for-­life, increasing the Concertación presence in the Senate. The moderation of the left was another factor. Many Socialists learned in exile to appreciate western European social democracy, renounced Marxism-­Leninism, and returned home “renovated” at the same time the communists had become marginalized. After fifteen years of Concertación presidents, including the Socialist Lagos, the economic model imposed by Pinochet and supported by the business elites and the right remained intact and made Chile prosperous; therefore to the right, the constraints on democracy imposed by the constitution no longer seemed necessary.65 Meanwhile, the military focused on the future rather than the past as

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it embraced modernization and, along with its Argentine counterpart, its new and growing role in international peacekeeping. With its finances secure and the military code intact, the military leaders saw no reason to oppose constitutional reform.66 The constitutional amendments enacted by Congress on September 22, 2005, essentially accomplished what Alywin and Frei had unsuccessfully attempted early in the postdictatorial era. The designated senators were eliminated along with senators-­for-­life. The reformed National Security Council had a civilian majority, was solely advisory to the president, and had no power of appointment to other agencies nor authority to approve or disapprove states of exception that a president might declare. The composition of the Constitutional Tribunal was democratized. The military’s role as guarantor of the institutional order was eliminated, and the president was empowered to remove military commanders at any time during their four-­year terms. The electoral code, however, was unaffected by the reform, leaving the right with the advantages inherent in the binomial system. After the constitution was amended, Pinochet’s 1978 amnesty law remained on the books but had sunk further into irrelevance—a relic of past times.67 By 2005, after a fifteen-­year quest for justice under democratic governments, victims of human rights violations, their families, and the domestic and international human rights movements achieved a major goal: ending impunity. At the time that impunity collapsed, few former repressors had been convicted and sentenced to prison. But the greatest impediment to justice was vanquished, and subsequent years would bring a torrent of criminal charges and prosecutions for human rights violations committed under state terrorism. With the military on the sidelines and prosecutors and judges acting on the basis of new jurisprudence on the invalidity of amnesties, hundreds of former repressors would finally be held accountable for their crimes. But it remained to be seen whether the defeat of impunity would lead to justice commensurate with the gravity of the human rights violations committed under state terrorism.

Conclusion

In this study I have attempted to explain how Argentine and Chilean human rights advocates, in conjunction with the international human rights lobby, accomplished a feat that has been achieved nowhere else in the world: ending impunity for all of those implicated in human rights violations committed under past repressive regimes. The process of undoing impunity entailed arduous tasks that lasted fifteen years. Overcoming impunity for all rather than for none or for a few selected human rights violators was the prerequisite to the judicial processes in the two countries; owing to their volume, duration, and indigenous character, these processes are unprecedented in the world. The impunity that prevailed in 1990 was constructed in very different ways in the two countries. In Argentina impunity was preceded by several years of success in achieving justice. Its weakened position following the Malvinas/Falklands War drove the military back to the barracks earlier than its leaders anticipated, leaving them no opportunity to erect defenses against prosecution other than a hastily adopted amnesty decree and the personnel and weaponry the military still possessed. This allowed the Alfonsín government to take the initiative in conducting trials of ranking officers that were designed, like those in Greece and elsewhere, to achieve selective justice in a limited time and bring closure to a dark period of national history. Alfonsín’s approach to justice was overwhelmed by the actions of the human rights movement, victims, and victims’ families who, encouraged by the postdictatorship climate of human rights construction and celebration, brought thousands of cases to the courts. The military reaction to this perceived persecution that Alfonsín had anticipated resulted in the 1986 punto final law, the 1987 due obedience law, and Menem’s 1989 and 1990 pardons. The laws and pardons un.

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did the justice done and erected an iron curtain of impunity that, despite the continuation of democracy, made the prospect of reviving the earlier momentum for justice appear remote. In Chile the transition from dictatorship to democracy allowed no such opportunity for holding human rights violators accountable, however temporarily. The Argentine dictatorship collapsed precipitously; the Pinochet regime came to a close in an orderly fashion according to the script that the regime had written. Pinochet had developed a shield of impunity in three stages. His amnesty decree law of April 1978 covered the bloodiest period of the dictatorship, exempting the great majority of repressors from prosecution. The 1980 constitution outlined a future elected government in which an essentially autonomous military would exercise direct political power, appointed senators would distort popular representation in Congress, Pinochet would enjoy congressional immunity from prosecution as a senator-­for-­life, and these and other authoritarian enclaves in the constitution would be almost impossible to amend. Finally, during the seventeen months between the 1988 plebiscite and the inauguration of the Aylwin government, Pinochet used his continuing dictatorial powers to pack the Supreme Court with loyalists, buttress military autonomy with a new charter, and extend his commandership of the army for eight years. Thus when the “protected democracy” that he had designed was inaugurated in 1990, impunity was firmly established and seemingly permanent. While the process of challenging and eventually overcoming impunity followed different courses in Argentina and Chile, the same forces that ultimately succeeded in that effort were at work in both countries. The first of these was forceful and persistent advocacy by the domestic human rights movements and, after a few years, by the international human rights lobby. When the 1973 coup launched state terrorism in Chile, the churches, particularly the Archdiocese of Santiago, took the lead in creating ad hoc organizations to aid refugees and victims; in 1975 the archdiocese founded the Vicaría de la Solidaridad. Under the leadership of Cardinal Archbishop Raúl Silva Henríquez, the church defended human rights to the extent it could, offered protection to victims’ organizations and other human rights groups that developed, and filed papers with the courts that accomplished little at the time but became invaluable later as records of human rights violations. At the onset of democracy in 1990, Chile’s dozens of human rights organizations shifted their focus from defending individuals against state terrorism to breaking down impunity for the crimes committed under the

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dictatorship. However, they faced crises of funding and support as their long-­established role as defender against repression ended, and their new task of bringing perpetrators to justice was daunting. Although some organizations disappeared and others contracted, the human rights movement survived and persisted in its quest to overcome impunity. In stark contrast to Chile, the Catholic hierarchy in Argentina supported state terrorism and denied protection to potential victims of human rights violations. Yet, driven by despair and hope, courageous mothers of disappeared people risked their lives to form the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, and the Abuelas and other groups followed. The legally oriented organizations CELS and APDH represented victims in the courts without immediate result but, as did the Vicaría in Chile, accumulated archives of documentation. The human rights movement was unable to stop the severe repression, but its activity called Argentines’ and the world’s attention to state terrorism. With the return of democracy in 1983 the human rights movement was at the forefront of the successful pursuit of justice that overwhelmed the courts. With the establishment of impunity in 1990, however, the movement faced a seemingly impossible task and, lacking broad support, went into decline. Like its Chilean counterpart, the Argentine human rights movement persisted and, when circumstances changed, was prepared to press vigorously to overcome impunity. The Argentine and Chilean human rights movements were not alone in their struggles against repression and, after 1990, against impunity. At the onset of state terrorism, the network of international human rights treaties was incomplete, and an effective international human rights lobby did not yet exist; the brutality of the Chilean coup and repression led to dramatic change. In response to the Chilean situation and to the spread of state terrorism to Argentina, the UN and inter-­American human rights agencies and international NGOs expanded and became much more active. The basic UN and inter-­American treaties entered into force, and international treaties outlawing torture and disappearance, both hallmarks of the Chilean and Argentine dictatorships, were drafted and put out for ratification. The legal environment within which human rights advocacy took place evolved over the years. Under state terrorism the judiciaries, completely controlled by the dictatorships, were complicit in the suppression of human rights. With the return of democracy in Argentina, many judges reversed course and aided in the pursuit of justice. However, as a result of the punto final and due obedience laws and Menem’s pardons, the legal environment changed again as the apparently insurmountable obstacles

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to overturning the laws and pardons stopped the momentum for justice of the first three years of democracy. President Menem’s support of reconciliation through amnesia and his packing of the Supreme Court with like-­minded justices further contributed to a legal environment hostile to the pursuit of justice. Pinochet took numerous measures to protect his and the military’s impunity. When the Aylwin administration sought to reform the judiciary to make it receptive to justice, the institutions of the protected democracy functioned as planned to preserve the status quo. Thus the legal environment in Chile was characterized by continuity from dictatorship to democracy, and the cornerstone of impunity, the 1978 amnesty law, remained in force. Facing formidable obstacles to overcoming impunity in their national courts, Argentine and Chilean advocates of justice turned increasingly to international human rights. The international human rights lobby took shape in response to the spread of repression through the Americas and around the world, and by the 1990s its advocacy had become an effective tool to complement the work of domestic movements. The UN greatly extended its reach by establishing the position of High Commissioner for Human Rights in 1993, criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia in 1993 and Rwanda in 1994, and the Rome Treaty for the International Criminal Court in 1998. Likewise, the Inter-­American Commission and Court vigorously promoted justice by demanding compliance with their rulings on the invalidity of amnesties for crimes against human rights, and international NGOs became ever more involved in the pursuit of justice. Chile and Argentina bound themselves legally to international human rights norms through constitutional amendments adopted in 1989 and 1994, respectively. Judicial reform was a key to creating a legal environment conducive to overturning impunity. This occurred first in Argentina, where the 1994 constitutional amendments resulting from Menem’s insistence on running for a second consecutive term included several provisions for modernizing the judicial system and making it more independent of executive control. Implementation of the major reforms was blocked, however, by Menem’s manipulation of the courts and his party’s dominance in Congress. In Chile, Aylwin’s attempts at judicial reform failed, but by 1997, the inadequacy of the judicial system in fighting crime and supporting the new economy enabled consensus on reform. With an expanded and reorganized Supreme Court, by 1998 only four Pinochet appointees remained among twenty-­one justices. Impunity began to erode in Chile

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with judicial reform; in Argentina, despite some lower court rulings that encouraged justice advocates, impunity remained robust until Kirchner’s presidency. Notable anniversaries of key events had major impacts on both countries in the mid- and late 1990s. In Argentina, the twentieth anniversary of the coup that installed the Proceso, the tenth anniversary of the publication of Nunca más, and the tenth of the trial of the juntas elicited memory, pain, and commemoration. In the midst of this span of anniversaries in 1994–1996, the televised confession of Adolfo Scilingo about death flights from ESMA brought about a renewed determination to resume the fight against impunity that had waned in the wake of the punto final and due obedience laws and Menem’s pardons. The Madres de Plaza de Mayo intensified their protests, lawyers at CELS and APDH searched for new legal approaches to overcome impunity, and some judges began implementing new jurisprudence from international sources and investigating and detaining military personnel for acts not covered by the pardons. The inter-­American human rights agencies, NGOs, and several foreign governments stepped up pressure on the Argentine government to stop defending impunity. Despite these efforts and some limited successes, the Menem government stood firm and, with the Supreme Court doing its bidding, rebuffed the renewed quest for justice generated by the precipitating events. In Chile 1998 marked the twenty-­fifth anniversary of the coup that overthrew democracy. That year also featured Augusto Pinochet starring in several dramas that, like the anniversary, stimulated memory and commemoration while molding public opinion toward support for justice. The first criminal charge against Pinochet to be accepted by the Chilean courts, the former dictator’s installation as senator-­for-­life, the conflict over the September 11 commemoration, and above all Pinochet’s arrest in London rekindled the deep-­seated antagonisms that had made Chile a nation of enemies while prompting the human rights movement to renewed activism. Coming just a year after judicial reform prepared the ground, the precipitating events accelerated the erosion of impunity. And unlike Menem in Argentina, the Frei government, while not actively committed to justice, did not stand in the way as impunity began to fray. By contrast Frei’s successor, Ricardo Lagos, put the weight of government behind the struggle for accountability. The eclipse of impunity in Argentina and Chile was a complex process in which setbacks alternated with advances. In both countries, new jurisprudence that emanated from domestic and international sources began

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to undermine the legal foundations of impunity. In tandem with judicial change and under a new generation of forward-­looking commanders, the militaries in both countries broke with their past and embraced a democratic future, ending their institutional resistance to justice for past human rights violations. In Argentina the forceful actions of President Kirchner, the Supreme Court’s 2005 decision on the unconstitutionality of the punto final and due obedience laws, and lower courts’ rulings against Menem’s pardons marked the end of impunity. In Chile several years of court decisions, the military’s about-­face, and the 2005 constitutional reforms that removed most of the constitution’s authoritarian enclaves and cemented civilian supremacy over the military ended impunity in that country. With the defeat of impunity, the doors to justice opened wide.

In the Aftermath of Collapse The following pages note some of the milestones along the path to justice following the collapse of impunity, beginning with Chile. Some of these developments were favorable for justice, others unfavorable. Overall, progress in bringing former repressors to justice has been real but uneven in Argentina and Chile.1 Seeking to force the implementation of its jurisprudence on the invalidity of amnesties for grave human rights violations, the Inter-­American Court of Human Rights in the 2006 Almonacid case ordered the Chilean government to ensure that Pinochet’s 1978 amnesty law would not be applied in that and future judicial cases. The Chilean Supreme Court had used the amnesty law sparingly over the previous few years to close criminal cases, and although the law remains on the books today, the Supreme Court has not invoked it in any cases since the Inter-­American Court’s 2006 ruling. On December 10, 2006, International Human Rights Day, Augusto C. Pinochet died at the age of ninety-­one with more than four hundred criminal charges pending against him. Denied a state funeral, he lay in state at the Escuela Militar, where thousands of supporters paid their final respects. In 2007 the Supreme Court took a turn toward the past. Invoking provisions of the penal code, justices began reducing sentences of some imprisoned repressors and, in the cases of some newly convicted human rights violators, dictating very lenient sentences, sometimes involving no prison time at all. This judicial behavior raised serious concerns among justice advocates.

Conclusion 123

In 2008 President Michelle Bachelet inaugurated a memorial honoring the seventy residents of the municipality of Paine who were killed or disappeared in October 1973. Paine, then a rural district near Santiago, suffered the highest per capita rate of murder and disappearance during the dictatorship. In 2009 a judge indicted 129 ex-­DINA operatives in the most sweeping single indictment to date. Six persons were arrested for the death of former president Eduardo Frei Montalva, whose presidency (1964–1970) preceded that of Salvador Allende. Frei died under mysterious circumstances in a Santiago clinic in 1982 following routine surgery. Sebastian Piñera, the candidate of the right-­wing coalition, was elected president in a January 2010 runoff election, ending Concertación control of the presidency. The Museum of Memory and Human Rights opened in 2010 in Santiago, and the National Institute of Human Rights began functioning the same year. Housed in the Ministry of the Interior, the institute was charged with promoting human rights in general and assisting plaintiffs with criminal charges for past human rights violations. Also in 2010 a new commission, commonly referred to as Valech II, was appointed to process claims of human rights violations that had accumulated since the Rettig Commission, the National Corporation of Reconciliation and Reparation that succeeded it, and the Valech Commission finished their work. Valech II reported 30 new cases of disappearance and execution for political reasons and 9,795 of political imprisonment and torture. In 2011 the authority of military courts over civilians, which had greatly expanded under the dictatorship and continued under democracy, was abolished. U.S. Navy Captain Ray E. Davis was indicted for the murders of two U.S. citizens, Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi Jr., days after the 1973 coup. Chile asked the United States to extradite Davis in the case on which the well-­known 1982 Costa-­G avras film Missing was based. Two events underscored the continuing deep division among Chileans. On September 11, more than a decade after the holiday was abolished, demonstrations against the coup and its legacies resulted in 45 injuries and 280 arrests. In November Cristián Labbé, mayor of the upscale Santiago municipality of Providencia and a former military man widely suspected of having been a torturer, hosted a well-­attended and hotly protested tribute to the imprisoned former ranking DINA officer Miguel Krasnoff, who had been sentenced to 144 years in 2006. A 2012 Human Rights Watch World Report expressed concern, for the second consecutive year, that the sentences handed down to convicted repressors were “unacceptably lenient.” Conservative justices lost the ma-

124 Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy

jority they had held since 2007 in the Supreme Court’s penal chamber, raising hopes among justice advocates that more appropriate sentencing would result. In Argentina the year 2006 was marked by the conclusion of the first trial for human rights violations since the Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that the punto final and due obedience laws were unconstitutional. In the trial former torturer Julio Simón was convicted and sentenced to prison. The hard-­line Madres de Plaza de Mayo held their last annual twenty-­ four-­hour march of resistance, declaring that with the Casa Rosada no longer occupied by enemies, further marches were unnecessary. Both groups of Madres continued the Thursday afternoon protests in the Plaza de Mayo, although with dwindling participation. Congress named March 24, the day of the coup that launched the Proceso, the Día Nacional de la Memoria por la Verdad y la Justicia (National Day of Memory for Truth and Justice). The government published a new edition of Nunca más with a prologue by the national secretary for human rights. In 2007 the Supreme Court began confirming lower-­court rulings that held Menem’s pardons unconstitutional. Proceso leaders Videla and Massera were among the first to have their pardons revoked. The federal government and the city of Buenos Aires signed an agreement to follow up President Kirchner’s 2004 commitment to create a museum of memory on the site of ESMA. A memorial wall bearing some nine thousand names of disappeared persons was inaugurated in the Parque de la Memoria. Vicar Christian von Wernich received a life sentence for numerous abductions, instances of torture, and murders. Cristina Fernández, wife of President Néstor Kirchner, was elected president, signaling continuity in attitude and policy affecting justice. In 2008, following a long series of measures reducing the power of the military, Congress abolished the system of military justice altogether, leaving military personnel subject to civilian courts in times of peace. In 2009 General Santiago Omar Riveros, former commander of Campo de Mayo, the country’s largest army base and, like ESMA, home to secret detention sites and death flights, was sentenced to life in prison. The long-­ anticipated trial of the naval officers who ran the secret detention center at ESMA began in December. In its annual report on human rights in Argentina, CELS declared 2010 “the year of trials.” Former first junta leader and president Videla received a life sentence for kidnapping, torture, and murder. During the trial, Videla for the first time took responsibility for the actions of army personnel under his command during the dirty war. Although past the

Conclusion 125

age of seventy and thus qualified for home arrest, he was remanded to a civilian prison. Admiral Massera died the same year, having escaped a second encounter with justice as a result of a 2002 stroke that left him demented. The federal Chamber of Deputies enacted a declaration stating that trials for human rights violations constituted a política de estado (policy of state). The legislature of the city of Buenos Aires adopted a similar resolution, and the Supreme Court formally committed the judiciary to continuing its postimpunity pursuit of justice. The ESMA trial concluded in October 2011 with twelve life sentences. Among those so sentenced was Captain Alfredo Astiz, the “blond angel of death” whose most notorious acts were the kidnapping and disappearance of two of the founding Madres de Plaza de Mayo and of two French nuns working with them. Cristina Fernández was reelected president. In 2012 another trial of personnel from ESMA got under way; involving sixty-­eight individuals, it was the largest trial to date for crimes against human rights. Videla, already serving his life term, was sentenced to an additional fifty years for baby abduction as a huge crowd followed the verdict on large screens outside the courtroom.

The Quality and Quantity of Justice The year 2005 marked the end of impunity in Argentina and Chile. Just as the struggle to overcome impunity followed different courses in the two countries, so has the process of bringing former repressors to justice. Table 1 numerically underscores the contrast between justice in Chile and Argentina. One of the most striking differences between Chilean and Argentine justice is the disparity in sentencing. The table indicates that Chilean judges have been quite lenient with human rights violators; on the basis on the very limited number of definitive sentences given, their Argentine counterparts have been much tougher on the same kinds of crimes. Another telling statistic is the number of convicted Chilean repressors serving prison time. Of 250 persons sentenced since 2000, only 62, or 25 percent, were in prison at the end of 2012. While the courts have generally issued short sentences, the situation became acute in 2007 when conservative justices became the majority in the Supreme Court’s sala penal (penal chamber) and began applying provisions of the Chilean penal code to reduce sentences already issued and to hand down sentences to newly convicted repressors that, in numerous cases, involved no prison time what-

126 Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy

Table 1. Trials, sentences, and incarcerations for crimes against human rights in Chile and Argentina through November 2012 Chile Number of active criminal cases Number of final judgments Number of sentences dictated Length of sentence  Zero to five years  Five to fifteen years  Fifteen to twenty years  Life Percentage of sentences involving incarceration Number of convicted given confirmed sentencesb Number and percent of convicted in prison Percentage held in military facility Percentage held in common prison Number held in preventive detention

Argentina

1,342 ca. 150 447

380 a ca. 10 16

294 (65.77%) 140 (31.32%) 10 (2.24%) 3 (0.67%) 24.0 250 62 (24.8%) 84.0 16.0 0

0 3 (18.75%) 5 (31.25%) 8 (50.0%) 100 15 11c (73.3%) 4.0 54.0d 684

Source: Adapted from Lorena Balardini and Cath Collins, “Juicios en Chile y Argentina: una aproximación en clave comparada,” CELS and Observatorio de Derechos Humanos, Universidad Diego Portales, 2012. a  Some 30 percent of these are “megacases”; though this term lacks a precise definition, it refers to numerous cases bundled together for trial. b  A substantial number have been convicted of more than one crime. c  The other 27 percent are under house arrest, as permitted at judicial discretion for those age seventy or over. d  Most of the rest are under house arrest.

ever. The words of a judge describing a Supreme Court justice capture this phenomenon: “Condena pero no encarcela” (He convicts but does not imprison).2 Human Rights Watch decried these sentences as “unacceptably lenient.” Conservatives became the minority in the penal chamber in 2012, yet critics believe that under President Sebastián Piñera the government’s human rights agencies have been less diligent than before in carrying out its legally mandated functions.3 The statistics on preventive detention in Argentina stand in sharp contrast with those on Chile. In November 2012, 684 individuals being processed by the Argentine judicial system were under detention, the majority in common jails and a third under house arrest. No Chileans implicated in human rights violations were under detention. Conditions of incarceration differ markedly between the two coun-

Conclusion 127

tries. Of the 62 Chileans serving prison time, 52, or 84 percent, were housed in special military prisons, primarily the Punta Peuco facility, which had been constructed specifically to hold military personnel convicted of human rights crimes and whose first residents were DINA leaders Contreras and Espinoza. Critics allege that the custodial personnel at the military prisons, who themselves are military men, function more like servants than guards. Of the eleven serving definitive sentences in Argentina, eight, or 73 percent, were housed in regular jails or prisons despite judges’ option to sentence older convicts to house arrest. The reasons for the differences in the justice rendered in the two countries are complex and beyond the scope of this work. However, it is fitting to briefly consider a major factor that accounts for those differences: the legacies of the state terrorist regimes. The Pinochet dictatorship tortured, killed, and disappeared, but it also restored order and property rights, created a dynamic economy, and left behind a political system that prevented a return of the turbulent politics of the 1960s and early 1970s. While the economic elites have benefited most from these legacies, a substantial proportion of the Chilean population also has embraced them, as reflected in public opinion polls and electoral outcomes from the 1988 plebiscite through the most recent elections.4 Thus leniency in sentencing may reflect the mixed record of the dictatorship as well as divided public opinion. In Argentina the Proceso left behind an economy in tatters and a political system that, minus the guerrillas, emerged from state terrorism little changed. The Proceso left no beneficial legacy, giving society at large, including the judiciary, no reason to consciously or subconsciously contemplate anything other than the crimes committed. In contrast to Chile, only a very small fringe in Argentina embraces the legacies of the 1976– 1983 dictatorship. In Chile a cost-­benefit analysis and a reading of public opinion might influence some judges toward leniency, but in Argentina public opinion strongly condemns the dictatorship and finds no benefit, only costs, to consider. The lexicon reflects the differing views of the dictatorships. The Pinochet regime is generally referred to as the “military government” or “military regime” and less commonly as the “dictatorship”; the term “state terrorism” is almost never used in Chile. In Argentina, “state terrorism” is ubiquitous.5 This glimpse of justice in Chile and Argentina demonstrates that the complete elimination of impunity does not lead automatically to the kind of justice that human rights advocates struggled so long and hard to achieve, even when many former repressors have been made to stand

128 Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy

naked before the law. In Argentina the first phase of justice was erased, and the second phase was delayed. It finally came thirty years after the coup that launched the Proceso and after a substantial number of the practitioners of state terrorism had cheated justice by dying. Despite the passage of time and a cumbersome appeals process that has slowed the pace of justice, progress has been made. The severity of final sentences handed down as of this writing, the preventive detention of almost all alleged repressors at any stage in their cases, the quickening pace of the judicial process, and the declaration establishing trials as state policy bode well for the prospects of justice satisfactory to many or most of the aggrieved and their supporters.6 In Chile the progress of nonjudicial or restorative justice has been impressive, particularly with the extension of recognition and reparation beyond the murdered and disappeared to the illegally detained and tortured. On the other hand, the justice delivered by the courts, although notable for the numbers of trials concluded and repressors convicted, has not met the hopes or expectations of human rights advocates or applied sentences, in many cases, remotely appropriate to the crimes committed.7 Shortcomings in the delivery of justice should not mask the remarkable, unprecedented course of overcoming impunity in Argentina and Chile. These are the first and so far the only countries to strip impunity not from a select few chosen to stand trial in search of exemplary justice and closure but from all identified human rights violators and some still to be discovered. In so doing, Chile and Argentina have set the bar high for advocates of justice in other countries with recent histories of severe repression.

Notes

Introduction 1. On trials before the current ones in Chile and Argentina, see Terence Roehrig, The Prosecution of Former Military Leaders in Newly Democratic Nations: The Cases of Argentina, Greece, and South Korea ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002); René Antonio Mayorga, “Democracy Dignified and an End to Impunity: Bolivia’s Military Dictatorship on Trial,” in Transitional Justice and the Rule of Law in New Democracies, edited by A. James McAdams (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1997), 61–92. 2. I borrow the term “justice cascade” from Kathryn Sikkink, The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions Are Changing World Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2011). Chapter 1: State Terrorism in the Southern Cone 1. This chapter is a synthesis of well-­known historical developments. Therefore, save for quotations and necessary explanations, end notes will be used to present brief bibliographies at the beginnings of major sections of the chapter. 2. On the Cuban Revolution and its impact on Latin America, see Hugh Thomas, Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom (New York: Harper and Row, 1971); Tad Szulc, Fidel Castro: A Critical Portrait (New York: William Morrow, 1986); Louis A. Pérez Jr., Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); Jorge I. Domínguez, To Make the World Safe for Revolution: Cuba’s Foreign Policy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989); Marifeli Pérez-­Stable, The Cuban Revolution: Origins, Course, and Legacy, 3rd edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Ernesto Che Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare, 3rd edition, with an introduction and case studies by Brian Loveman and Thomas M. Davies Jr. (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1997); and Thomas C. Wright, Latin America in the Era of the Cuban Revolution, revised edition (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001).

130 Notes to Pages 10–16

3. Herbert L. Matthews, The Cuban Story (New York: George Braziller, 1961), 185. 4. Quoted in Jaime Suchlicki, ed., Cuba, Castro, and Revolution (Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1972), 196. 5. On Chilean politics of the 1960s and early 1970s, see Michael Fleet, The Rise and Fall of Chilean Christian Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985); Paul E. Sigmund, The Overthrow of Allende and the Politics of Chile, 1964–1976 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977); Sergio Bitar, Chile, Experiment in Democracy, translated by Sam Sherman (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1986); Stefan de Wylder, The Political Economy of the Rise and Fall of the Unidad Popular (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976); and Arturo Valenzuela, The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Chile (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978). 6. Electing presidents with less than a majority of the vote was normal in Chile, which had a multiparty system and no runoff requirement. 7. Onganía is quoted in Martin Edward Andersen, Dossier Secreto: Argentina’s Desaparecidos and the Myth of the “Dirty War” (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993), 52. For background on the 1976–1983 Argentine military dictatorship, see Luis Alberto Romero, A History of Argentina in the Twentieth Century, translated by James P. Brennan (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2002), 1–214; Félix Luna, Argentina de Perón a Lanusse, 1943–1973 (Barcelona: Planeta, 1972); Robert J. Alexander, Juan Domingo Perón (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1979); Juan Corradi, The Fitful Republic (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985); Claudia Hilb and Daniel Lutzky, eds., La nueva izquierda argentina, 1960–1980 (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1984); and María José Moyano, Argentina’s Lost Patrol: Armed Struggle, 1969–1979 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995). 8. Borrowed from Karen Remmer, Military Rule in Latin America (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 117. Remmer referred to the Chilean capitalist class. 9. Mexico was the only country that did not comply with the OAS mandate. On the military response to the Cuban Revolution, see Brian Loveman and Thomas M. Davies Jr., The Politics of Antipolitics: The Military in Latin America, revised and updated edition (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1997); Genaro Arriagada Herrera, El pensamiento político de los militares: estudios sobre Chile, Argentina, Brasil y Uruguay (Santiago: Centro de Investigaciones Socioeconómicas de la Compañía de Jesús en Chile, 1981); Instituto de Estudios Políticos para América Latina y África, La ideología de la seguridad nacional en América Latina (Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Políticos para América Latina y África, 1977); John Child, Unequal Alliance: The Inter-­American Military System, 1938–1978 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1980); and Lesley Gill, The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the Americas (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004). 10. Quoted in Mario Horacio Orsolini, La crisis del ejército (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Arayú, 1964), 45. 11. Quoted in Andersen, Dossier Secreto, 44. 12. Quoted in Genaro Arriagada Herrera, Por la razón o la fuerza: Chile bajo Pinochet (Santiago: Editorial Sudamericana, 1998), 63.

Notes to Pages 17–22 131

13. On state terrorism in Chile, see Chile, Report of the National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation, 2 vols., translated by Phillip E. Berryman (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993); Heraldo Muñoz, The Dictator’s Shadow: Life under Augusto Pinochet (New York: Basic Books, 2008); Carlos Huneeus, The Pinochet Regime, translated by Lake Sagaris (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2007); Steve J. Stern, Battling for Hearts and Minds: Memory Struggles in Pinochet’s Chile, 1973–1988 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006); Arriagada Herrera, Por la razón o la fuerza; Eugenio Ahumada et al., Chile, la memoria prohibida: las violaciones a los derechos humanos, 1973–1983, 3 vols., 4th edition (Santiago: Pehuén, 1989); Ascanio Cavallo Castro, Manuel Salazar Salvo, and Oscar Sepúlveda Pacheco, Chile, 1973–1988: la historia oculta del régimen militar (Santiago: Editorial Antártica, 1989); Pamela Constable and Arturo Valenzuela, A Nation of Enemies: Chile under Pinochet (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991); Mary Helen Spooner, Soldiers in a Narrow Land: The Pinochet Regime in Chile (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); and Thomas C. Wright, State Terrorism in Latin America: Chile, Argentina, and International Human Rights (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007). 14. Quoted in Thomas G. Sanders, “Military Government in Chile,” in The Politics of Antipolitics: The Military in Latin America, edited by Brian Loveman and Thomas M. Davies Jr. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1978), 274. 15. Buenos Aires Herald, March 25, 1976, quoted in Patricia Marchak, God’s Assassins: State Terrorism in Argentina in the 1970s (Montreal: McGill-­Q ueen’s University Press, 1999), 212. 16. Quoted in Loveman and Davies, Politics of Antipolitics, 160. 17. On state terrorism in Argentina, see Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas (CONADEP), Nunca más: informe de la Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas, 5th ed. (Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires, 1999); Enrique Vásquez, La última: origen, apogeo y caída de la dictadura militar (Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires, 1985); Andersen, Dossier Secreto; Iain Guest, Behind the Disappearances: Argentina’s Dirty War against Human Rights and the United Nations (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990); Marguerite Feitlowitz, A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Eduardo Luis Duhalde, El estado terrorista argentino: quince años después, una mirada crítica (Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires, 1998); Paul H. Lewis, Guerrillas and Generals: The “Dirty War” in Argentina (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002); Emilio F. Mignone, Derechos humanos y sociedad: el caso argentino (Buenos Aires: Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS), 1991); Marchak, God’s Assassins; Donald C. Hodges, Argentina’s “Dirty War”: An Intellectual History (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991); and Wright, State Terrorism. 18. Clarín, January 31, 1976. 19. Quoted in Feitlowitz, Lexicon of Terror, 24. 20. Quoted in Eduardo Luis Duhalde, El estado terrorista argentino (Barcelona: Editorial Argos Vergara, 1983), 79. As noted in the introduction, this and all translations from Spanish works are mine unless otherwise indicated. 21. Saint Jean quoted in Feitlowitz, Lexicon of Terror, 32; Menéndez quoted in Lewis, Guerrillas and Generals, 147.

132 Notes to Pages 26–28

Chapter 2: The Construction of Impunity 1. Raúl Alfonsín, Memoria política: transición a la democracia y derechos humanos (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2004), 34. Alfonsín indicated that he was unaware of the Greek case of prosecuting repressors: “I know no other cases in America, Europe, Africa, or Asia of countries that have been able to judge and sentence those most responsible for crimes against humanity as we did” (35). 2. Quoted in Rebecca Bill Chávez, The Rule of Law in Nascent Democracies: Judicial Politics in Argentina (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), 29. In addition to Alfonsín’s Memoria política, see Horacio Verbitsky, Civiles y militares: memoria secreta de la transición, 2nd edition (Buenos Aires: Editorial Contrapunto, 1987). 3. Kathryn Sikkink enumerates the precedents that Argentina set under Al‑ fonsín, in “From Pariah State to Global Protagonist: Argentina and the Struggle for International Human Rights,” Latin American Politics and Society 50, no. 1 (spring 2008): 1–29. General works on transitions and democratization include Ruti Teitel, Transitional Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); A. James McAdams, ed., Transitional Justice and the Rule of Law in New Democracies (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997); Alexandra Barahona de Brito, Carmen González-­Enríquez, and Paloma Aguilar, eds., The Politics of Memory: Transitional Justice in Democratizing Societies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Mark R. Amstutz, The Healing of Nations: The Promise and Limits of Political Forgiveness (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005). 4. The discussion of politics and civil-­military relations in post-­1983 Argentina draws on Verbitsky, Civiles y militares; Ernesto López, Ni la ceniza ni la gloria: actores, sistema político y cuestión militar en los años de Alfonsín (Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, 1994); Alison Brysk, The Politics of Human Rights in Argentina: Protest, Change, and Democratization (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994); Ignacio C. Massun, Alfonsín: una difícil transición (Buenos Aires: Editorial Métodos, 1999); David Pion-­Berlin, Through Corridors of Power: Institutions and Civil-­Military Relations in Argentina (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1997); Edward C. Epstein, ed., The New Argentine Democracy: The Search for a Successful Formula (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1992); J. Patrice McSherry, Incomplete Transition: Military Power and Democracy in Argentina (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997); Alfonsín, Memoria política; Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS) and Americas Watch, Verdad y justicia en la Argentina: actualización (Buenos Aires: CELS and Americas Watch, 1991). 5. CONADEP, Nunca más, 443. 6. Salvador María Lozada, Los derechos humanos y la impunidad en la Argentina (1974–1999) (Buenos Aires: Nuevohacer, 1999), 117–134; Verbitsky, Civiles y militares, 59–63, 69–73. The decree establishing CONADEP is published in Marcelo A. Sancinetti, Derechos humanos en la Argentina postdictatorial (Buenos Aires: Lerner Editores, 1988), 177–179. 7. CONADEP, Nunca más, 443–471; Brysk, Politics of Human Rights, 68–72. 8. CONADEP, Nunca más, 15, 473. 9. Ibid., 480. 10. Priscilla B. Hayner discusses the healing aspects of truth-­telling and the

Notes to Pages 29–32 133

dangers of retraumatization from that experience in Unspeakable Truths: Confronting State Terror and Atrocity (New York: Routledge, 2001), 133–153. 11. Two truth commissions preceded Argentina’s, but neither made a mark. Uganda established such a commission in 1974, but it served at the direction of dictator Idi Amin, who did not publish its report. Bolivia established a congressional commission to investigate past violations in 1982; however, after documenting 155 disappearances, the commission disbanded without publishing a final report. Thus Argentina’s was the first truth commission to gain international recognition. On truth commissions, see Hayner, Unspeakable Truths, and Robert I. Rotberg and Dennis Thompson, eds., Truth v. Justice: The Morality of Truth Commissions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). 12. Equipo Argentino de Antropología Forense, Tumbas anónimas: informe sobre la identificación de restos de víctimas de la represión ilegal (Buenos Aires: Equipo Argentino de Antropología Forense, 1992). See also the team’s annual reports and its website, http://www.eaaf.org. 13. Ernesto López, “Argentina: un largo camino hacia el control civil sobre los militares,” in Control civil sobre los militares y política de defensa en Argentina, Brasil, Chile, y Uruguay, edited by Ernesto López (Buenos Aires: Editorial Altamira, 2007), 25–26. 14. Verbitsky, Civiles y militares, 69–84; López, Ni la ceniza ni la gloria, 92–98; Brysk, Politics of Human Rights, 74–76. 15. Verbitsky, Civiles y militares, 69–84. See Chapter 4 of the present study for more detail on the trial of the juntas. 16. Brysk, Politics of Human Rights, 123–148; Luis Roniger and Mario Sznajder, The Legacy of Human-­Rights Violations in the Southern Cone: Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1999), 190–206. La historia oficial (1985, The Official Story) is an award-­winning film directed by Luis Puenzo. 17. McSherry, Incomplete Transition, 117–147, 173–182; CELS and Americas Watch, Verdad y justicia, 71–73; La Razón, December 10, 1985; La Prensa, December 23, 1986. 18. Sancinetti, Derechos humanos, 61–90; Verbitsky, Civiles y militares, 147–296; Ernesto López, El último levantamiento (Buenos Aires: Editorial Legasa, 1988), 58–67. 19. Quoted in La Prensa, December 24, 1986. Lozada, Los derechos humanos, 159–214; Sancinetti, Derechos humanos, 233–242; CELS and Americas Watch, Verdad y justicia, 50–51. 20. The filing of these new charges is described in Chapter 4. 21. Marcelo Fabián Sain, Los levantamientos carapintada, 1987–1991, 2 vols. (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1994); López, El último levantamiento, 69–89; Deborah L. Norden, Military Rebellion in Argentina: Between Coups and Consolidation (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), 125–130. Alfonsín defends himself against the charge of negotiating with and capitulating to Rico in Memoria política, 55–75. 22. Sancinetti, Derechos humanos, 280–281; entire speech, 277–282. 23. Ibid., 91–152; Verbitsky, Civiles y militares, 331–369; López, El último levantamiento, 93–104; Pion-­Berlin, Through Corridors of Power, 99–101. Human rights groups estimated that the due obedience law reduced 450 pending cases to

134 Notes to Pages 33–36

50; by October 1988, only 17 officers remained on trial. Brysk, Politics of Human Rights, 83–84. 24. CELS and Americas Watch, Verdad y justicia, 83–85; Rosendo Fraga, Menem y la cuestión militar (Buenos Aires: Editorial Centro de Estudios Unión para la Nueva Mayoría, 1991), 127–143; Lozada, Derechos humanos, 215–218. 25. CELS and Americas Watch, Verdad y justicia, 85–88; Marguerite Guzmán Bouvard, Revolutionizing Motherhood: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1994), 211–214. In his autobiography Menem offered an unconvincing explanation of his decision to issue the pardons: “The pardons demystified them (the convicted military men), and returned them to a destiny that they did not choose: being common Argentines, lost in the multitude, with a past judged by their peers, and very far from the martyrdom that prison appeared to bestow on them.” Carlos Saúl Menem, Universos de mi tiempo: un testimonio personal (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1999), 9. 26. Página 12 (Buenos Aires), December 30, 1990. 27. In La Nación, December 31, 1990. 28. Studies of the postdictatorial period in Chile include Ascanio Cavallo Castro, La historia oculta de la transición: Chile 1990–1998 (Santiago: Grijalbo, 1998); Paul Drake and Iván Jaksić, eds., El modelo chileno: democracia y desarrollo en los noventa (Santiago: LOM Ediciones, 1999); Rafael Otano, Crónica de la transición (Santiago: Planeta, 1995); Alan Angell, Democracy after Pinochet: Politics, Parties, and Elections in Chile (London: Institute for the Study of the Americas, 2007); and Gregory Weeks, The Military and Politics in Postauthoritarian Chile (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003). 29. Thomas E. Skidmore, The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); Wilfred A. Bacchus, Mission in Mufti: Brazil’s Military Regimes, 1964–1985 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1990); Servicio Paz y Justicia, Uruguay, Uruguay nunca más, translated by Elizabeth Hampsten (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992); Saúl Sosnowski and Louise B. Popkin, eds., Repression, Exile, and Democracy: Uruguayan Culture, translated by Louise B. Popkin (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993). 30. Robert K. Goldman and Cynthia G. Brown, Challenging Impunity: The Ley de Caducidad and the Referendum Campaign in Uruguay (New York: Americas Watch, 1989). Uruguayan voters confirmed the prohibition of prosecuting former repressors in a second referendum in 2009; Human Rights Watch, “Uruguay: Plebiscite Undermines Justice,” October 27, 2009, http://www.hrw.org/news/2009/10/27 /uruguay-­plebiscite-­undermines-­justice. However, judges soon began overriding the ban, invoking new jurisprudence on the invalidity of amnesties. The Arquidiocese de São Paulo published its findings in Brasil, nunca mais (Petrópolis, Brazil: Vozes, 1985). 31. John Dinges and Saul Landau, Assassination on Embassy Row (New York: McGraw-­Hill, 1980); Ahumada et al., Chile, la memoria prohibida, 2:413–417; C. Huneeus, Pinochet Regime, 190–204. 32. Ahumada et al., Memoria prohibida, 3:9–47; Eugenio Hojman, 1973–1989 Memorial de la dictadura: cronología de 16 años de pesadilla (Santiago: Editorial Emisión, 1990), 91; Paul E. Sigmund, The United States and Democracy in Chile (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 110–118.

Notes to Pages 36–40 135

33. In Decree-­law 2.191, April 19, 1978; C. Huneeus, Pinochet Regime, 190–204. See also Pablo Policzer, The Rise and Fall of Repression in Chile (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009). 34. Chile, Diario Oficial, April 19, 1978; Brian Loveman and Elizabeth Lira, Las ardientes cenizas del olvido: vía chilena de reconciliación política 1932–1994 (Santiago: LOM Ediciones, 2000), 451–465. 35. Wright, State Terrorism in Latin America, 53. 36. José Luis Cea Egaña, Tratado de la Constitución de 1980: características generales, garantías constitucionales (Santiago: Editorial Jurídica de Chile, 1988); Cavallo Castro, Salazar Salvo, and Sepúlveda Pacheco, Chile, 1973–1988, 309–332. 37. Fredrik Uggla, “‘For a Few Senators More’? Negotiating Constitutional Changes during Chile’s Transition to Democracy,” Latin American Politics and Society 47, no. 2 (summer 2005): 57. 38. Constitution of Chile, Chapter 10. The terms of the commanders to be appointed in 1990 were set at eight years; they were reduced to four years beginning in 1998. 39. Constitution of Chile, Articles 81, 95, 96; Peter M. Siavelis, The President and Congress in Postauthoritarian Chile: Institutional Constraints to Democratic Consolidation (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2000), 37–39. 40. Constitution of Chile, Chapters 7, 11. The composition of the National Security Council, the Constitutional Tribunal, and the group of designated senators could and would be liberalized to a degree by future presidential appointments as the original members’ terms expired; however, these three authoritarian enclaves, along with the Supreme Court, appeared to represent iron-­clad guarantees of military impunity for at least the first eight years of Chile’s transition. 41. Text here draws on Carlos Andrade Geywitz, Reforma de la constitución política de la República de Chile de 1980, 2nd edition (Santiago: Editorial Jurídica de Chile, 2002); Uggla, “‘For a Few Senators More’?” 51–75; C. Huneeus, Pinochet Regime, 435–438; Muñoz, Dictator’s Shadow, 212–214; Steve J. Stern, Reckoning with Pinochet: The Memory Question in Democratic Chile, 1989–2006 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 22–29. 42. Constitution of Chile, Chapter 14, Articles 116, 118; Andrade Geywitz, Reforma de la Constitución, 36–41; Francisco Geisse and José Antonio Ramírez Arrayas, La reforma constitutional (Santiago: CESOC Ediciones Chile-­América, 1989), 143–163. 43. For example, in the 1997 election 57,710 voters in southern District 19 elected two senators, as did 1,186,677 voters in Santiago’s District 8. Thomas C. Wright and Costandina Titus, “The 1997 Chilean Congressional Election: Transition at the Crossroads,” in From the Macro to the Micro: Latin American Studies in a Global and Local Context: Proceedings of the Pacific Coast Council on Latin American Studies, vol. 17, ed. Donald S. Castro (Fullerton, CA: Pacific Coast Council on Latin American Studies, 1999), 50. 44. Siavelis, President and Congress, 31–40; John B. Londregan, Legislative Institutions and Ideology in Chile (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 84–93. 45. Ley Reservada del Cobre (no. 18.445/85). 46. Organic Constitutional Law of the Armed Forces (no. 18.984/90).

136 Notes to Pages 41–45

47. Alexandra Barahona de Brito, “Passion, Constraint, Law, and Fortuna: The Human Rights Challenge to Chilean Democracy,” in Burying the Past: Making Peace and Doing Justice after Civil Conflict, edited by Nigel Biggar (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2001), 154–155. Alan Angell writes that as a result of the tenuring of Pinochet’s bureaucracy, the Concertación was able to place only 556 of its people in the public administration at the beginning of Aylwin’s term; Democracy after Pinochet, 42–45. 48. Alexandra Barahona de Brito, Human Rights and Democratization in Latin America: Uruguay and Chile (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1997), 98–106; C. Huneeus, Pinochet Regime, 438–439. The number of CNI operatives incorporated into the army is disputed. Cavallo Castro indicates that the number was 2,016; Historia oculta, 31, 37. Barahona de Brito places the number at 19,000; Human Rights and Democratization, 106. 49. In their comparative study of democratic transitions, Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan found that “Chilean democracy began under more constrained constitutional circumstances” than any of the seven Latin American and southern European cases in their study Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-­Communist Europe (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 211. 50. Ascanio Cavallo Castro, e-­mail interview, Santiago, October 19, 2012; C. Huneeus, Pinochet Regime, 438; Stern, Reckoning with Pinochet, 22. 51. Francisco J. Romero Salvadó, Twentieth-­Century Spain: Politics and Society in Spain, 1898–1998 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 150; Otano, Crónica, 99–103; C. Huneeus, Pinochet Regime, 191. 52. Londregan, Legislative Institutions, 51. Chapter 3: Human Rights Advocacy 1. This and the following paragraph of text are based on Patricio Orellana and Elizabeth Q. Hutchison, El movimiento de derechos humanos en Chile, 1973– 1990 (Santiago: Centro de Estudios Políticos Latinoamericanos Simón Bolívar [CEPLA], 1991), especially 11–23, 91–94, 162–166; Brian H. Smith, The Church and Politics in Chile: Challenges to Modern Catholicism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982), 287–294; and Pamela Lowden, Moral Opposition to Authoritarian Rule in Chile, 1973–90 (London: Macmillan, 1996), 27–51. 2. Chile lost some 380 clerics in the first two years after the coup, 314 of whom were foreigners. Many were expelled or pressured to leave the country. Some were tortured, and a few were murdered. B. Smith, Church and Politics, 329–333. 3. B. Smith, Church and Politics, 67–161; Lowden, Moral Opposition, 13–25; Otano, Crónica, 277–281. 4. Oscar Pinochet de la Barra, El Cardenal Silva Henríquez: luchador por la justicia (Santiago: Editorial Salesiana, 1987); Lowden, Moral Opposition, 53–149; Cynthia G. Brown, The Vicaría de la Solidaridad in Chile (New York: Americas Watch, 1987); Jaime Esponda F., “Objetivos y criterios estratégicos aplicados por la Vicaría de la Solidaridad del Arzobispado de Santiago en su tarea de defensa de los derechos humanos,” in Represión política y defensa de los derechos humanos, edited

Notes to Pages 45–48 137

by Hugo Frühling E. (Santiago: Centro de Estudios Sociales-­CESOC, 1986), 107–131. General Pinochet himself wrote of Silva Henríquez: “He appeared to have more Marxist or socialist ideas than any leftist political leader”; Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, Camino corrido: biografía de un soldado (Santiago: Instituto Geográfico Militar de Chile, 1990–1994), 2:24. 5. Cath Collins, Post-­Transitional Justice: Human Rights Trials in Chile and El Salvador (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2010), 66–67; Brown, The Vicaría. Lowden indicates that of 8,706 writs filed through 1988, the courts accepted 23; Moral Opposition, 151. Others report different numbers of writs accepted. Collins, for example, says “no more than ten”; Post-­Transitional Justice, 69. 6. B. Smith, Church and Politics, 326; Lowden, Moral Opposition, 163–164. 7. Collins, Post-­Transitional Justice, 65. 8. Jeffrey M. Puryear, Thinking Politics: Intellectuals and Democracy in Chile, 1973–1988 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994); Orellana and Hutchison, El movimiento, 25–26; Angell, Democracy after Pinochet, 20–22. The Ford Foundation was a major supporter of the Academia de Humanismo Cristiano and other centers; see William Korey, Taking on the World’s Repressive Regimes: The Ford Foundation’s International Human Rights Policies and Practices (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 26–28, 64. 9. Mario Garcés D. and Nancy Nicholls L., Para una historia de los derechos humanos en Chile: historia institucional de la Fundación de Ayuda de las Iglesias Cristianas FASIC, 1975–1991 (Santiago: LOM Ediciones, 2005); Orellano and Hutchison, Derechos humanos, 143–194; Elizabeth Lira, “Psicología y derechos humanos en una situación represiva: la experiencia de la FASIC,” in Frühling E., Represión política, 269–291. 10. Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos de Chile (AFDD), Un camino de imágenes: 20 años de historia de la Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos de Chile (Santiago: AFDD, 1997); Hernán Vidal, Dar la vida por la vida: la Agrupación Chilena de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos (Minneapolis: Institute for the Study of Ideologies and Literature, 1982); Marjorie Agosín, Tapestries of Hope, Threads of Love: The Arpillera Movement in Chile, 1974–1994 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996); Viviana Díaz, member, AFDD, interview with the author, Santiago, October 19, 2012. 11. Orellana and Hutchison, Derechos humanos, 5–68, 204–225; Silvia Fernández Ramil and Jorge Osorio Vargas, “Notas sobre algunas experiencias de educación para los derechos humanos en Chile,” in Frühling E., Represión política, 185–209; Patricia M. Chuchryk, “Subversive Mothers: The Opposition to Military Rule in Chile,” in Surviving beyond Fear: Women, Children, and Human Rights in Latin America, edited by Marjorie Agosín (Fredonia, NY: White Pine Press, 1993), 86–97. Most of the organizations published, and some continue to do so, periodic reports on their activities. 12. Mark Ensalaco, Chile under Pinochet: Recovering the Truth (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), 120. 13. Orellana and Hutchison, Derechos humanos, 51–52; Brown, The Vicaría, 35–42. 14. Raúl Veiga, Las organizaciones de derechos humanos (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1985); Graciela Fernández Meijide, “Historia de las

138 Notes to Pages 48–51

organizaciones de derechos humanos en la Argentina y su rol en la democracia,” in Frühling E., Represión política, 59–77; María Sondereguer, “El trabajo de las organizaciones de derechos humanos con sectores populares: areas de actividad y perspectivas hacia el futuro,” in Frühling E., Represión política, 79–95. 15. Quoted in Emilio Mignone, Witness to the Truth: The Complicity of Church and Dictatorship in Argentina, 1976–1983, translated by Phillip Berryman (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988), 6. Horacio Verbitsky, La mano izquierda de Dios: la última dictadura, 1976–1983 (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 2010). 16. Mignone, Witness to the Truth; CONADEP, Nunca más, 259–263; Sandra McGee Deutsch, Las Derechas: The Extreme Right in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, 1890–1939 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 102–105, 240–244; Patrick Rice, activist priest, interview with the author, Buenos Aires, December 9, 2002. 17. CONADEP, Nunca más, 347–360; Mignone, Witness to the Truth, 128–150; Andersen, Dossier Secreto, 54–55, 184–193. 18. Horacio Verbitsky, The Flight: Confessions of an Argentine Dirty Warrior, translated by Esther Allen (New York: New Press, 1996), 30. 19. In CONADEP, Nunca más, 260. Mignone, Witness to the Truth, 110–118. 20. Página 12, October 10, 2007. 21. Veiga, Las organizaciones; Fernández Meijide, “Historia de las organizaciones.” 22. Bouvard, Revolutionizing Motherhood; Camila Correa and Marisol Morzilli, Las madres de la historia argentina (La Plata, Argentina: Ediciones Al Margen, 2011); Jo Fisher, Mothers of the Disappeared (Boston: South End Press, 1989); Inés Vásquez, ed., Historia de las Madres de Plaza de Mayo (Buenos Aires: Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo, 2007); John Simpson and Jana Bennett, The Disappeared: Voices from a Secret War (London: Robson Books, 1985); Matilde Mellibovsky, Circle of Love over Death: Testimonies of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, translated by María Proser and Matthew Proser (Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press, 1997). Marjorie Agosín’s Circles of Madness is a book of poems and photographs; Circles of Madness: Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo = Círculos de locura: Madres de la Plaza de Mayo (Fredonia, NY: White Pine Press, 1992). 23. Ilda Micucci, member, Madres de Plaza de Mayo–Línea Fundadora, interview with the author, Buenos Aires, December 9, 2002. 24. Inter-­American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Argentina (Washington, DC: Inter-­American Commission on Human Rights, 1980), 117. 25. Marta Vásquez, president, Madres de Plaza de Mayo–Línea Fundadora, interview with the author, Buenos Aires, December 10, 2002; Bouvard, Revolutionizing Motherhood; Correa and Morzilli, Las madres; Fisher, Mothers of the Disappeared; Mellibovsky, Circle of Love. 26. Rita Arditti, Searching for Life: The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Disappeared Children of Argentina (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). For an account of the Abuelas’ work to 1990, see Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, Niños desaparecidos en la Argentina desde 1976 (Buenos Aires: Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, 1990). 27. An undated CELS brochure has a brief history of the organization; see

Notes to Pages 51–54 139

CELS’s annual Derechos humanos en Argentina. Informe anual and its website, http:// cels.org.ar. Horacio Verbitsky, journalist, author, and president, CELS Board of Directors, interview with the author, Buenos Aires, October 22, 2012; Carolina Varsky, director of litigation, CELS, interview with the author, Buenos Aires, October 22, 2012. 28. Feitlowitz, Lexicon of Terror, 41–46. 29. IACHR, Report on the Status of Human Rights in Chile: Findings of “on the Spot” Observations in the Republic of Chile July 22–August 2, 1974 (Washington, DC: OAS, 1974); IACHR, Second Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Chile (Washington, DC: OAS, 1976); IACHR, Third Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Chile (Washington, DC: OAS, 1977); Arriagada Herrera, Por la razón, 22–23. 30. José Antonio Viera-­G allo, Socialist politician and member, Tribunal Constitucional, interview with the author, Santiago, October 15, 2012. 31. Longtime human rights advocate and leader Aryeh Neier asserts that “Pinochet’s coup, and the role played by Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and the CIA in bringing it about, were crucial in the emergence of the human rights movement in the United States”; Taking Liberties: Four Decades in the Struggle for Human Rights (New York: Public Affairs, 2003), 151. See also Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 89–90; and Darren G. Hawkins, International Human Rights and Authoritarian Rule in Chile (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), 55–57, 81. 32. Lars Schoultz, Human Rights and United States Policy toward Latin America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), 75. 33. Wright and Oñate, Flight from Chile, 123–148; Fernando Montupil, ed., Exilio, derechos humanos y democracia: el exilio chileno en Europa (Santiago: Casa de América and Servicios Gráficos Caupolicán, 1993). This paragraph of text also draws on several papers presented at a conference titled “European Solidarity with Chile, 1970–1990,” sponsored by the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, in June 2011. 34. Howard Tolley Jr., The UN Commission on Human Rights (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987). 35. Tolley, UN Commission, 63–66, 70–82, 86, 104, 111–133; Ensalaco, Chile under Pinochet, 98–124, 163–167; Heraldo Muñoz, Las relaciones exteriores del gobierno militar chileno (Santiago: Ediciones del Ornitorrinco, 1986), 191–197, 309– 315; Hawkins, International Human Rights, 61–62; Guest, Behind the Disappearances, 95–98. Guest writes, “The Chilean coup had a dramatic impact on the U.N.” (97). 36. Guest, Behind the Disappearances, 89–332; Aldo César Vacs, Discreet Partners: Argentina and the USSR since 1917 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984), 24–126; Joseph S. Tulchin, Argentina and the United States: A Conflicted Relationship (Boston: Twayne, 1990), 146–149. 37. Brysk, Politics of Human Rights, 51–58; Amnesty International, Report on the Mission to Argentina, November 6–15, 1976 (London: Amnesty Publications, 1977); Amnesty International, The “Disappeared” of Argentina: List of Cases Reported to Amnesty International, March 1976–February 1979 (London: Amnesty International, 1979); Pablo Yankelevich, “Exiles and the Argentine Diaspora: Issues and Prob-

140 Notes to Pages 54–59

lems,” in Exile and the Politics of Exclusion in the Americas, edited by Luis Roniger, James N. Green, and Pablo Yankelevich (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2012), 198–213; Guest, Behind the Disappearances, 64; Carlos Slepoy, Argentine exile and human rights activist, interview with the author, Madrid, November 13, 2001. 38. Andersen, Dossier Secreto, 250–269; Cynthia Brown, ed., With Friends Like These: The Americas Watch Report on Human Rights and U.S. Policy in Latin America (New York: Pantheon, 1985), 99–100; Guest, Behind the Disappearances, 151–243. Guest writes, “Argentina came to symbolize Carter’s confrontational approach to human rights” (xiv). Many Argentines expressed their gratitude to Carter, among them Emilio Mignone in his Derechos humanos y sociedad, 58. 39. IACHR, Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Argentina; Guest, Behind the Disappearances, 164–179; Jorge Taiana, Peronist politician and minister of foreign affairs, 2005–2010, interview with the author, Buenos Aires, October 23, 2012. 40. Sikkink, Justice Cascade, 9. 41. IACHR, Report on the Status of Human Rights in Chile, 1974, Chapter 17, 2. 42. David J. Harris and Stephen Livingstone, eds., The Inter-­American System of Human Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Scott Davidson, The Inter-­American Human Rights System (Aldershot, England: Dartmouth, 1997); Tom Farer, “The Rise of the Inter-­American Human Rights Regime: No Longer a Unicorn, Not Yet an Ox,” in Harris and Livingstone, Inter-­American System of Human Rights, 46; Sikkink, Justice Cascade, 64–67. 43. Brysk, Politics of Human Rights, 164; Collins, Post-­Transitional Justice, 43–44, 101–103; Roniger and Sznajder, Legacy of Human-­Rights Violations, 215–218. 44. CONADEP, Nunca más, 479; Collins, Post-­Transitional Justice, 43–44, 101– 103, 117–119. 45. I. Vásquez, Historia de las Madres, 171–172; Bouvard, Revolutionizing Motherhood, 16, 162–164; Marta Vásquez, member, Madres de Plaza de Mayo– Línea Fundadora, interview with the author, Buenos Aires, October 23, 2012; CODEPU, El irrenunciable camino de la justicia: Pinochet y la Mesa de Diálogo (Santiago: CODEPU, 2000); Alejandra Arriaza, executive secretary, CODEPU, interview with the author, Santiago, October 17, 2012. Viviana Díaz reported in our 2012 interview that the movement had been at the “point of breaking apart” over the Mesa de Diálogo issue. See ch. 6 for information on the Mesa de Diálogo. 46. Correa and Morzilli, Las madres, 111–126. 47. Ibid., 166–172; Bouvard, Revolutionizing Motherhood, 211–216; Horacio Verbitsky, Hacer la corte: la construcción de un poder absoluto sin justicia ni control (Buenos Aires: Planeta, 1993); Verbitsky, interview. 48. Roberto Herrscher, “Reflections on Human Rights,” Buenos Aires Herald, February 23, 1989; Sebastián Miranda, Los secretos de La Tablada: la última acción armada de la guerrilla (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Buen Combate, 2012); Alfonsín, Memoria política, 103–131. 49. The quotation is from the Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo’s undated pamphlet “Nuestras consignas,” n.p. Hayner, Unspeakable Truths, 170–172, 174– 178, 316–317. 50. Lita Boitano, president, Familiares de Desaparecidos y Detenidos por Razones Políticas, interview with the author, Buenos Aires, October 24, 2012.

Notes to Pages 59–64 141

51. Louis N. Bickford, “Preserving Memory: The Past and the Human Rights Movement in Chile,” in Democracy and Human Rights in Latin America, edited by Richard S. Hillman, John A. Peeler, and Elsa Cardozo da Silva (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002), 10; Felipe Agüero, “Democracia, gobierno y militares desde el cambio de siglo: advances hacia la normalidad democrática,” in El gobierno de Ricardo Lagos: la nueva vía chilena hacia el socialismo, edited by Robert L. Funk (Santiago: Ediciones Universidad Diego Portales, 2006), 64–65. 52. Isabel Allende, My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey through Chile, translated by Margaret Sayers Peden (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 194. 53. Separate polls found that 75 and 80 percent favored continuing the investigations, while 62 and 70 percent favored prosecutions. Elizabeth Lira and Brian Loveman “Derechos humanos en la transición ‘modelo’: Chile 1988–1999,” in Drake and Jaksić, El modelo chileno, 365. 54. Alicia Lira, president, Agrupación de Familiares de Ejecutados Políticos, interview with the author, Santiago, October 16, 2012; Gabriela Zúñiga, spokesperson, AFDD, interview with the author, Santiago, October 18, 2012. See Lira and Loveman, “Derechos humanos,” 342–349; Cavallo Castro, La historia oculta, 19–20. 55. Collins, Post-­Transitional Justice, 43–44, 101–103, 117–119; Weeks, Military and Politics, 64; Roniger and Sznajder, Legacy of Human-­Rights Violations, 215–218; María Paz Vergara, director, Fundación de Documentación y Archivo de la Vicaría de la Solidaridad, interview with the author, Santiago, October 19, 2012. 56. Díaz, interview, 2002. Garcés and Nicholls, Para una historia de los derechos humanos, 254; Zúñiga, interview. 57. AFDD, Un camino de imágenes, 107–109, 119. 58. Brian Loveman and Elizabeth Lira, El espejismo de la reconciliación política: Chile, 1990–2002 (Santiago: LOM Ediciones, 2002), 109–126; Cavallo Castro, La historia oculta, 217–222; Díaz, interview, 2012. For background on the Aylwin law, see Chapter 6. 59. Loveman and Lira, El espejismo, 109–126; AFDD, Un camino de imágenes, 124–129; Otano, Crónica, 321–329; Díaz, interview, 2012. 60. Loveman and Lira, El espejismo, 148–173; Weeks, Military and Politics, 114– 137; AFDD, Un camino de imágenes, 138–141. Chapter 4: The Changing Legal Environment, Domestic and International 1. Chile, Report of the National Commission, 1:117. 2. Alejandra Matus Acuña, El libro negro de la justicia chilena (Santiago: Editorial Planeta, 1999); Lisa Hilbink, Judges beyond Politics in Democracy and Dictatorship: Lessons from Chile (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 157–176; Constable and Valenzuela, Nation of Enemies, 115–139; Collins, Post-­Transitional Justice, 69–72; Alejandro Solís Muñoz, judge, interview with the author, Santiago, October 17, 2012. 3. Chile, Report of the National Commission, 1:126; Matus Acuña, El libro negro; Constable and Valenzuela, Nation of Enemies, 115–139. 4. Quoted in Constable and Valenzuela, Nation of Enemies, 116.

142 Notes to Pages 64–69

5. On Argentina between 1930 and 1976, see Romero, History of Argentina, 59–214; and Gino Germani, Política y sociedad en una época de transición: de la sociedad tradicional a la sociedad de masas (Buenos Aires: Paidós, 1971). 6. CONADEP, Nunca más, 391–441; quotation on 391. Enrique Groisman, La Corte Suprema de Justicia durante la dictadura (1976–1983) (Buenos Aires: Centro de Investigaciones sobre el Estado y la Administración, 1987); Gretchen Helmke, Courts under Constraints: Judges, Generals, and Presidents in Argentina (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 68–75; Elin Skaar, Judicial Independence and Human Rights in Latin America: Violations, Politics, and Prosecution (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 48. 7. CONADEP, Nunca más, 391–441, quotation from 392; Nunca más lists disappeared lawyers, 431–434. Groisman, La Corte Suprema; Eduardo S. Barcesat, “Defensa legal de los derechos a la vida y la libertad personal en el régimen militar argentino,” in Frühling E., Represión política, 141–162. 8. Brysk, Politics of Human Rights, 63–68. 9. Ibid., 113–115; Chávez, Rule of Law, 32–33. 10. Verbitsky, Civiles y militares, 322. 11. Alfonsín, Memoria política, 36, 45. 12. Verbitsky, Civiles y militares, 43–84; Pion-­Berlin, Through Corridors of Power, 77–82; Tedesco, Democracy in Argentina, 64–70. 13. Verbitsky, Civiles y militares, 103–108; Pion-­Berlin, Through Corridors of Power, 80–82, 95; Brysk, Politics of Human Rights, 76. 14. This and the following paragraphs in text are based on El Diario del Juicio, a weekly newspaper established in Buenos Aires specifically to cover the trial; Jorge Camarasa, Rubén Felice, and Daniel González, El juicio: proceso al horror (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana/Planeta Editores, 1985); Sancinetti, Derechos humanos, 1–60, 221–228; and Amnesty International, Argentina: The Military Juntas and Human Rights—Report of the Trial of the Former Junta Members, 1985 (London: Amnesty International, 1987). 15. Quoted in Camarasa, Felice, and González, El juicio, 203. 16. El Diario del Juicio, June 4, 11, and 18, 1985; María Seoane and Héctor Ruiz Núñez, La noche de los lápices, 2nd edition (Buenos Aires: Planeta, 1992). See also the eponymous 1986 film directed by Héctor Olivera. 17. In Camarasa, Felice, and González, El juicio, 195, 197. Luis Moreno Ocampo, the assistant prosecutor in the trial of the juntas, became the first chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, serving nine years in that position. 18. Patricia Tappatá Valdez, director, Memoria Abierta, interview with the author, Buenos Aires, December 4 and 11, 2002. Pion-­Berlin argues that the trial of the juntas “defeated the principle of impunity”; Through Corridors of Power, 105. 19. Brysk, Politics of Human Rights, 222–223n49; Pion-­Berlin, Through Corridors of Power, 88–92. 20. López, El último levantamiento, 66. Verbitsky, Civiles y militares, 317–331; Tedesco, Democracy in Argentina, 123–125. 21. Jaime Malamud-­Goti, “Punishing Human Rights Abuses in Fledgling Democracies: The Case of Argentina,” in Impunity and Human Rights in International Law and Practice, edited by Naomi Roht-­A rriaza (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 162, 168–170.

Notes to Pages 70–72 143

22. Puryear, Thinking Politics, 110; John A. Detzner, Tribunales chilenos y derecho internacional de derechos humanos: la recepción del derecho internacional de derechos humanos en el derecho interno chileno (Santiago: Comisión Chileno de Derechos Humanos, Programa de Derechos Humanos, Academia de Humanismo Cristiano, 1988); John A. Detzner, “Utilización de mecanismos internacionales en la protección de los derechos humanos: el caso chileno,” Revista IDDH (July–December 1987): 3–20; Francisco Orrego Vicuña and Francisco Orrego Bauzá, “La aplicación del derecho internacional de los derechos humanos por los tribunales nacionales: nuevas tendencias derivadas de la experiencia chilena” (Chile, Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Asesoría de Derechos Humanos, 1999), 26; Roberto Garretón, human rights lawyer and member, Board of Directors, National Institute of Human Rights, interview with the author, Santiago, October 15, 2012. 23. Human Rights Watch, World Report 1992 (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1992), 147; Sikkink, Justice Cascade, 77. 24. Andrade Geywitz, Reforma de la constitución política, 77–78, 199–202); Rodrigo Díaz Albónico, “La reforma al artículo 5 de la constitución política,” in Nuevas direcciones en la protección del individuo, edited by Jeanette Irigoin (Santiago: Instituto de Estudios Internacionales de la Universidad de Chile, 1991), 199–208; Andrés Allamand, La travesía del desierto (Santiago: Aguilar, 1999), 172–188. José Antonio Viera-­G allo, a Concertación member of the negotiating team, admitted that the amendment to article 5 was considered at the time a “symbolic gesture,” but acknowledged that its long-­term importance has been “enormous”; Viera-­ Gallo, interview. The more conservative right-­wing party, the Unión Democrática Independiente (UDI), did not support the negotiations. 25. Daniel A. Sabsay and José M. Onaindia, La constitución de los argentinos: análisis y comentario de su texto luego de la reforma de 1994, 2nd edition (Buenos Aires: Errepar, 1995); María Angélica Gelli, Constitución de la nación comentada y concordada (Buenos Aires: Editorial La Ley, 2005); Alfonsín, Memoria política, 155–240; Alberto Bonnet, La hegemonía menemista: el neoconservadurismo en Argentina, 1989– 2001 (Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros, 2007), 57–65, 126–128; Franco Castiglioni, “Ingeniería política, reforma constitutional y ballotage,” in Política y sociedad en los años del menemismo, edited by Ricardo Sidicaro and Jorge Mayer (Buenos Aires: Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1995), 103–117. 26. Alfonsín, Memoria política, 193–240; Janet Koven Levit, “The Constitutionalization of Human Rights in Argentina: Problem or “Promise?” Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 37 (1999): 281–356; Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS), Informe anual sobre la situación de los derechos humanos en la Argentina: 1995 (Buenos Aires: CELS, 1995), 2–3. Constitutional reform with an emphasis on human rights was a priority of the Consejo para la Consolidación de la Democracia (Council for the Consolidation of Democracy), an advisory board appointed by Alfonsín in 1985; Alfonsín, Memoria política, 166–189. 27. Jonathan Power, Like Water on Stone: The Story of Amnesty International (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2001); Claude E. Welch Jr., NGOs and Human Rights: Promise and Performance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001); Neier, Taking Liberties, 149–286. The organizations’ websites are http://www.amnesty.org/ and http://www.hrw.org/. 28. Korey, Taking on the World’s Repressive Regimes, 25.

144 Notes to Pages 72–75

29. Ibid., 54–68, 262–263. 30. Sikkink, Justice Cascade, 96–125. 31. Christina Cerna, “The Inter-­American Commission on Human Rights: Its Organization and Examination of Petitions and Communications,” in Harris and Livingstone, Inter-­American System of Human Rights, 65–114; Antônio Augusto Cançado Trinidade, “Operation of the Inter-­American Court of Human Rights,” in Harris and Livingstone, Inter-­American System of Human Rights, 133–149; Par Engstrom and Andrew Hurrell, “Why the Human Rights Regime in the Americas Matters,” in Human Rights Regimes in the Americas, edited by Mónica Serrano and Vesselin Popovski (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2010), 29–55. An Argentine legal scholar confirmed the effectiveness of the Inter-­American Commission and Court in his country; Víctor Abramovich, “Una nueva institucionalidad pública: los tratados de derechos humanos en el orden constitucional argentino,” in La aplicación de los tratados sobre derechos humanos en el ámbito local: la experiencia de una década, edited by Víctor Abramovich, Alberto Bovino, and Christian Courtis (Buenos Aires: CELS, 2007), iii–xv. 32. Naomi Roht-­A rriaza and Lauren Gibson, “The Developing Jurisprudence on Amnesty,” Human Rights Quarterly 20, no. 4 (1998): 843–885; Ellen Lutz, “Responses to Amnesty by the Inter-­American System for the Protection of Human Rights,” in Harris and Stephen Livingstone, Inter-­American System of Human Rights, 345–370; Par Engstrom, “Amnesty and the Inter-­American Human rights System,” presentation at the Human Rights Consortium, School of Ad‑ vanced Study, University of London, October 23, 2010, http://www.academia .edu/1433923/Amnesty_and_the_Inter-­American_Human_Rights_System; Tai‑ ana, interview. 33. Sikkink, Justice Cascade, 114. 34. Kirsten A. Young, The Law and Process of the U.N. Human Rights Commission (Ardsley, NY: Transnational, 2002); Benjamin N. Schiff, Building the International Criminal Court (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2008); William A. Schabas, An Introduction to the International Criminal Court, 4th edition (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 35. Pilar Domingo and Rachel Sieder, eds., Rule of Law in Latin America: The International Promotion of Judicial Reform (London: University of London, Institute of Latin American Studies, 2001); Elin Skaar, “Judicial Independence and Human Rights Policies in Argentina and Chile,” Working Paper 2001:15 (Bergen, Norway: Chr. Michelsen Institute, 2001). As of 2007, fourteen Latin American countries had enacted judicial reforms varying from minor adjustments to extensive overhauls; Máximo Langer, “Revolution in Latin American Criminal Procedure: Diffusion of Legal Ideas from the Periphery,” American Journal of Comparative Law 55 (2007): 617. 36. Sabsay and Onaindia, La constitución de los argentinos; Gelli, Constitución de la nación argentina; Chávez, Rule of Law, 30, 71–77. 37. Chávez, Rule of Law, 33–36; Helmke, Courts under Constraints, 84–92. The judicial council did not meet until 1999, when Congress finally decided its composition; Catalina Smulovitz, “Judicialization in Argentina: Legal Cultures or Opportunities and Support Systems?” in Cultures of Legality: Judicialization and

Notes to Pages 75–77 145

Political Activism in Latin America, edited by Javier A. Couso, Alexandra Huneeus, and Rachel Sieder (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 242. 38. International Commission of Jurists, Chile: A Time of Reckoning; Human Rights and the Judiciary (Geneva: Centre for the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, 1992), 200–205; Cynthia G. Brown, Human Rights and the “Politics of Agreements”: Chile during President Aylwin’s First Year (New York: Americas Watch, 1991), 36–68; Lisa Hilbink, “Un estado de derecho no liberal: la actuación del poder judicial chileno en los años 90,” in Drake and Jaksić, El modelo chileno, 324– 326; Jorge Correa Sutil, “‘No Victorious Army Has Ever Been Prosecuted . . . ’: The Unsettled Story of Transitional Justice in Chile,” in Transitional Justice and the Rule of Law in New Democracies, edited by A. James McAdams (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 131–154. 39. AFDD, Recuento de actividades 1990 (Santiago: AFDD, 1990), 24–25, 102– 107; Alexander Wilde, “Irruptions of Memory: Expressive Politics in Chile’s Transition to Democracy,” in Genocide, Collective Violence, and Popular Memory: The Politics of Remembrance in the Twentieth Century, edited by David E. Lorey and William H. Beezley (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2002), 8–9. In her essay “The Dance of Life: Women and Human Rights in Chile,” Marjorie Agosín discusses the cueca sola: “A woman who dances alone evokes in the cueca’s rhythm the memory of the man who is absent, and the dance changes from a pleasurable experience to a well of pain and memory”; Agosín, Ashes of Revolt (Fredonia, NY: White Pine Press, 1996), 146. Muñoz calls the inauguration an “exorcism” in Dictator’s Shadow, 218–219. 40. Alfredo Joignant, Un día distinto: memorias festivas y batallas conmemorativas en torno al 11 de septiembre en Chile, 1974–2006 (Santiago: Editorial Universitaria, 2007), 67–70; Roniger and Sznadjer, Legacy of Human-­Rights Violations, 213–220; Wilde, “Irruptions of Memory,” 10–11. The only presidents not buried in the General Cemetery are Bernardo O’Higgins, Gabriel González Videla, and Augusto Pinochet. 41. Chile, Report of the Chilean National Commission; Cavallo Castro, La historia oculta, 19–28. 42. Corporación Nacional de Reparación y Reconciliación, Informe sobre calificación de víctimas, 576; Lira and Loveman, “Derechos humanos,” 356–359; Hayner, Unspeakable Truths, 172–174, 314–315. As of October 2011, the officially accepted count of murdered and disappeared was 3,216. Observatorio Derechos Humanos, Universidad Diego Portales (UDP), “Cifras de víctimas y sobrevivientes de violaciones masivas a los dd hh oficialmente reconocidas por el estado chileno,” Santiago, October 2011, courtesy of Cath Collins. 43. Chile, Report of the National Commission, 2:855–878. 44. In El Mercurio, March 5, 1991, as quoted in Brown, Human Rights and the “Politics of Agreements,” 51. 45. International Commission of Jurists, Chile: A Time of Reckoning, 247–248; Hilbink, “Un estado de derecho,” 326. 46. Chile, Historia de la ley no. 19.519, Crea el Ministerio Público (Santiago: Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional de Chile, September 16, 1997), http://www.bcn .cl/histley/lfs/hdl-­19519/HL19519.pdf.

146 Notes to Pages 78–81

47. Rafael Blanco, “El programa de justicia del gobierno de Eduardo Frei,” in El período del Presidente Frei Ruiz-­Tagle: reflexiones sobre el segundo gobierno concertacionista, edited by Oscar Muñoz and Carolina Stefoni (Santiago: FLACSO-­Chile, Editorial Universitaria, 2002), 187–220; Manuel Antonio Garretón, “La (in)conducción política del segundo gobierno democrático,” in Muñoz and Stefoni, El período del Presidente Frei Ruiz-­Tagle, 43–82; Hilbink, Judges beyond Politics, 185–186. 48. Blanco, “El programa de justicia”; Andrade Geywitz, Reforma de la constitución política, 359–367, 375–387; Jorge Correa Sutil, “Cenicienta se queda en la fiesta: el poder judicial chileno en la década de los noventa,” in Drake and Jaksić, El modelo chileno, 281, 306–313; Hilbink, Judges beyond Politics, 185–187; Alfonso Insunza Bascuñán, “The 1978 Amnesty Law and International Treaties,” Revista Jurídica ARCIS 1, no. 1 (1998), at Memoria y Justicia, http://memoriayjusticia.cl/english /en_issues-­amnesty.html; Memoria y Justicia, “Avenues and Obstacles to Justice,” http://memoriayjusticia.cl/english/en_avenues.html. 49. Fundación de Ayuda Social de las Iglesias Cristianas (FASIC), Derechos humanos en Chile: resumen mensual (Santiago: FASIC, January 1998); Arzobispado de Santiago, Fundación de Documentación y Archivo de la Vicaría de la Solidaridad (FUNVISOL), Informe de derechos humanos, 1st semester 1998, 3; Hilbink, Judges beyond Politics, 178; Claudio Fuentes Saavedra, La transición de los militares: relaciones civiles-­militares en Chile 1990–2006 (Santiago: LOM Ediciones, 2006), 118; Barahona de Brito “Passion, Constraint, Law, and Fortuna,” 161–163. Judge Alejandro Solís Muñoz called the acceptance of the first criminal charge against Pinochet “the first brick in the building”; interview with the author, Santiago, October 17, 2012. Marny A. Requa calls the 1998 decisions “the turning point”; “A Human Rights Triumph? Dictatorship-­Era Crimes and the Chilean Supreme Court,” Human Rights Law Review 12, no. 1 (2012): 84. 50. FASIC, Derechos humanos en Chile: resumen mensual, January through October 1998; Arzobispado de Santiago, FUNVISOL, Informe de derechos humanos, 1st and 2nd semesters 1998. 51. Collins, Post-­Transitional Justice, 90–91. Collins indicates near-­unanimity of opinion among the dozens of people she interviewed that changes in judicial attitudes and behavior were under way prior to Pinochet’s arrest in October 1998 (134). Chapter 5: Precipitating Events 1. For instances of persons encountering their former torturers, see Feitlowitz, Lexicon of Terror, 85–87, 209–210; and Mary Helen Spooner, The General’s Slow Retreat: Chile after Pinochet (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 190–191. 2. Katherine Hite, Politics and the Art of Commemoration: Memorials to Struggle in Latin America and Spain (London: Routledge, 2012); Elizabeth Jelin, “Los sentidos de la conmemoración,” in Las conmemoraciones: las disputas en las fechas “in-­felices,” edited by Elizabeth Jelin (Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno, 2002), 245–250; Federico Guillermo Lorenz, “De quién es el 24 de marzo? Las luchas por la memoria del golpe de 1976,” in Jelin, Las conmemoraciones, 53–100.

Notes to Pages 81–85 147

3. Verbitsky, The Flight. 4. Ibid.; Feitlowitz, Lexicon of Terror, 193–201; Tappatá Valdez, interviews, 2002. 5. Verbitsky, The Flight, 20–24, quotations are on 20, 20, 23, 23, and 24, respectively. 6. The pact of silence was not strictly honored. Scilingo himself had told his wife and two other people of his experiences at ESMA, and his wife had told numerous acquaintances. Others probably talked as well. But it took the impact of the televised confession to convey to the Argentine public what had been revealed privately. Verbitsky, The Flight, 31, 59–60; Feitlowitz, Lexicon of Terror, 198–199. 7. Feitlowitz, Lexicon of Terror, 193–238; Vásquez, interview, 2002; Patricia Tappatá Valdez, director, Human Rights Division, Ministery of Foreign Affairs, interview with the author, Buenos Aires, October 23, 2012. 8. In Feitlowitz, Lexicon of Terror, quotations on 210, 209–210, and 212, respectively. CELS, Informe anual, 1995, viii, 123–145. 9. Feitlowitz, Lexicon of Terror, 193–195. By 1998 a total of eight military men had publicly described their involvement in the repression; Elin Skaar, “Judicial Independence and Human Rights Policies,” 56. 10. Vásquez, interview, 2012. 11. Quoted in Feitlowitz, Lexicon of Terror, Bonaparte on 197–198, Steimberg on 209, and Villani on 210. 12. Wright, State Terrorism, 161. 13. In La Nación, April 27, 1995. The speech is reprinted in Balza’s autobiographical Dejo constancia: memorias de un general argentino (Buenos Aires: Planeta, 2001), 260–262. 14. Balza, Dejo constancia, 207–213. 15. La Prensa, April 28, 1995. 16. Ibid. 17. Elizabeth Jelin, “The Minefields of Memory,” NACLA Report on the Americas 32, no. 2 (September–October 1998): 23–29; Elizabeth Jelin and Susana G. Kaufman, “Layers of Memories: Twenty Years After in Argentina,” in Genocide, Collective Violence, and Popular Memory: The Politics of Remembrance in the Twentieth Century, edited by David E. Lorey and William H. Beezley (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2002), 31–52, especially 38–41. 18. CELS, Informe anual, 1998, 42–43; Feitlowitz, Lexicon of Terror, 186–192; Rosa Klainer, “Estudios para el análisis de experiencias de educación en derechos humanos en Argentina,” in Experiencias de educación en derechos humanos en América Latina, edited by Roberto Cuéllar (San José, Costa Rica: Instituto Interamericano de Derechos Humanos and Ford Foundation, 2000), 35–82; Jelin and Kaufman, “Layers of Memories.” Examples of commemoration abound. On April 26, 1996, Página 12 carried announcements on the anniversaries of the disappearances of Dr. Daniel Alberto Goldberg and Jorge Salvador Gullo. In 2001 athletic events in Buenos Aires and in Italy were named for disappeared athlete Miguel Sánchez. The legislature of Buenos Aires province claimed an abandoned house where four youths were killed by the military twenty-­five years earlier as part of the province’s cultural patrimony. La Nación, January 9, 2001. 19. Patricia Tappatá Valdez, “El Parque de la Memoria,” in Monumentos, memo-

148 Notes to Pages 85–87

riales y marcas territoriales, ed. Elizabeth Jelin and Victoria Langland (Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno, 2003), 97–111; Hite, Politics and the Art of Commemoration, 59–60; CELS, Informe anual, 1998, 39–42; CELS, Informe anual, 2000, 28. Menem did not hide his approach of burying the past, frequently admonishing the public to “forget” what had happened during the Proceso; McSherry, Incomplete Transition, 252–253, 263. 20. Clarín, March 26, 2001; announcement from Provincia de Buenos Aires, Comisión Provincial por la Memoria, December 4, 2002 (seen by the author); Tappatá Valdez, interviews, 2002. 21. I. Vásquez, ed., Historia de las Madres, 209–258; Correa and Morzilli, Las madres, 188–204; Guzmán Bouvard, Revolutionizing Motherhood, 162–164; Mercedes Colas de Meroño, member, Madres de Plaza de Mayo-­Línea Fundadora, interview with the author, Buenos Aires, December 5, 2002. 22. Alba Lancillotto, president, Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, interview with the author, Buenos Aires, December 10, 2002. As of 2012, 105 stolen children had been matched with their biological parents; Francisco Goldman, “Children of the Dirty War: Argentina’s Stolen Orphans,” New Yorker, March 19, 2012, 65. 23. CELS, La aplicación de los tratados sobre derechos humanos por los tribunales locales (Buenos Aires: Editores del Puerto, 1997). 24. CELS, Informe anual, 1998, 48–52; CELS, Informe anual, 2000, 62–64; Susana Kaiser, “Outing Torturers in Postdictatorship Argentina,” NACLA Report on the Americas 34, no. 1 ( July–August 2000): 14–15; Laura Hidalgo Fresno, Juan Manuel Torrez, Juan Pablo Montello, Facundo Ramos Mejía, and María Abril Álvarez, HIJOS members, interviews with the author, Buenos Aires, October 24, 2012. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who chaired South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, suggests that public shaming may serve as a partial substitute for criminal punishment; Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, “The Moral Foundations of Truth Commissions,” in Truth v. Justice: The Morality of Truth Commissions, ed. Robert I. Rotberg and Dennis Thompson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 22–44, especially 43. Naomi Roht-­A rriaza, “The Role of International Actors in National Accountability Processes,” in Barahona de Brito, González-­Enríquez, and Aguilar, Politics of Memory, 54. 25. Página 12, December 6, 2002. The author witnessed the transmission ceremony, known as the entrega de los pañuelos (delivery of the scarves). 26. CELS, Informe anual, 1995, 2–3; CELS, La aplicación de los tratados, 1997; Naomi Roht-­Arriaza, The Pinochet Effect: Transnational Justice in the Age of Human Rights (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 101–108; Alexandra Barahona de Brito, “Truth, Justice, Memory, and Democratization,” in Barahona de Brito, González-­Enríquez, and Aguilar, Politics of Memory, 138–139. The 1998 CELS Informe anual acknowledged that “the international community has an important and very effective role to play in ending impunity in our region” (21). CELS published a ten-­year retrospective on its work to apply international human rights treaties in Argentine courts; Víctor Abramovich, Alberto Bovino, and Christian Courtis, eds., La aplicación de los tratados sobre derechos humanos en el ámbito local: la experiencia de una década (Buenos Aires: CELS, 2007). 27. Eduardo Anguita, Sano juicio: Baltasar Garzón, algunos sobrevivientes y la lucha contra la impunidad en Latinoamérica (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana,

Notes to Pages 87–90 149

2001); Ernesto Ekaizer, Yo, Augusto (Buenos Aires: Aguilar, 2003), 363–472; Roht-­ Arriaza, Pinochet Effect, 118–149; Roht-­A rriaza, “Role of International Actors,” 53–54. After going to Spain to testify in the trials of other alleged repressors, Adolfo Scilingo was tried in 2005 and sentenced to 640 years; he remains in a Spanish prison as of this writing. 28. Stern, Reckoning with Pinochet, 212–232. For the main events of 1990–1998 that elicited memory irruptions see Wilde, “Irruptions of Memory,” 8–13. Wilde later carries the story through 2010; Alexander Wilde, “A Season of Memory: Human Rights in Chile’s Long Transition,” in The Politics of Memory in Chile: From Pinochet to Bachelet, edited by Cath Collins, Katherine Hite, and Alfredo Joignant (Boulder, CO: FirstForum Press, 2013), 31–60. 29. FUNVISOL, Informe de derechos humanos, 1st semester 1998, 3. 30. Constitution of Chile, Article 45. Aylwin’s presidential term had been set at four years in the “tie-­up” laws Pinochet left in place, which precluded Aylwin from receiving an automatic Senate seat. The constitution was revised in 1994 to fix the term at six years, then again in 2005 to restore the four-­year term. 31. Garretón, “La (in)conduccíon política,” 67–68; Muñoz, Dictator’s Shadow, 240–241; Siavelis, President and Congress, 30–31, 107; Weeks, Military and Politics, 127–137. 32. Joignant, Un día distinto; Azun Candina Polomer, “El día interminable: memoria e instalación del 11 de septiembre en Chile (1974–1999), in Jelin, Las conmemoraciones, 9–51; Loveman and Lira, El espejismo, 210–221. Decree-­law 18.026 established the holiday. El Mercurio, August 20 and 23, 1998; NACLA Report on the Americas 32, no. 2 (September–October 1998): 5. The Day of National Unity was abolished after two years. 33. Ekaizer, Yo, Augusto, 16–27; Muñoz, Dictator’s Shadow, 242–245; Spooner, General’s Slow Retreat, 156–159. 34. Roger Burbach, The Pinochet Affair: State Terrorism and Global Justice (London: Zed Books, 2003), 101; Eduardo Martín de Pozuelo and Santiago Tarín, España acusa (Barcelona: Plaza y Janés, 1999), 178–195; Pilar Urbano, Garzón: el hombre que veía amanecer (Barcelona: Plaza y Janés, 2000), 515–522; Ekaizer, Yo, Augusto, 16–27. 35. Quoted in Anguita, Sano juicio, 264. Muñoz, Dictator’s Shadow, 246–250. 36. Diana Woodhouse, ed., The Pinochet Case: A Legal and Constitutional Analysis (Oxford: Hart, 2000); Roht-­A rriaza, Pinochet Effect, 32–66; Ekaizer, Yo, Augusto, 215–237, 475–966; Mónica Pérez, Augusto Pinochet, 503 días atrapado en Londres (Santiago: Editorial Los Andes, 2000); Muñoz, Dictator’s Shadow, 242–273; Carlos Castresana, Spanish prosecutor, interview with the author, Madrid, December 11, 2001. See also the 2001 film The Pinochet Case, directed by Patricio Guzmán. 37. Roht-­A rriaza, Pinochet Effect; on universal jurisdiction, see especially 6–14. Another author’s title reflects the same impact: Jorge Mario Eastman, Pinochet: el déspota que revolucionó el derecho internacional (Bogotá: TM Editores, 2000). According to veteran human rights official Aryeh Neier in Taking Liberties, “Augusto Pinochet and Slobodan Milosevic are symbols of the cruelty and barbarity of the last third of the twentieth century, but they also inspired the most significant advances in international accountability for the authors of great crimes” (363).

150 Notes to Pages 90–94

38. Marc Cooper, “Payback Time for Pinochetistas,” The Nation, December 21, 1998, 24; Loveman and Lira, El espejismo, 253–277. 39. Burbach, Pinochet Affair, 113–116; Roht-­A rriaza, Pinochet Effect, 37–40; Gabriela Zúñiga, spokesperson, AFDD, interview with the author, Santiago, October 18, 2012. 40. Díaz, interview, 2002. 41. Tomás Moulián, “The Arrest and Its Aftermath,” NACLA Report on the Americas 32, no. 6 (May-­June 1999): 13. 42. Allende, My Invented Country, 194–195. 43. La Tercera, November 23, 1998; Spooner, General’s Slow Retreat, 162–167; Burbach, Pinochet Affair, 104–106. 44. Alicia Lira, president, Agrupación de Familiares de Ejecutados Políticos, interview with the author, Santiago, October 16, 2012. 45. Zúñiga, interview. 46. Marcela Prádenas, Chilean exile, interview with the author, Madrid, October 5, 2001. 47. Alicia Margarita Piña Allende, member, AFDD, interview with the author, Santiago, November 20, 2002. 48. In El País Semanal (Madrid), June 15, 2003, 14. See also Ariel Dorfman, Exorcising Terror: The Incredible Unending Trial of General Augusto Pinochet (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002), a personal chronicle of the author’s reactions to the arrest and trial as well as an analysis of both. 49. Sara Carrasco, staff member, FASIC, interview with the author, Santiago, November 20, 2002; FASIC, “Programa de salud integral para víctimas de tortura,” pamphlet, n.d. 50. La Tercera, December 2, 1998; Muñoz, Dictator’s Shadow, 252–254. 51. Loveman and Lira, El espejismo, 320–325; Roht-­A rriaza, Pinochet Effect, 67–96; Raquel Aldana, “Steps Closer to Justice for Past Crimes in Chile and Argentina: A Story of Judicial Boldness,” Instant Analysis. Cox Center War Crimes Research Portal (Cleveland, OH: Frederick K. Cox International Law Center, Case Western Reserve University, November 17, 2004), http://law.case.edu/war-­crimes -­research-­portal/instant_analysis.asp?id=12. 52. FASIC, Derechos humanos, November 1999; FUNVISOL, Informe de derechos humanos, 2nd semester 1999, 47; Stern, Reckoning with Pinochet, 232–238. 53. In Muñoz, Dictator’s Shadow, 253. Burbach, Pinochet Affair, 105. 54. Loveman and Lira, El espejismo, 320–325. 55. Quoted in Burbach, Pinochet Affair, 119–120. 56. Ekaizer, Yo, Augusto, 967–973; FASIC, Derechos humanos, April 2000; Roht-­ Arriaza, Pinochet Effect, 67–68; Muñoz, Dictator’s Shadow, 272. 57. Katherine Hite, “El monumento a Salvador Allende en el debate político chileno,” in Jelin and Langland, Monumentos, memoriales y marcas territoriales, 19–55; Katherine Hite, “Resurrecting Allende,” Chile: Thirty Years Later, special issue, NACLA Report on the Americas 37, no. 1 (July–August 2003): 19–24; Cath Collins and Katherine Hite, “Memorials, Silences, and Reawakenings,” in Collins, Hite, and Joignant, Politics of Memory, 133–163; FASIC, Derechos humanos, March 2002, November 2003; Louis S. Bickford, “The Archival Imperative,” Human Rights Quarterly 21, no. 4 (1999): 1097–1122; Bickford, “Human Rights

Notes to Pages 95–98 151

Archives and Research on Historical Memory: Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay,” Latin American Research Review 35 (2000): 160–182; Bickford, “Preserving Memory,” 13. Released the year before Pinochet’s arrest, Patricio Guzmán’s film Chile, Obstinate Memory criticizes the continuing suppression of popular memory of the UP years; Marcial Godoy-­A nativia, “On Patricio Guzmán’s Chile, Obstinate Memory,” NACLA Report on the Americas 32, no. 2 (September–October 1998): 21. 58. Joignant, Un día distinto, 81–119; FASIC, Derechos humanos, August, September, October, November 2003. The July–August 2003 issue (vol. 37, no. 1) of NACLA Report on the Americas is titled “Chile: Thirty Years Later.” The Museo de Memoria y Derechos Humanos in Santiago displays photographs of more than eighty monuments to victims of human rights violations and a map of their locations; author’s observation, October 14, 2012. Chapter 6: The Eclipse of Impunity 1. On democratic consolidation and related issues, see Jorge I. Domínguez, ed., Constructing Democratic Governance: Latin America and the Caribbean in the 1990s (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); John Peeler, Building Democracy in Latin America (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1998); Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-­Communist Europe (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Scott Mainwaring, Guillermo O’Donnell, and Samuel Valenzuela, eds., Issues in Democratic Consolidation: The New South American Democracies in Comparative Perspective (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992). 2. For overviews of the evolution of civil-­military relations in Argentina, see Marcelo Fabián Sain, Los votos y las botas: estudios sobre la defensa nacional y las relaciones civil-­militares en la democracia argentina (Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros, 2010); Ernesto López and David Pion-­Berlin, Democracia y cuestión militar, translated by Horacio Pons (Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, 1996): Herbert C. Huser, Argentine Civil-­Military Relations: From Alfonsín to Menem (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 2002); Pion-­ Berlin, Through Corridors of Power; McSherry, Incomplete Transition; and Norden, Military Rebellion. For Chile, see Fuentes, La transición de los militares; Juan Esteban Montes and Gonzalo García Pino, ¿Y qué pasó con los militares? (Santiago: Centro de Estudios para el Desarrollo, 2003); and Weeks, Military and Politics. 3. López, Ni la ceniza ni la gloria, 122–128; Kristina Mani, Democratization and Military Transformation in Argentina and Chile: Rethinking Rivalry (Boulder, CO: FirstForum Press, 2011), 88–89; Pion-­Berlin, Through Corridors of Power, 107–122; Carlos Juan Moneta, Fuerzas armadas y gobierno constitucional después de Malvinas: hacia una nueva relación civil-­militar (Mexico City: Centro Latinoamericano de Estudios Estratégicos, 1986); Rosendo Fraga, La cuestión militar, 1987–1989 (Buenos Aires: Editorial Centro de Estudios para la Nueva Mayoría, 1989), 164–168. 4. Alfonsín, Memoria política, 251–264; Daniel Garibaldi, Sociedad y seguridad: el nuevo desafío de la Argentina moderna (Buenos Aires: Editorial Dunken, 2006); Pion-­Berlin, Through Corridors of Power, 141–177; López, Ni la ceniza ni la gloria,

152 Notes to Pages 98–101

117–122; Carlos H. Acuña and Catalina Smulovitz, “Adjusting the Armed Forces to Democracy: Successes, Failures, and Ambiguities in the Southern Cone,” in Constructing Democracy: Human Rights, Citizenship, and Society in Latin America, ed. Elizabeth Jelin and Eric Hershberg (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1996), 14–21; Ernesto López, “Argentina: un largo camino hacia el control civil sobre los militares,” in Control civil sobre los militares y política de defensa en Argentina, Brasil, Chile y Uruguay, ed. Ernesto López (Buenos Aires: Editorial Altamira, 2007), 21. 5. Bonnet, La hegemonía menemista, 65–81; Laura Tedesco and Jonathan R. Barton, The State of Democracy in Latin America: Post-­Transitional Conflicts in Argentina and Chile (London: Routledge, 2004), 140. 6. Pion-­Berlin, Through Corridors of Power, 122–127; McSherry, Incomplete Transition, 237–242. 7. Pion-­Berlin, Through Corridors of Power, 122–140, 175; McSherry, Incomplete Transition, 231–267; Mani, Democratization and Military Transformation, especially 122–124, 129, 135, 154, 161, and 168–169; Taiana, interview; Fraga, Menem y la cuestión militar, 35–36, 151–160. Fraga says the Gulf War mission gave the navy a new raison d’être (35–36). 8. Pion-­Berlin, Through Corridors of Power, 45–46, 63–71. 9. Peter H. Smith, Democracy in Latin America: Political Change in Comparative Perspective, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 101. See also Pion-­ Berlin, Through Corridors of Power, 45–71, 105; McSherry, Incomplete Transition, 201, 231. 10. Círculo Militar, In Memoriam (Buenos Aires: Círculo Militar, 1998, 1999), 2, 10–11; Roniger and Sznajder, Legacy of Human-­Rights Violations, 77, 316n53; McSherry, Incomplete Transition, 264–266; Guido Braslavsky, Enemigos íntimos: los militares y Kirchner; de la purge a los juicios, crónica de una confrontación (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 2009), 13–19. 11. CELS, Informe anual, 1998, 88–104; Martín Abregú, “Human Rights after the Dictatorship: Lessons from Argentina,” NACLA Report on the Americas 34, no. 1 ( July–August 2000): 12–18. 12. Leonardo G. Filippini, “Los informes finales de la Comisión Interamericana en la jurisprudencia de la Corte Supreme argentina,” in Abramovich, Bovino, and Courtis La aplicación de los tratados, 157–164; Aldana, “Steps Closer to Justice”; Roht-­Arriaza, Pinochet Effect, 102–108; María José Guembe, staff member, CELS, interview with the author, Buenos Aires, December 12, 2002. 13. J. Patrice McSherry, “Military Rumblings in Argentina,” NACLA Report on the Americas 34, no. 1 ( July-­August 2000): 16. 14. CELS, Informe anual, 2000, 17–33; CELS, Informe anual, 2002, 12–14; McSherry, “Military Rumblings,” 16–17. 15. Aldana, “Steps Closer to Justice”; Roht-­A rriaza, Pinochet Effect, 102–108. 16. CELS, Informe anual, 2001, 2002; Filippini, “Los informes finales,” 154– 156; Roht-­A rriaza, Pinochet Effect, 113–116. Examples of international NGO involvement include Argentina: Amicus Curiae Brief on the Incompatability with International Law of the Full Stop and Due Obedience Laws Presented by the International Commission of Jurists, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch before the National Chamber for Federal Criminal and Correctional Matters of the Republic of

Notes to Pages 102–105 153

Argentina ( June 2001) and Amnesty International’s Argentina: Legal Memorandum, the Full Stop and Due Obedience Laws: Submitted by Amnesty International and the International Commission of Jurists, December 2003. 17. The Argentine economy shrank by 20 percent between 1999 and 2002; the official unemployment rate was 24 percent at the end of 2002, although the real rate was considerably higher. Buenos Aires Herald, December 3, 2002; Romero, History of Argentina, 333–349; Bonnet, La hegemonía menemista, 375–389; Tedesco and Barton, State of Democracy, 116–118, 131–136; Andrés Gaudin, “Thirteen Days that Shook Argentina—and What Now?” NACLA Report on the Americas 35, no. 5 (March–April 2002): 6–9. 18. Brinzoni quoted in Fred Rosen, “The Argentine Conundrum,” NACLA Report on the Americas 35, no. 5 (March-­April 2002): 5. Hang quoted in Sain, Los votos y las botas, 180. Gaudin, “Thirteen Days”; Tedesco and Barton, State of Democracy, 135–136. 19. Carlos Alberto Curi, Néstor Kirchner: la construcción de poder, 2003–2005 (Buenos Aires: Mesa Editorial, 2010); Andrés Malamud and Miguel de Luca, eds., La política en tiempos de los Kirchner (Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires, 2011); Carolina Varsky and Leonardo G. Filippini, “Desarrollos recientes de las instituciones de la justicia de transición en la Argentina,” in Abramovich, Bovino, and Courtis, La aplicación de los tratados, 447–472; Andrés Gaudin, “The Kirchner Factor,” NACLA Report on the Americas 38, no. 4 (January– February 2005): 16–18. 20. Quotations from Braslavsky, Enemigos íntimos, 119; Sain, Los votos y las botas, 191–197; Curi, Néstor Kirchner, 129–130; Sebastián Mauro and Federico M. Rossi, “Entre la plaza y la Casa Rosada: diálogo y confrontación entre los movimientos sociales y el gobierno nacional,” in Malamud and de Luca, La política en tiempos de los Kirchner, 171; Jorge Battaglino, “Política de defensa y política militar durante el Kirchnerismo,” in Malamud and de Luca, La política en tiempos de los Kirchner, 244–245; Gaudin, “Kirchner Factor.” 21. Curi, Néstor Kirchner, 112–128; Roberto Gargarella, “Notas sobre Kirchnerismo y justicia,” in Malamud and de Luca, La política en tiempos de los Kirchner, 63–70; Braslavsky, Enemigos íntimos, 10; Smulovitz, “Judicialization in Argentina,” 242. 22. Kirchner is quoted in Página 12, March 25, 2004. Braslavsky, Enemigos íntimos, 183–188, 192–197; the retiring general and Videla are quoted on 186. In an interview in 2012 Patricia Tappatá Valdez called the removal of the portraits “absolutely significant.” 23. Kirchner is quoted in Página 12, March 25, 2004. Braslavsky, Enemigos íntimos, 188–192; Curi, Néstor Kirchner, 132. 24. Quoted in La Nación, June 16, 2005; Página 12, June 16, 2005; Braslavsky, Enemigos íntimos, 239–245. 25. Braslavsky, Enemigos íntimos, 241. 26. On civil-­military relations during the Aylwin administration, see Francisco Rojas Aravena, Transición y relaciones civil-­militares en Chile en el nuevo marco internacional (Santiago: FLACSO-­Chile, 1996); Chile, Ministerio Secretaría General de Gobierno, Relación civil-­militar (Santiago: Ministerio Secretaría General de Go-

154 Notes to Pages 105–108

bierno, 1994); Fuentes, La transición de los militares; Weeks, Military and Politics, 50–94; Montes and García Pino, ¿Y qué pasó con los militares?, 54–63; and Cavallo Castro, La historia oculta, 160–170. 27. In Las Últimas Noticias, October 14, 1989, as quoted in Correa Sutil, “‘No Victorious Army,’” 151n14. Lira and Loveman, “Derechos humanos,” 344. 28. Quoted in La Época, September 12, 1990. Weeks, Military and Politics, 62–65. 29. In El Mercurio, March 8, 1991. 30. Human Rights Watch, The Limits of Tolerance: Freedom of Expression and the Public Debate in Chile (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1998); Brown, Human Rights and the “Politics of Agreements,” 94–97. La Nación, “Cuando Chile ardió en el caos,” September 5, 1993. 31. Quoted in Weeks, Military and Politics, 64. Also see Cavallo Castro, La historia oculta, 48–53. 32. The “second independence day” was the message on a flyer distributed in the streets by Pinochet supporters on September 11, 1993, and seen by the author. See Joignant, Un día distinto. 33. Cavallo Castro, La historia oculta, 48–53; Otano, Crónica de la transición, 149. 34. Cavallo Castro, La historia oculta, 29–37, 52–53; Otano, Crónica de la transición, 124–130, 310; Emilio Rojo Orrego, La otra cara de la Moneda: los cuatro años de Aylwin (Santiago: Ediciones ChileAmérica CESOC, 1995), 60–64. Sociologist Tomás Moulián writes, “The de facto power of Pinochet revealed that the glitter of the presidential sash was little more than window dressing”; “The Time of Forgetting: The Myths of the Chilean Transition,” NACLA Report on the Americas 32, no. 2 (September–October 1998): 17. 35. Cavallo Castro, La historia oculta, 67–85; Otano, Crónica de la transición, 153–159; Weeks, Military and Politics, 66–72; Rojo Orrego, La otra cara, 141–143; Chile, Ministerio Secretaría General del Gobierno, Relación civil-­militar, 67. For a chronological list of civil-­military points of tension and confrontations between 1990 and 2000, see Brian Loveman, Chile: The Legacy of Hispanic Capitalism, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 331–335. 36. Cavallo Castro, La historia oculta, 194–216; Otano, Crónica de la transición, 306–320; Weeks, Military and Politics, 83–92. Aylwin’s attempt to resolve the issue of the disappeared through the so-­called Ley Aylwin, covered in Chapter 3, was sparked by the Boinazo. 37. Fuentes, La transición de los militares, 113–114; Montes and García Pino, ¿Y qué pasó con los militares?, 55–56; Otano, Crónica de la transición, 151, 333–334. 38. On civil-­military relations during the Frei administration (1994–2000), see Fuentes, La transición de los militares; Rodrigo Atria, “La relación civil-­militar entre 1994 y 2000: bases para el cambio,” in Muñoz and Stefoni, El período del Presidente Frei Ruiz-­Tagle, 221–242; Montes and García Pino, ¿Y qué pasó con los militares?, 65–107; and Weeks, Military and Politics, 95–146. 39. Alejandra Matus Acuña and Francisco Javier Artaza, Crimen con castigo (Santiago: Ediciones B, Grupo Zeta, 1996), 271–295; Cavallo Castro, La historia oculta, 264–272; Fuentes, La transición de los militares, 81–85; Weeks, Military and Politics, 98–101.

Notes to Pages 108–111 155

40. Cavallo Castro, La historia oculta, 349–355; Manuel Antonio Garretón, “La (in)conducción política,” 67–68; Alan Angell, Democracy after Pinochet, 148. 41. Hite, “El monumento a Salvador Allende,” 47–48; Loveman, Chile, 354– 355; Gregory B. Weeks, “The Transition Is Dead, Long Live the Transition: Civil-­ Military Relations and the Limits of Consensus,” in The Bachelet Government: Conflict and Consensus in Post-­Pinochet Chile, edited by Silvia Borzutzky and Gregory B. Weeks (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2010), 78–79. 42. One of the other human rights organizations opposing the Mesa de Diálogo was CODEPU. Its many statements about the Mesa de Diálogo are found in CODEPU, El irrenunciable camino de la justicia, 71–107. Vergara, interview. The president of the Agrupación de Familiares de Ejecutados Políticos (AFEP, Organization of Family Members of the Executed for Political Reasons) called the Mesa de Diálogo “forced reconciliation”; Lira, interview. Frei established a DNA bank in 1998 to aid in the identification of the disappeared. 43. This and the following paragraph of text are based on FASIC, Derechos humanos, January, February, April 2001; Loveman and Lira, El espejismo, 277–286, 302–331; Chile, “Acuerdo de la Mesa de Diálogo: hacia el reencuentro de todos los chilenos,” pamphlet (Santiago: Gobierno de Chile, 2000); Gregory Weeks, “Inching toward Democracy: President Lagos and the Chilean Armed Forces,” in After Pinochet: The Chilean Road to Democracy and the Market, edited by Silvia Borzutzky and Lois Hecht Oppenheim (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006), 26–41; Ana Rojas Castañeda, member, AFDD, interview with the author, Santiago, November 20, 2002. On the Lagos administration, see Robert L. Funk, ed., El gobierno de Ricardo Lagos: la nueva vía chilena hacia el socialismo (Santiago: Ediciones Universidad Diego Portales, 2006); and Ricardo Lagos, Discursos presidenciales, 21 mayo 2000–2005 (Santiago: Gobierno de Chile, 2005). 44. Loveman and Lira, El espejismo, 326–328; quotation on 328. La Tercera, June 22, 2000. 45. AFDD, “Declaración pública,” mimeo, December 12, 2001. See also FASIC, Derechos humanos, January and February 2001. 46. FASIC, Derechos humanos, May and June, 2001; Roht-­A rriaza, Pinochet Effect, 93–94; Loveman and Lira, El espejismo, 333–438; María Raquel Mejías, official, Human Rights Division, Ministry of the Interior, interview with the author, Santiago, November 21, 2002. 47. José Bengoa said “the justices . . . are trying to show they are no longer the pawns of Pinochet”; quoted in Burbach, Pinochet Affair, 125; Alexandra Huneeus, “Judging from a Guilty Conscience: The Chilean Judiciary’s Human Rights Turn,” Law and Social Inquiry 35, no. 1 (winter 2010): 99–135; José Zalaquett, human rights lawyer and scholar, interview with the author, Santiago, November 22, 2002. Cath Collins traces the course of prosecutions through 2012 in the “Politics of Prosecutions,” in Collins, Hite, and Joignant, Politics of Memory in Chile. 48. CODEPU lists sixty-­six cases; El irrenunciable camino, 58–65. Burbach, Pinochet Affair, 123–145; Weeks, Military in Politics, 146–151. For detailed chronologies of Pinochet’s legal travails, see Collins, Post-­Transitional Justice, 141; and C. Huneeus, Pinochet Regime, 499–502. 49. FASIC, Derechos humanos, July 2001, July 2002; Loveman and Lira, El espe-

156 Notes to Pages 111–114

jismo, 349–350; Spooner, General’s Slow Retreat, 185–188; Loreto Meza, human rights lawyer, interview with the author, Santiago, October 15, 2012; Hernán Quezada, human rights lawyer, interview with the author, Santiago, October 15, 2012. Human rights lawyer Carmen Hertz said, “The entire political and social establishment in Chile wanted an end to the Pinochet case”; in Burbach, Pinochet Affair, 140. 50. Quotations in FASIC, Derechos humanos, August 2003. See also FASIC, Derechos humanos, March and December 2001, June 2003, January 2004; Aldana, “Steps Closer to Justice”; Fuentes, La transición de los militares, 116–137; Verónica Reyna, human rights lawyer, FASIC, interview with the author, Santiago, November 19, 2002. 51. Tina Rosenberg, “Chile’s Military Must Now Report to One of Its Past Victims,” New York Times, May 11, 2004. 52. In FASIC, Derechos humanos, August 2002. See also Fuentes, La transición de los militares, 133–134. Fuentes writes that during Cheyre’s tenure there was a “progressive acceptance . . . of the rules of the judicial game [reglas del juego judicial]” (115), and he calls Cheyre “the general of the military transition” (136). 53. Quoted in FASIC, Derechos humanos, August 2002. 54. Quoted in Spooner, General’s Slow Retreat, 191–192. See also FASIC, Derechos humanos, May 2002, May 2003; Agüero, “Democracia, gobierno y militares,” 56. 55. FASIC, Derechos humanos, September 2002, June 2003, March and June 2004; Fuentes, La transición de los militares, 133. Agüero periodizes civil-­military relations by presidential term: Aylwin, confrontation; Frei, pacification and, after Pinochet’s arrest, catharsis; and Lagos, agreement and democratic normality; “Democracia, gobierno y militares,” 59. 56. FASIC, Derechos humanos, November 2003; Collins, Post-­Transitional Justice, 141; Muñoz, Dictator’s Shadow, 278–279. 57. Muñoz, Dictator’s Shadow, 283–298; Washington Post, July 15, 2004; Collins, Post-­Transitional Justice, 90–91. 58. Fuentes estimates that the 35,000 persons who reported to the Valech Commission represented no more than a third of all those who underwent torture during the dictatorship; La transición de los militares, 124. Steve Stern writes that Chilean College of Medicine estimated the number of tortured at 200,000; Reckoning with Pinochet, 258. As noted in the conclusion of this book, a new commission convened in 2010 documented 9,795 additional torture victims. 59. Quoted in Muñoz, Dictator’s Shadow, 304. The commission’s report, Comisión Nacional sobre Prisión Política y Tortura, Informe (Santiago: Comisión Nacional sobre Prisión Política y Tortura, 2004), is archived at the Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional de Chile (BCN), http://www.bcn.cl/bibliodigital/dhisto/lfs /Informe.pdf. Issues of Informe anual sobre derechos humanos en Chile are produced by and archived at the Centro de Derechos Humanos, Universidad Diego Portales (UDP), Santiago, http://www.derechoshumanos.udp.cl/archivo/informe-­anual/. See also Stern, Reckoning with Pinochet, 286–297. 60. Quoted in Stern, Reckoning with Pinochet, 301. Collins, Post-­Transitional Justice, 147–148. 61. Centro de Derechos Humanos UDP, Informe anual, 2005, 201–203; Human

Notes to Pages 114–127 157

Rights Watch, “Essential Background: Overview of Human Rights in Chile,” December 31, 2004; FASIC, Derechos humanos, July 2003, June 2004; Fuentes, La transición de los militares, 111. 62. Quoted in La Tercera, November 4, 2004. FASIC, Derechos humanos, No‑ vember 2004; Claudio Fuentes, “La pausada des-­pinochetización de las fuerzas armadas de Chile,” in Influencias y resistencias: militares y poder en América Latina, ed. Felipe Agüero and Claudio Fuentes (Santiago: FLACSO Chile, 2009), 319–325; Agüero, “Democracia, gobierno y militares,” 56–57. 63. Centro de Derechos Humanos UDP, Informe anual, 2006, 263–269; Human Rights Watch, World Report 2006: Chile, at http://www.hrw.org/world-­report-­2006 /chile; Collins, Post-­Transitional Justice, 95–96; Stern, Reckoning with Pinochet, 330– 331; Karinna Fernández, human rights lawyer, interview with the author, Santiago, October 15, 2012. 64. Agüero, “Democracia, gobierno y militares,” 55. 65. Ibid., 50–56; Fuentes, La transición de los militares, 147–152; Fuentes, “La pausada des-­pinochetización,” 306–315. 66. Mani, Democratization and Military Transformation, 157–161, 169–170. 67. Emilio Pfeffer Urquiaga, Reformas constitucionales 2005: antecedentes, debates, informes (Santiago: Editorial Jurídica de Chile, 2005); Francisco Zúñiga Urbina, ed., Reforma constitucional (Santiago: LexisNexis, 2005). Conclusion 1. The developments are gleaned from the various Chilean, Argentine, and international reports on human rights found in the notes and bibliography of this book. 2. Solís Muñoz, interview. 3. Karinna Fernández Neira, “Breve análisis de la jurisprudencia chilena, en relación a las graves violaciones a los derechos humanos cometidos durante la dictadura militar,” Estudios Constitucionales 8, no. 1 (2010): 467–487; Cath Collins, “Human Rights Trials in Chile during and after the ‘Pinochet Years,’” International Journal of Transitional Justice 4, no. 1 (2010): 67–86; Cath Collins, political scientist, author, and human rights activist, interviews with the author, Santiago, October 13, 15, 19, 2012. 4. The right-­wing presidential candidate polled below 45 percent of the vote in only one of five presidential elections between 1989 and 2010. Polling found that Chileans, some fifteen years after the dictatorship’s end, were almost evenly divided between those who attributed the human rights violations to institutional rather than individual responsibility; roughly half responded that the Pinochet regime was partly good and partly bad. See Augusto Varas, Claudio Fuentes, and Felipe Agüero, Instituciones cautivas: opinion pública y nueva legitimidad social de las fuerzas armadas (Santiago: FLACSO-­Chile, 2008), 55; and Carlos Huneeus and Sebastián Ibarra, “The Memory of the Pinochet Regime in Public Opinion,” in Collins, Hite, and Joignant, Politics of Memory, 217–219. 5. In Lorena Balardini and Cath Collins’s comprehensive November 2012 report “Juicios en Chile y Argentina: una aproximación en clave comparada,” pro-

158 Notes to Page 128

duced for CELS and the Observatorio Derechos Humanos, Universidad Diego Portales (UDP), the authors measure what they call “societal repudiation” of the state terrorist regimes and the repressors. They find the level of societal repudiation “relatively high” in Argentina and “very low” in Chile. The prevailing attitude in Argentina is confirmed in my interviews with Verbitsky, Taiana, and Agustín Colombo Sierra, lawyer, professor, and human rights activist, Buenos Aires, October 22 and 24, 2012. 6. This assessment is based on conversations with the Argentines I interviewed in October 2012. All affirmed that, in their opinions, justice was being accomplished in Argentina, although most voiced caveats such as “It came late” and “There is much to do.” The interviews are listed in the bibliography. 7. Most Chileans I interviewed in October 2012 acknowledged that some justice had been done, but all either volunteered the term a medias (halfway) or, when asked if that term applied, agreed that it did. A few felt that no justice had been done. The interviews are listed in the bibliography.

Selected Bibliography

Interviews Álvarez, María Abril. Member, HIJOS, Buenos Aires, October 24, 2012. Arriaza, Alejandra. Executive secretary, CODEPU, Santiago, October 17, 2012. Barbuto, Valeria. Director, Memoria Abierta, Buenos Aires, October 25, 2012. Boitano, Lita. President, Familiares de Desaparecidos y Detenidos por Razones Políticas, Buenos Aires, October 24, 2012. Cao, Silvia. Official, Human Rights Division, Ministry of Foriegn Affairs, Buenos Aires, October 23, 2012. Carrasco, Sara. Staff member, FASIC, Santiago, November 20, 2002. Castresana, Carlos. Prosecutor, Madrid, December 11, 2001. Cavallo Castro, Ascanio. Historian and journalist, Santiago, October 19, 2012, by e-­mail. Colas de Meroño, Mercedes. Member, Madres de Plaza de Mayo-Línea Fundadora, Buenos Aires, December 5, 2002. Collins, Cath. Political scientist, author, and human rights activist, Santiago, October 13, 15, 19, 2012. Colombo Sierra, Agustín. Lawyer, professor, and CELS member, Buenos Aires, October 22, 24, 2012. Díaz, Viviana. President, AFDD, Santiago, November 21, 2002; member, AFDD, Santiago, October 19, 2012. Fernández, Karinna. Human rights lawyer, Santiago, October 15, 2012. Garretón, Roberto. Lawyer, member, Board of Directors, National Institute of Human Rights, Santiago, October 15, 2012. Guembe, María José. Staff member, CELS, Buenos Aires, December 12, 2002. Hidalgo Fresno, Laura. Member, HIJOS, Buenos Aires, October 24, 2012. Lancillotto, Alba. President, Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, Buenos Aires, December 10, 2002. Lira, Alicia. President, Agrupación de Familiares de Ejecutados Políticos, Santiago, October 16, 2012. Mejías, María Raquel. Human rights official, Ministry of the Interior, Santiago, November 21, 2002.

160 Selected Bibliography

Meza, Loreto. Human rights lawyer, Santiago, October 15, 2012. Micucci, Ilda. Member, Madres de Plaza de Mayo–Línea Fundadora, Buenos Aires, December 9, 2002. Montello, Juan Pablo. Member, HIJOS, Buenos Aires, October 24, 2012. Oñate, Rody. Author, public relations professional, former exile, Santiago, October 14, 2012. Piña Allende, Alicia Margarita. Member, AFDD, Santiago, November 20, 2002. Prádenas, Marcela. Chilean exile, Madrid, October 5, 2001. Quezada, Hernán. Human rights lawyer, Santiago, October 15, 2012. Ramos Mejía, Facundo. Member, HIJOS, Buenos Aires, October 24, 2012. Reyna, Verónica. Human rights lawyer, FASIC, Santiago, November 19, 2002. Rice, Patrick. Activist priest, Buenos Aires, December 9, 2002. Rojas Castañeda, Ana. Member, AFDD, Santiago, November 20, 2002. Slepoy, Carlos. Argentine exile and human rights activist, Madrid, November 13, 2001. Solís Muñoz, Alejandro. Judge, Santiago, October 17, 2012. Taiana, Jorge. Peronist politician, minister of foreign affairs 2005–2010, Buenos Aires, October 23, 2012. Tappatá Valdez, Patricia. Director, Memoria Abierta, Buenos Aires, December 4, 11, 2002; director, Human Rights Division, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Buenos Aires, October 23, 2012. Torrez, Juan Manuel. Member, HIJOS, Buenos Aires, October 24, 2012. Varsky, Carolina. Director of litigation, CELS, Buenos Aires, October 22, 2012. Vásquez, Marta. President, Madres de Plaza de Mayo–Línea Fundadora, Buenos Aires, December 10, 2002; member, October 23, 2012. Verbitsky, Horacio. Journalist, scholar, and president, CELS Board of Directors, Buenos Aires, October 22, 2012. Vergara, María Paz. Director, Fundación de Documentación y Archivo de la Vicaría de la Solidaridad (FUNVISOL), Santiago, October 19, 2012. Viera-­G allo, José Antonio. Socialist politician and member, Tribunal Constitucional, Santiago, October 15, 2012. Zalaquett, José. Human rights lawyer and scholar, Santiago, November 22, 2002. Zúñiga, Gabriela. Spokesperson, AFDD, Santiago, October 18, 2012. Published Sources Abramovich, Victor. “Una nueva institucionalidad pública: los tratados de derechos humanos en el orden constitucional argentino.” In Abramovich, Bovino, and Courtis, La aplicación de los tratados, iii–xv. Abramovich, Victor, Alberto Bovino, and Christian Courtis, eds. La aplicación de los tratados sobre derechos humanos en el ámbito local: la experiencia de una década. Buenos Aires: CELS, 2007. Abregú, Martín. “Human Rights after the Dictatorship: Lessons from Argentina.” NACLA Report on the Americas 34, no. 1 ( July–August 2000): 12–18. Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo. Niños desaparecidos en la Argentina desde 1976. Buenos Aires: Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, 1990.

Selected Bibliography 161

Acuña, Carlos H., and Catalina Smulovitz. “Adjusting the Armed Forces to Democracy: Successes, Failures, and Ambiguities in the Southern Cone.” In Constructing Democracy: Human Rights, Citizenship, and Society in Latin America, edited by Elizabeth Jelin and Eric Hershberg, 13–38. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996. Agosín, Marjorie. Ashes of Revolt. Fredonia, NY: White Pine Press, 1996. ———. Circles of Madness: Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo = Círculos de locura: Madres de la Plaza de Mayo. Fredonia, NY: White Pine Press, 1992. ———. Surviving beyond Fear: Women, Children, and Human Rights in Latin America. Fredonia, NY: White Pine Press, 1993. ———. Tapestries of Hope, Threads of Love: The Arpillera Movement in Chile, 1974– 1999. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996. Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos (AFDD). Un camino de imágenes: 20 años de historia de la Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos en Chile. Santiago: Corporación AFDD, 1997. ———. Recuento de actividades 1990. Santiago: AFDD, 1990. Agüero, Felipe. “Democracia, gobierno y militares desde el cambio de siglo: avances hacia la normalidad democrática.” In El gobierno de Ricardo Lagos: la nueva vía chilena hacia el socialismo, edited by Robert L. Funk, 49–67. Santiago: Ediciones Universidad Diego Portales, 2006. Agüero, Felipe, and Claudio Fuentes, eds. Influencias y resistencias: militares y poder en América Latina. Santiago: FLASCO-Chile, 2009. Ahumada, Eugenio, Javier Luis Egaña, Augusto Góngora, Carmen Quesney, Gustavo Saball, and Gustavo Villalobos, with text by Rodrigo Atria. Chile, la memoria prohibida: las violaciones a los derechos humanos, 1973–1983. 3 vols. Santiago: Pehuén, 1989. Aldana, Raquel. “Steps Closer to Justice for Past Crimes in Chile and Argentina: A Story of Judicial Boldness.” Instant Analysis. Cox Center War Crimes Research Portal. Cleveland, OH: Frederick K. Cox International Law Center, Case Western Reserve University, November 17, 2004. At http://law.case.edu/war­crimes-­research-­portal/instant_analysis.asp?id=12. Alexander, Robert J. Juan Domingo Perón. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1979. Alfonsín, Raúl. Memoria política: transición a la democracia y derechos humanos. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2004. Allamand, Andrés. La travesía del desierto. Santiago: Aguilar, 1999. Allende, Isabel. My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey through Chile. Translated by Margaret Sayers Peden. New York: HarperCollins, 2003. Amnesty International. Argentina: Legal Memorandum, the Full Stop and Due Obedience Laws. Amnesty International and International Commission of Jurists. London: International Secretariat, 2003. ———. Argentina: The Military Juntas and Human Rights—Report of the Trial of the Former Junta Members, 1985. London: Amnesty International, 1987. ———. The “Disappeared” of Argentina: List of Cases Reported to Amnesty International, March 1976–February 1979. London: Amnesty International, 1979. ———. Report on the Mission to Argentina, November 6–15, 1976. London: Amnesty Publications, 1977. Amstutz, Mark R. The Healing of Nations: The Promise and Limits of Political Forgiveness. Lanham: MD, Rowman and Littlefield, 2005.

162 Selected Bibliography

Andersen, Martin Edwin. Dossier Secreto: Argentina’s Desaparecidos and the Myth of the “Dirty War.” Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993. Andrade Geywitz, Carlos. Reforma de la constitución política de la República de Chile de 1980. 2nd edition. Santiago: Editorial Jurídica de Chile, 2002. Angell, Alan. Democracy after Pinochet: Politics, Parties, and Elections in Chile. London: Institute for the Study of the Americas, 2007. Anguita, Eduardo. Sano juicio: Baltasar Garzón, algunos sobrevivientes y la lucha contra la impunidad en Latinoamérica. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 2001. Arditti, Rita. Searching for Life: The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Disappeared Children of Argentina. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Arquidiocese de São Paulo. Brasil, nunca mais. Petrópolis, Brazil: Vozes, 1985. Arriagada Herrera, Genaro. El pensamiento político de los militares: estudios sobre Chile, Argentina, Brasil y Uruguay. Santiago: Centro de Investigaciones Socioeconómicos de la Compañía de Jesús en Chile, 1981. ———. Por la razón o la fuerza: Chile bajo Pinochet. Santiago: Editorial Sudamericana, 1998. Arzobispado de Santiago, Fundación de Documentación y Archivo de la Vicaría de la Solidaridad (FUNVISOL). Informe de derechos humanos. 1st and 2nd semesters 1998. http://www.vicariadelasolidaridad.cl/. Atria, Rodrigo. “La relación civil-­militar entre 1994 y 2000: bases para el cambio.” In Muñoz and Stefoni, El período del Presidente Frei Ruiz-­Tagle, 221–242. Bacchus, Wilfred A. Mission in Mufti: Brazil’s Military Regimes, 1964–1985. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1990. Balardini, Lorena, and Cath Collins. “Juicios en Chile y Argentina: una aproximación en clave comparada.” Report. Buenos Aires and Santiago: CELS and Observatorio Derechos Humanos, Universidad Diego Portales (UDP), 2012. Balza, Martín Antonio. Dejo constancia: memorias de un general argentino. Buenos Aires: Planeta, 2001. Barahona de Brito, Alexandra. Human Rights and Democratization in Latin America: Uruguay and Chile. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1997. ———. “Passion, Constraint, Law, and Fortuna: The Human Rights Challenge to Chilean Democracy.” In Burying the Past: Making Peace and Doing Justice after Civil Conflict, edited by Nigel Biggar, 150–183. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2001. ———. “Truth, Justice, Memory, and Democratization in the Southern Cone.” In Barahona de Brito, González-­Enríquez, and Aguilar, Politics of Memory, 119–160. Barahona de Brito, Alexandra, Carmen Gonzáles-­Enríquez, and Paloma Aguilar, eds. The Politics of Memory: Transitional Justice in Democratizing Societies. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2001. Barcesat, Eduardo S. “Defensa legal de los derechos a la vida y libertad personal en el régimen militar argentino.” In Frühling E., Represión política, 141–162. Battaglino, Jorge. “Política de defensa y política militar durante el Kirchnerismo.” In Malamud and de Luca, La política en tiempos de los Kirchner, 241–250. Bickford, Louis N. “The Archival Imperative.” Human Rights Quarterly 21, no. 4 (1999): 1097–1122.

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Index

abductions: in Argentina, overviews of, 22–23, 27–28, 67–68, 102, 124; in Chile, overviews of, 88; complicity of Catholic Church in, 49; criminality of and judicial reform, 78–79; secuestro calificado and, 79, 92–93, 111. See also baby abductions; disappearances aberrant acts in law, 30, 32, 69 Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo), 50, 58, 85, 100, 119 Academia de Humanismo Cristiano (Academy of Christian Humanism), 46, 70 Acción Democrática (AD), 10 Acción Verdad y Justicia Hijos-­Chile (Sons and Daughters for Truth and Justice–Chile), 93 accountability. See due obedience law; impunity, construction of Ad Hoc Working Group on Chile (UN), 53 adoption of stolen babies. See baby abductions AFDD (Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos, Group of Families of the Detained and Disappeared), 47, 60–61, 76, 91, 109 Agosín, Marjorie, 145n39 agrarian reform, 8–9, 10, 11, 12, 17, 40

Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos (AFDD, Group of Families of the Detained and Disappeared), 47, 60–61, 76, 91, 109 Agrupación de Familiares de Ejecutados Políticos (AFEP, Group of Families of Those Executed for Political Reasons), 47 Agrupación de Familiares de Presos Políticos (Group of Families of Political Prisoners), 47 Agüero, Felipe, 156n55 Alfonsín, Raúl: and end of state terrorist regime, 24; human rights groups, interaction with, 57; legal reforms under, 65–69; military reforms under, 97–98, 110; resignation of, 32; and transitional justice, approaches to, 4, 26–27, 29–30, 31–32, 117–118. See also CONADEP (Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparicion de Personas, National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons) Alianza Anticomunista Argentina, 13 Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA), 10 Allende, Isabel (deputy, president’s daughter), 91, 92 Allende, Isabel (novelist, president’s cousin), 59, 91

180 Index

Allende, Salvador: deposition and death of, 16–17, 87–88; platform and presidency of, 11–12, 14, 40; pro-­Allende support and human rights movement, 51–52, 53, 59, 91–92; symbolic funeral for, 76, 88; tributes/commemorations to, 94–95 Alliance for Progress, 14 Alliance of Parties for the NO (Concertación de Partidos por el NO), 20 Almonacid case, 122 Alvear, Soledad, 78 amendments, constitutional: and human rights law, 70–71, 73, 86; for legislative/judicial reform, 74–75, 99, 115, 116; Pinochet’s strategies against, 39, 105 American Convention on Human Rights, 70, 72–73 American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, 63, 71 Americas Watch, 70, 72 Amin, Idi, 133n11 amnesty decrees: Aylwin’s strategies, 59, 60, 77, 105; in Brazil and Uruguay, 34–35; de facto amnesty of due obedience, 32; Frei’s strategies, 61, 107–108; invalidation of by international human rights law, 73; Menem’s strategies, 71; military self-­amnesty, 24, 26; of Pinochet, 35–36, 41–42, 56, 70, 75, 118; reversals of, judicial reform and, 59, 65–66, 78–79, 93, 111, 122 Amnesty International, 51, 52, 63, 72, 86, 89 Anderson, Jon Lee, 89 Angell, Alan, 136n47 anniversaries as precipitating events. See precipitating events and evolution of justice anti-­American sentiments, 9 anti-­Marxism justification for dirty war, 17, 18–22, 24, 28, 31, 33, 35, 48, 67, 80, 82, 94

anti-­Semitism, 23 apartheid, 29, 53 APDH (Asamblea Permanente por los Derechos Humanos, Permanent Assembly for Human Rights), 48, 51, 58, 85, 100 appointments (government) and shield of impunity, 37–38, 40–41, 58, 64, 75 Archdiocese of Santiago, 45, 118 archives, information, 45, 51, 60, 72, 119 Arellano Stark, Sergio, 93 Argentina: human rights movements in, 43, 48–51, 52, 53, 54–55, 56–58, 60–61, 70–73, 119; impunity in, collapse of, 35, 96–105, 121–122; impunity in, construction of, 25–34, 117–118; judicial reform in, postdictatorial, 74–75, 120–121; judiciary under state terrorism in, 63–65; legal environment and transitional justice in, 62–63, 65–69, 79, 119; postimpunity justice in, analysis and contrasts, 125–128; postimpunity justice in, milestones in, 124–125; precipitating events and collapse of impunity in, 80–87, 95, 121; revolution era of, 12–14, 15–16; state terrorism in, evolution of, 16, 20–24 Argentine Auschwitz, 81–82 Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (Equipo Argentino de Antropología Forense), 29, 34, 72 arpilleras, 47 arrest of Pinochet, 89–94, 108–109, 110–111, 114, 121 Asamblea Permanente por los Derechos Humanos (APDH, Permanent Assembly for Human Rights), 48, 51, 58, 85, 100 assassinations, 13, 21, 36, 112 Astiz, Alfredo, 86–87, 125 atrocious and aberrant acts in law, 30, 32, 69 Aylwin, Patricio: civil-­military ten-

Index 181

sion and, 59–61, 105–107; election of, 20; judicial reform strategies of, 74–75, 77–79; non-­judicial restorative strategies of, 60–61, 75–76 Aylwin Doctrine/Law, 60–61, 77 baby abductions: in Argentina, overview of, 23; identifying, 58; legal progress and justice regarding, 32, 82, 100–101, 125; media coverage of, 30. See also children, disappearances of; Madres de Plaza de Mayo (Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo) Bachelet, Alberto, 111 Bachelet, Michelle, 111–112, 123 Ballerino, Jorge, 107 Balza, Martín, 83–84, 100, 101 Barreiro, Ernesto, 31–32 Batista, Fulgencio, 8 Bay of Pigs incident, 9 Behind the Disappearances (Guest), 139n35 Bendini, Roberto, 103, 105 Bengoa, José, 155n47 Bignone, Reynaldo, 22 blond angel of death, 86–87, 125 bodies/remains: death flights and, 5, 23, 29, 49, 81–82, 93, 121; exhumation and sea burials of, 93, 109; identification of, 29, 34, 72, 110; stealing/hiding, 29 Boinazo, 107 Bolaños, Manuel, 100 Bolivia, 2, 13, 15, 133n11 Bonafini, Hebe de, 84, 100 Bonamín, Victorio, 48 Bonaparte, Laura, 83 Brazil, 3, 7, 19, 29, 34–35 Brinzoni, Ricardo, 101, 102 Britain: Amnesty International founded in, 72; and Falklands/Malvinas War, 4, 24, 26, 33, 35, 97, 117; Pinochet’s travel to, 89–90 Buenos Aires Herald, 21, 58 business interests and democratic reform, 77–78, 94, 99, 114, 115 Bussi, Hortensia, 53

Campo de Mayo, 32, 69, 82, 100, 124 Cámpora, Héctor, 13 Candeloro, Haydée García de, 68 capitalism and democratic reform, 77–78, 94, 99, 114, 115 Carabineros de Chile, 6, 37, 113 Carapintada rebellions, 32, 33, 98 Caravan of Death, 92–93, 108, 111, 114 Carter ( Jimmy) administration, 19, 36, 52, 54–55 Castillo Velasco, Jaime, 47 Castro, Fidel, 7–11 Catholic Church: and anti-­Marxist goals, 19, 22; complicity of, with military regime in Argentina, 48– 49; human rights advocacy of, in Chile, 44–46, 53, 59–60, 64, 118, 119; and social services for victims, 92; and truth commission in Brazil, 35 Caucoto, Nelson, 111 Cavallo, Gabriel, 101 CELS (Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales, Center for Legal and Social Studies): founding of and mission, 50–51; funding of, from Ford Foundation, 72; human rights/ legal advocacy of, 57, 58, 70, 85, 86, 100, 119, 124 censorship, media, 9, 17, 21, 47, 70, 106 Center for Human Rights, Universidad de Chile, 94 Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS, Center for Legal and Social Studies). See CELS (Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales, Center for Legal and Social Studies) Centro Nacional de Informaciones (CNI, National Information Center), 6, 36, 41, 113 Chamber of Deputies (Chile), 20, 38, 61, 92, 125 Cheyre, Juan Emilio, 112, 114, 115 Chicago Boys economic model, 19, 20 children, disappearances of, 30, 47, 49–50, 73–74, 85. See also baby abductions

182 Index

children of disappeared, social services for, 46, 77 Chile: human rights movements in, 43–48, 51–53, 54, 55–57, 59–61, 69–73, 118–119; impunity in, collapse of, 35, 96–97, 105–116, 121– 122; impunity in, construction of, 25, 34–42; judicial reform in, postdictatorial, 75–79, 120–121; judiciary of, under state terrorism, 63–65; legal environment and transitional justice in, 62–63, 120; postimpunity justice in, analysis and contrasts, 125–128; postimpunity milestones for justice in, 122–124; precipitating events and collapse of impunity in, 80, 87–95, 121; revolution era of, 11–12, 14, 16; state terrorism in, evolution of, 16–20, 21, 22, 24 Chile, Obstinate Memory (film), 151n57 Chilean National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation, 64, 75–79 Christian Democratic Party, 11, 12, 20, 35, 47, 88, 108 Christianity and anti-­Marxist goals, 22, 49 churches. See religion CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), 139n31 civilian government, transition to: and Great Depression, 15; human rights challenges and, 56–57; transition to, in Uruguay and Brazil, 34–35; transition to, overviews of, 20, 24, 25. See also impunity, construction of; transitional justice CNI (Centro Nacional de Informaciones, National Information Center), 6, 36, 41, 113 Coalition of Parties for Democracy (Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia), 20, 70–71 Code of Military Justice (Argentina), 30, 32, 69, 97 CODEPU (Comité de Defensa de los

Derechos del Pueblo, Committee for the Defense of the People’s Rights), 47, 60, 61, 155n42 Cold War, 14–15, 114 Collins, Cath, 146n51 Comisión Chilena de Derechos Humanos (CCHDH, Chilean Human Rights Commission), 47, 60, 72 Comisión Nacional Contra la Tortura (National Commission against Torture), 47 Comisión Nacional de Verdad y Reconciliación (National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation, Rettig Commission), 76–77, 113 Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparicion de Personas (CONADEP, National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons). See CONADEP (Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparicion de Personas, National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons) Comisión Nacional sobre Prisión Política y Tortura (National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture, Valech Commission), 113 Comité de Cooperación para la Paz en Chile (COPACHI, Committee of Cooperation for Peace in Chile), 44 Comité de Defensa de los Derechos del Pueblo (CODEPU, Committee for the Defense of the People’s Rights), 47, 60, 61, 155n42 Comité Nacional de Ayuda a los Refugiados (CONAR, National Committee for Aid to Refugees), 44 Comité Pro Retorno de Exiliados (Committee for the Return of Exiles), 47 Comités de Defensa de la Revolución (Committees of Defense of the Revolution), 9 commemorations. See memorials/ tributes

Index 183

Committee 1, Committee 2, 44 communism/Communist Party, 10, 11, 18, 22, 48, 78, 88, 115 CONADEP (Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparicion de Personas, National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons), 26–28, 66, 101. See also Nunca más (Never Again) report Concertación de Partidos por el NO (Alliance of Parties for the NO), 20 Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia (Coalition of Parties for Democracy), 20, 70–71 “condena pero no encarcela,” 126 confessions of repressors, 5, 81–84, 92, 96, 121 conscription, military, 97, 98 Consejo de Seguridad Nacional (National Security Council, Chile), 37–38, 91, 115, 116 Consejo Supremo (Supreme Council, Argentina), 66–67, 101 constitutional reform/amendments: and human rights law, 70–71, 73, 86; for legislative/judicial reform, 74–75, 99, 115, 116; Pinochet’s strategies against, 39, 105 “Constitution of Liberty,” 37, 88 constitution under Pinochet, 37–42, 88 construction of impunity: in Argentina, 26–34, 117–118; in Chile, 34–42, 118; overviews, 25, 42 Contreras, Manuel, 18, 93, 108 Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (UN), 73, 89 COPACHI (Comité de Cooperación para la Paz en Chile, Committee of Cooperation for Peace in Chile), 44 Córdoba uprising, 13 Corporación Nacional de Reparación y Reconciliación (National Corpo-

ration of Reparation and Reconciliation), 77 coup/seizure of power. See state terrorism, evolution of courts, judicial. See judiciary criminal charges: filings of, against Pinochet, 87–88, 111; filings of, in Argentina, 31–32, 69, 100–101, 102; filings of, in Chile, 92, 111, 115; statutes of limitations on, 31, 60, 114 (see also punto final strategy) Cuban Revolution, impact of, 7–16 cueca sola, 76 Cumplido laws, 75 “Dance of Life, The” (Agosín), 145n39 Davis, Ray E., 123 Dawson Island, 95 Day of National Liberation, 88–89 Day of the Army, 106 death flights, 5, 23, 29, 49, 81–82, 93, 121 decree laws, 35, 36, 40–41. See also amnesty decrees decreto supremo, 107 de la Rúa, Fernando, 101, 102 democracy: under Allende, 52; ascendancy of, in Latin America, 9–10, 35, 39, 46, 97, 99, 104, 115; consolidation of, 31, 96–97, 102, 108; “protected democracy” of Pinochet’s constitution, 19, 20, 35, 37–39, 41–42, 118; transitions to, overviews of, 25, 26, 34, 56, 62, 75, 79, 116, 117–122. See also civilian government; transitional justice Democracy after Pinochet (Angell), 136n47 Derechos humanos y sociedad (Mignone), 140n38 detention centers: under Argentine military regime, 22–23, 27–28, 55, 67–68, 82–83, 104, 124; under Chilean military regime, 16, 18, 36, 76 d’Hondt electoral system, 40 Día Nacional de la Memoria por la

184 Index

Verdad y la Justicia (National Day of Memory for Truth and Justice), 124 Díaz, Pablo, 68 Díaz, Viviana, 60 DINA (Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional, National Directorate of Intelligence), 16, 18–19, 36, 63, 112, 123. See also CNI (Centro Nacional de Informaciones, National Information Center) Dirección de Información Exterior (Foreign Information Directorate), 52 Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA, National Directorate of Intelligence). See DINA (Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional) dirty war, anti-­Marxism justification for, 17, 18–22, 24, 28, 31, 33, 35, 48, 67, 80, 82, 94 disappearances: under Argentine military regime, 21–24, 27–29, 49–50; under Chilean military regime, 17–18, 34, 88; confessions of repressors, 81–84; and erosion of amnesty laws, 78–79; indictments for, 93–94; memorials/tributes, 76, 84–85, 94–95, 100, 123, 124; numbers of, 18, 23, 28, 65, 76, 77, 109, 123; reparations to victims, 58–59, 60, 77, 112, 113; resolution strategies for justice, 67–68, 75–77, 107– 110, 113–114, 123. See also human rights movements doctrine of national security, 15–16, 18, 27 draft, military, 97, 98 due obedience law: and Alfonsín’s strategies, 29–30, 32–33, 98; as construct of impunity, 69, 70, 79, 85, 117–118; discretion and due obedience, 68–69; repeal/annulment of, 101, 103, 104, 122, 124; repudiation of, 83 Duhalde, Eduardo, 102 Duvalier, François (Papa Doc), 53

Easter uprising (Campo de Mayo), 32, 69 economies: of Argentina, 24, 32–33, 35, 51, 58, 101–102; business interests and democratic reform, 77–78, 94, 99, 114, 115; of Chile, 19–20, 36, 41–42, 115; Great Depression and military takeovers, 15; and leftist revolution, 8–9, 10–12 Ecuador, 29, 100 education, human rights, 30, 45, 46, 55, 84, 94, 95, 97, 114 Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (ERP, People’s Revolutionary Army), 13 elections: postdictatorial, 26, 32, 37, 39–40; revolution era, 11, 13; under state terrorism, 17, 19–20, 24 elites: business interests and democratic reform, 77–78, 94, 99, 114, 115; impact of revolution on, 12–13, 14–16 El Mercurio, 78 El Salvador, 29 El vuelo (1995, The Flight), 81 Equipo Argentino de Antropología Forense (Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team), 29, 34, 72 escraches, 85–86, 93 ESMA (Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada, Naval Mechanics School), 81–82, 84–85, 100, 104, 124–125 Espinoza, Pedro, 108 Estadio Chile, 75–76, 95 Europe: extradition requests from, 86–87, 98, 101; human rights activism in, 44–46, 51, 52–53, 91–92; social democracy and returned exiles in, 20, 115 evacuations, 44, 51 executions, 23, 28, 92. See also murders/killings exemplary trials, 29–30, 57, 66, 68–69. See also due obedience law exile, forced: under Argentine military regime, 21–22, 27, 54, 65; under Chilean military regime,

Index 185

18, 50–51; and human rights activism, 19, 27, 46–47, 52–53, 54, 70, 91; of Perón, 12; reparations for, 58–59 expropriations of property, 8, 9, 11–12, 14, 64, 99 extraditions: European requests for, 86–87, 90, 98, 101; Kirchner’s agreement with, 103; Pinochet’s hearing regarding, 90–94 Falklands/Malvinas War, 4, 24, 26, 33, 35, 97, 117 family-­based human rights activism, 46–47, 49 FASIC (Fundación de Ayuda Social de las Iglesias Cristianas, Social Aid Foundation of the Christian Churches), 44, 46, 92 Fernández, Cristina, 102, 124, 125 fidelismo, 10, 14 “final document,” 24, 35. See also dirty war financial issues: funding for human rights activism, 46, 47, 53, 56, 59, 72; Pinochet scandal, 113; reparations for victims of repression, 58–59, 60, 77, 112, 113. See also economies Firmenich, Mario, 33 Ford Foundation, 72, 86 foreign relations: business interests and democratic reform as related to, 77; and Cuban revolution, 9; and judicial reform, Chile, 78; and Pinochet’s arrest, 89, 90–91; and public relations campaigns, 51, 52. See also extraditions; international human rights movements; international law and human rights; U.S. foreign relations forensics and identification of remains, 29, 34, 72, 110 France, 87, 94 Franco, Francisco, 42 free market economic approach, 16, 19 Frei Montalva, Eduardo, 11, 123

Frei Ruiz-­Tagle, Eduardo, 61, 77–79, 88, 91, 107–109 Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez (Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front), 78 Friedman, Milton, 19 Fuentes, Claudio, 156n52, 156n58 Fujimori, Alberto, 3 full stop (punto final) strategy, 31–33, 60–61, 69, 70, 101, 103, 104, 117–118 funas, 93 Fundación de Ayuda Social de las Iglesias Cristianas (FASIC, Social Aid Foundation of the Christian Churches), 44, 46, 60, 92 Fundación de Documentación y Archivo de la Vicaría de la Solidaridad (FUNVISOL, Foundation of Documentation and Archive of the Vicaría de la Solidaridad), 60, 72 funding for human rights activism, 46, 47, 53, 56, 59, 72 Galtieri, Leopoldo, 102 Garcés, Joan, 89 Garzón, Baltasar, 87, 89–90, 91, 94 General Cemetery, 76, 88 Geneva Conventions, application of, 68, 78–79 Godoy, Jorge, 104 Goldberg, Daniel Alberto, 147n18 Gonzáles Videla, Gabriel, 145n40 Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo (Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo), 50, 58, 85, 100, 119 graves, mass, 29, 109 Great Depression, 15 Greece, 2, 53 Greek-­style trials, 2, 30, 34, 117. See also due obedience gremios (guilds), 12 Group of Families of Political Prisoners (Agrupación de Familiares de Presos Políticos), 47 Group of Families of the Detained and Disappeared (AFDD, Agrupación de Familiares de Deteni-

186 Index

dos Desaparecidos), 47, 60–61, 76, 91, 109 Group of Families of Those Executed for Political Reasons (AFEP, Agrupación de Familiares de Ejecutados Políticos), 47 Guatemala, 7, 29 guerrilla warfare, 8, 13–14, 58 Guerrilla Warfare (Guevara), 8, 9 Guest, Iain, 139n35, 140n38 Guevara, Che, 8, 13, 15 Guzmán, Juan, 92–93, 108, 111 Guzmán, Patricio, 151n57 habeas corpus petitions, 45, 51, 64, 65 Haiti, 29, 53 Hang, Julio, 102 Hertz, Carmen, 156n49 HIJOS (Hijos por la Identidad y la Justicia y contra el Olvido y el Silencio, Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice and against Forgetting and Silence), 85–86 Holocaust, comparisons to, 27 Holy Week crisis (1987), 31–32 Honduras, 29, 73 Horman, Charles, 123 Human Rights Commission (UN), 53 human rights education, 30, 45, 46, 55, 84, 94, 95, 97, 114 human rights movements: evolution of, in Argentina, 23, 24, 25, 43, 119; evolution of, in Chile, 18, 19, 24, 35, 43, 118–119; under military regime, in Argentina, 48–51; under military regime, in Chile, 44–48; reenergizing of, through precipitating events, 81–87; transitional period for, in Argentina, 57–59, 66; in transitional period, challenges of, 56–57. See also international human rights movements; international law and human rights; individual organizations Human Rights Quarterly, 52 Human Rights Watch, 52, 72, 86, 123–124, 126 Human Rights Working Group, 52

Ibáñez, Víctor, 82 identification of remains, 29, 34, 72, 110 impunity, construction of: in Argentina, 26–34, 117–118; in Chile, 34–42, 118; overviews, 25, 42 impunity, eclipse/collapse of: in Argentina, 97–105; in Chile, 105– 116; overviews, 96–97, 116, 121–122. See also judiciary; legal environment and justice advocacy; precipitating events and evolution of justice incarceration policies (postimpunity), analysis and contrasts, 126–127 Indonesia, 53 infants, abductions of. See baby abductions intellectuals, victimization of, 28, 46 Inter-­American Commission on Human Rights, 23–24, 51–52, 55, 70, 73, 86, 101 Inter-­American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons, 71, 73 Inter-­American Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture, 73 Inter-­American Court of Human Rights, 55, 58–59, 73, 86, 122 Inter-­American Institute of Human Rights, 55 Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration, 44 Internal Security Law, 98 International Commission of Jurists, 51, 86 International Commission on Human Rights, 100–101 International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights (UN), 72 International Covenants on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (UN), 72 International Criminal Court, 74 International Criminal Tribunal (UN), 74 international human rights movements: and activism of 1990s,

Index 187

71–74, 110, 119; under military regimes, 51–56; reenergization of, in 1990s, 86–87, 120. See also international law and human rights; individual organizations international law and human rights: evolution of, overviews, 18, 21, 63; impact of “Pinochet effect” on, 90–91; and postdictatorial changes, 69–71, 77, 78–79; and universal jurisdiction, emergence of, 86–87, 90, 100–101, 114. See also international human rights movements International Red Cross, 44, 51, 86 Israel, 53 Italy, 54, 87 Izurieta, Ricardo, 91, 93, 106, 108 Jara, Víctor, 95 Jewish community, 23, 44 John Paul II (pope), 50 judiciary: under Allende, 11; control of, under state terrorist regimes, 38, 41–42, 58, 62–65, 74–75; reforms in, postdictatorial, 74–79, 119–121. See also legal environment and justice advocacy justice: postimpunity analysis and contrasts, 125–128. See also human rights movements; transitional justice Kennedy administration, 14–15 “K factor,” 103 kidnapping. See abductions; baby abductions; disappearances; secuestro calificado Kirchner, Néstor, 98, 102–104 Kissinger, Henry, 139n31 Krasnoff, Miguel, 123 Labbé, Cristián, 123 labor unions, 10, 12–13, 17, 21, 28 Lagos, Ricardo, 94, 108–110, 113 La Moneda. See Moneda, the land expropriations and property rights, 8, 9, 11–12, 14, 64, 99 Lanusse, Alejandro, 13

Lapacó, Carmen, 101 La Perla detention camp, 31, 82 La Tablada army base attack, 58, 100 La Tercera, 90 Latin America: Cuban Revolution as influence on, 7–11, 14–15; democracy’s ascendancy in, 9–10, 35, 39, 46, 97, 99, 104, 115; human rights movement’s evolution in, 4, 45, 52–53; judicial reform in, 74; state terrorism’s evolution in, 7, 16–24; truth commissions in, 28–29 Lavín, Joaquín, 108 Law of Defense, 97–98 Law 23.049, 30, 32 legal aid for victims of repression, 45, 46, 48, 50–51, 60, 85, 119 legal environment and justice advocacy: overviews of, 62–63, 119– 121; under restored democracy in Argentina, 65–69, 100–101; under state terrorism in Argentina, 64– 65; under state terrorism in Chile, 63–64. See also judiciary legislative process: Alfonsín’s strategies, 26–27, 31–32, 65–66; control of, under state terrorist regimes, 37–38, 41, 75; reforms in, postdictatorial, 74–75, 78. See also amendments, constitutional Letelier, Orlando, 36, 108 leyes de amarre (tie-­up laws), 40–41 Liga Argentina por los Derechos del Hombre (Argentine League for the Rights of Man), 48 Linz, Juan, 136n49 Lira, Alicia, 92 Lonquén mine, 64 Luder, Italo, 24, 67 Madres de Plaza de Mayo (Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo), 49–50, 57, 58, 59, 85, 119, 121, 124 Madres de Plaza de Mayo-­Línea Fundadora (Founding Line), 57, 86 Malvinas/Falklands War, 4, 24, 26, 33, 35, 97, 117

188 Index

Mar del Plata, Argentina, 68 Marín, Gladys, 88 Martínez Busch, Jorge, 114 Marxism, threat of, as justification for dirty war, 17, 18, 24, 28, 31, 33, 35, 48, 67, 80, 82, 94 Massera, Emilio, 20–21, 67, 68, 100, 125 mass graves, 29 Matthews, Herbert, 10 media: censorship of, 9, 17, 47, 106; human rights coverage by, 17–18, 30, 51–53, 82–84, 85–86, 87; printing of Nunca más, 27, 84, 124; and propaganda campaigns by military regimes, 51, 52, 106; television coverage of confessions, 82 Medical Legal Service, 110 Memoria Abierta (Open Memory), 85 Memorial del Ejército, 108 memorials/tributes, 76, 84–85, 94–95, 100, 123, 124 Menem, Carlos Saúl: and 2003 elections, 102; and human rights movements, 70–71; and legal/judicial environments, 69, 74–75, 79, 119–120; military reforms under, 98–100; and transitional justice, approaches to, 32–34, 58–59, 84–85, 121 Menéndez, Luciano B., 22, 99, 102 Mesa de Diálogo (Roundtable), 57, 108–110 Methodist Church, 46 Mexico, 130n9 Mignone, Emilio, 51, 84, 140n38 military regimes. See impunity, construction of; impunity, eclipse/collapse of; judiciary; state terrorism, evolution of Milošević, Slobodan, 149n37 Missing (film), 123 Moffitt, Ronni, 36, 108 Moneda, the, 17, 94, 95 “month of the army,” 106 Montoneros, 13 Moreno Ocampo, Luis, 142n17 Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo

(Madres de Plaza de Mayo), 49–50, 57, 58, 59, 85, 119, 121, 124 Moulián, Tomás, 91, 154n34 Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR, Movement of the Revolutionary Left), 11, 12, 18, 78 Movimiento Ecuménico por los Derechos Humanos (Ecumenical Movement for Human Rights), 49 Movimiento Todos por la Patria (All for the Fatherland Movement), 58 murders/killings: under Argentine military regime, 21; under Chilean military regime, 17–18, 36, 108, 112, 123; and death flights, 5, 23, 29, 49, 81–82, 93, 121; and due obedience exemptions, 32; numbers of, 76, 77; revolutionary assassinations, 13, 21. See also disappearances museum of memory, 84–85, 104, 124 Museum of Memory and Human Rights, 123 Museum of Subversion, 100 National Commission against Torture (Comisión Nacional Contra la Tortura), 47 National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture (Comisión Nacional sobre Prisión Política y Tortura, Valech Commission), 113 National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP, Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparicion de Personas). See CONADEP (Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparicion de Personas, National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons) National Committee for Aid to Refugees (CONAR, Comité Nacional de Ayuda a los Refugiados), 44 National Corporation of Reparation and Reconciliation (Corporación Nacional de Reparación y Reconciliación), 77 National Day of Memory for Truth

Index 189

and Justice (Día Nacional de la Memoria por la Verdad y la Justicia), 124 National Directorate of Intelligence (DINA, Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional), 16, 18–19, 36, 63, 112, 123. See also CNI (Centro Nacional de Informaciones, National Information Center) National Institute of Human Rights, 123 National Intelligence Law, 98 National Security Council (Consejo de Seguridad Nacional, Chile), 37–38, 91, 115, 116 national security doctrine, 15–16, 18, 27 National Stadium, “exorcism” of, 75–76, 95 Naval Mechanics School (ESMA, Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada), 81–82, 84–85, 100, 104, 124–125 Neier, Aryeh, 139n31, 149n37 Never Again report. See Nunca más (Never Again) report New Yorker, 89 Nicaragua, 10 “Night of the Neckties,” 68 “Night of the Pencils,” 68 Nixon administration, 11, 18, 19, 52, 54 Nunca más (Never Again) report: anniversary of, 81, 121; findings of, overview, 27–28; military denouncement of, 66, 100; published, 27, 84, 124. See also truth commissions Official Story, The (film), 30 Onganía, Juan Carlos, 13 Operation Condor, 16, 18, 112 Organization of American States (OAS), 14–15, 51, 55, 63, 70, 73, 97 Pacto de Olivos, 71, 74 Paine memorial, 123 Palestinians in Israel, 53

Panama, 29 Paraguay, 29, 53 Parque de la Memoria (Park of Memory), 85, 124 Partido Comunista (Communist Party), 11, 88 Partido Justicialista (Peronist Party), 12–13, 32–33 Partido Nacional (National Party), 12 Partido por la Democracia (PPD, Party for Democracy), 35 Partido Socialista (Socialist Party), 11, 35 Pascarelli, Hugo, 22 People’s Peace Prize, 50 Pereyra de Avellaneda, Iris Etelvina, 67–68 Permanent Assembly for Human Rights (APDH, Asamblea Permanente por los Derechos Humanos), 48, 51, 58, 85, 100 Perón, Isabel, 13, 21 Perón, Juan D., 12–13, 13–14, 64 Peru, 3, 10, 29 Piña Allende, Alicia Margarita, 92 Piñera, Sebastian, 123, 126 pinocheques affair, 107 Pinochet, Augusto C.: amnesty decree by, 35–36; arrest of, in London, 89–94, 108–109; on Cardinal Archbishop Silva, 137n4; death of, 122; disgrace and downfall of, 112–114; fear of and public apathy toward, 59; and financial scandal, 113; and impunity, construction of, 37, 88, 105–108, 118; legacy of dictatorship of, 42, 113, 127; on national security doctrine, 16; 1973 coup led by, 12; and “protected democracy,” 19, 20, 35, 37–39, 41–42, 118; as regime leader, 17–18. See also DINA (Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional, National Directorate of Intelligence) Plaza de Mayo demonstrations. See Madres de Plaza de Mayo (Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo)

190 Index

poblaciones, 19 Poblete Córdoba, Pedro, 78–79, 93 Post-­Transitional Justice (Collins), 146n51 Prádenas, Marcela, 92 Prats, Carlos, 12, 112 precipitating events and evolution of justice: in Argentina, 81–87; in Chile, 87–95; overviews of, 80, 96–97 “prisoners of conscience” program, 72 prison terms, analysis and contrasts, 125–128 Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation (Linz and Stepan), 136n49 Proceso de Reorganización Nacional (Process of National Reorganization), 21 Programa de Derechos Humanos (Human Rights Program), 70 prosecutorial jurisdiction, reform of, 78 Protección a la Infancia Dañada por los Estados de Emergencia (PIDEE, Protection of Children Harmed by States of Emergency), 47 “protected democracy” of Pinochet’s constitution, 19, 20, 35, 37–39, 41–42, 118 Protestant churches, 44 public opinion and justice, 56–58, 59, 60, 61, 127 public relations campaigns by military regimes, 51, 52, 106 Punta Peuco, 108 punto final strategy, 31–33, 60–61, 69, 70, 101, 103, 104, 117–118 purges, 17, 21, 65, 78, 107, 108, 112. See also retirements, forced Radical Party (Argentina), 24, 31, 71 rank (military) and accountability. See due obedience law rape, 27, 30, 32, 113 Reagan administration, 20

rectóscopo, 82 Red Cross, 44, 51, 86 refugees, Chilean, 44, 51, 52–53 religion: Christianity and anti-­Marxist goals, 22, 49; Jewish community, 23, 44; Protestant churches, 44. See also Catholic Church remembrances. See memorials/tributes; precipitating events and evolution of justice Renovación Nacional (RN, National Renovation Party), 39, 70–71 reparations to victims of repression, 58–59, 60, 77, 112, 113 retirements, forced, 78, 81, 97, 103, 107, 108, 112. See also purges Rettig, Raúl, 70 Rettig Commission, 76–77, 113 Revista Chilena de Derechos Humanos, 70 Rico, Aldo, 32 Riggs Bank scandal, 113 right-­to-­t ruth principle, 100–101 Río de la Plata, 85 Ríos Ereñú, Héctor, 31 Riveros, Santiago Omar, 124 Roman Catholic Church. See Catholic Church Rome Statute, 74, 120 “rule of law” movement, 74 rural-­based resistance, revolutionary, 8, 10 Russia (USSR), 7–8, 10–11, 54. See also Marxism, threat of, as justification for dirty war Rwanda, 2, 74, 120 Sábato, Ernesto, 27, 100 Saint Jean, Ibérico, 22 Salvador Gullo, Jorge, 147n18 Sánchez, Miguel, 147n18 Sandinista Revolution, 10 School of the Americas, 15 Scilingo, Adolfo, 81–82, 100, 149n27 Second Declaration of Havana, 10 secret detention centers: under Argentine military regime, 22–23,

Index 191

27–28, 55, 67–68, 82–83, 104, 124; under Chilean military regime, 16, 18, 36 secuestro calificado, 79, 92–93, 111 Seineldín, Mohamed Alí, 98 sentencing practices, contrasts and analysis, 125–128 September 11 holiday, 88, 106 Servicio Paz y Justicia (SERPAJ, Peace and Justice Service), 48 sexual violence, 27, 30, 32, 82, 113 shaming, public, 30, 85–86, 93 Silva Henríquez, Raúl, 45, 46, 118 Simón, Julio (El Turco Julián), 82–83, 124 Snow, Clyde, 29 Social Aid Foundation of the Christian Churches (FASIC, Fundación de Ayuda Social de las Iglesias Cristianas), 44, 46, 60, 92 socialism: Allende’s platform, 11–12; anti-­Pinochet activism, 88, 91; and Cuban Revolution, 8–9; guerrilla organizations, 13 social support programs for victims, 45, 46, 77, 92. See also reparations to victims of repression Solidaridad, 45 Solís Muñoz, Alejandro, 146n49 Somoza dynasty, 10 Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice and against Forgetting and Silence (HIJOS, Hijos por la Identidad y la Justicia y contra el Olvido y el Silencio), 85–86 Sons and Daughters for Truth and Justice–Chile (Acción Verdad y Justicia Hijos–Chile), 93 South Africa, 29, 53, 148n24 South Korea, 2 Soviet Union, 10–11, 16, 54 Spain, 12–13, 87, 89, 90, 94 state terrorism, evolution of: in Argentina, 20–24; in Chile, 16–20; in Latin America, overviews of, 7–16 Steimberg, Sara, 83

Stepan, Alfred, 136n49 Stern, Steve, 156n58 Strassera, Julio César, 68 strikes by gremios, 12 Stroessner, Alfredo, 53 students, victimization of, 28, 68. See also intellectuals, victimization of subversives, definitions, 15, 22 Suharto, 53 Sunday Telegraph (London), 94 Supreme Council, Argentina (Consejo Supremo), 66–67, 101 Taking Liberties (Neier), 139n31, 149n37 technology and revolution, 9–10 Teruggi, Frank Jr., 123 Thatcher, Margaret, 89 tie-­up laws, 40–41 Tortolo, Adolfo, 48 torture: under Argentine military regime, 21, 22–23, 67–68; and atrocious and aberrant acts in law, 30, 32; under Chilean military regime, 16, 17–18, 47, 65, 75–76, 94, 113; clergy’s complicity in, 49; confessions of, 81–84; convictions for, 124–125; Geneva Convention rules on, 79; human rights actions against, 53, 71, 73, 102, 113, 119; Nunca más report on, 27–28; and Pinochet, charges against, 90, 93–94; and public shaming of repressors, 93; restorative justice measures and, 75–76, 84–85; support programs for victims of, 46, 92; in Uruguay and Brazil, 34–35 transitional justice: and construction of impunity, 26–34, 34–42, 117–118; and human rights movements, 56–61; restorative strategies and, 60–61, 75–76, 128. See also impunity, construction of trials of repressors: among Argentine junta members, 29–30, 31–32, 34, 57, 66–69, 97; in Chile, 114, 115; among ESMA personnel, 124–125;

192 Index

in foreign courts, 87; Pinochet, 94, 111; postimpunity analysis and contrasts, 125–128 Tribunal Constitucional (Constitutional Tribunal), 38, 116 Trotskyism, 13 Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 29, 105 truth commissions: in Brazil, 35; CONADEP, 26–28; in countries other than Argentina and Chile, 28–29; Rettig Commission, 76–77; and right-­to-­t ruth principle, 101; Valech Commission, 113; Valech II, 123 tubos, 23 Tupamaro guerrillas (Uruguay), 13 Turco Julián, El ( Julio Simón), 82 Tutu, Desmond, 148n24 Uganda, 133n11 UN (United Nations), 73–74, 120; condemnation of Chilean regime by, 18, 53, 73; hands-­off posture of, 53, 54; High Commissioner for Human Rights, 74; High Commissioner for Refugees, 44; and international human rights framework, 71, 72–73, 74, 89, 94, 119; protection and evacuation of refugees by, 51 unemployment, 19, 20, 44, 45, 102, 103 Unidad Popular (UP, Popular Unity), 11, 95 Unión Cívica Radical (Radical Party), 24, 31 Unión Democrática Independiente (UDI), 143n24 union supporters, victimization of, 28 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN), 63, 71, 95 Universidad de Chile, 94 urban-­based resistance, revolutionary, 8, 13–14, 21 Uruguay, 13, 29, 34–35

U.S. foreign relations: with Argentina, 54–55; with Chile, 11–12, 18, 19, 20, 36, 52; with Cuba, 8, 9, 14–15; military support of counterinsurgencies as, 15–16 USSR, 7–8, 10–11, 54. See also Marxism, threat of, as justification for dirty war Valech Commissions, 113, 123 Vance, Cyrus, 36, 54 Vásquez, Marta, 83 Verbitsky, Horacio, 81 Vicaría de la Solidaridad (Vicariate of Solidarity), 44–46, 53, 59–60, 64, 72, 118, 119 Víctor Jara Stadium, 95 Videla, Jorge Rafael, 20–21, 33, 49, 68, 100, 124–125 Viera-­G allo, José Antonio, 143n24 Villa Grimaldi, 18, 76, 112 Villani, Mario, 83 von Wernich, Christian, 49, 124 war, state of, arguments over, 68, 78–79 Washington Office on Latin America, 52, 72 women, human rights activism of, 47, 49–50. See also Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo); Madres de Plaza de Mayo (Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo) women, sexual violence against, 27, 30, 32, 113. See also baby abductions Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearance, 55 World Council of Churches, 46 World Report (Human Rights Watch), 123–124 Yugoslavia, 2, 74, 120 Zúñiga, Gabriela, 92