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(Re)Forming the State: Recruiting the Dead and Revitalizing Transitional Justice

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Human Rights, Transitional Justice, and the Reconstruction of Political Order in Latin America

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Abstract

This chapter looks at the reconfiguring of transitional justice in the twenty-first century. Following the dislocations of the 1990s, which brought not only conflict over reconciliation but also conflict over neoliberal economic restructuring, state makers embraced the practices of memory and anti-impunity. These practices were recruited to serve as symbols of a post-authoritarian national identity, for which the state positioned itself as guardian.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This was the title of the one of the official acts marking the day, held at the Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires. Página/12, March 24, 2006 .

  2. 2.

    Florencia E. Mallon, ‘Reflections on the Ruins: Everyday Forms of State Formation in Nineteenth Century Mexico,’ in Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico, ed. Joseph M. Gilbert and Daniel Nugent (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), 71–72.

  3. 3.

    A small handful of scholars have observed this phenomenon, calling it the ‘statization of memory’ and noting that ‘government administrations have seemingly taken on the rhetoric and desires of those formally positioned opposition to the state.’ Emilio Crenzel, ‘Toward a History of the Memory of Political Violence and the Disappeared in Argentina,’ in The Struggle for Memory in Latin America: Recent History and Political Violence, ed. Eugenia Allier-Montaño and Emilio Crenzel (New York: Palgrave, 2015), 28; Vikki Bell, ‘The Politics of “Memory” in the Long Present of the Southern Cone,’ in The Memory of State Terrorism in the Southern Cone: Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, ed. Francesca Lessa and Vincent Druliolle (New York: Palgrave, 2011), 210.

  4. 4.

    Miguel A. Centeno and Agustin E. Ferraro, ‘Republics of the Possible: State Building in Latin America and Spain,’ in State and Nation Making in Latin America and Spain: Republics of the Possible, ed. Miguel Centeno and Agustin Ferraro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 13.

  5. 5.

    Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York: Penguin, 2004), 216.

  6. 6.

    Ley 25.633, ‘Institúyense el 24 de Marzo como Día Nacional de la Memoria por l Verdad y la Justicia,’ Boletín Oficial de la República Argentina, August 25, 2002.

  7. 7.

    Página/12, March 25, 2003.

  8. 8.

    Clarín, May 26, 2003.

  9. 9.

    H.I.J.O. S. Revista 1, no. 1 (1996): 1. H.I.J.O.S. (with punctuation) is a related but separate organization from HIJOS, without punctuation. The former was based in the city of La Plata. I have used the name without punctuation in the text despite the fact that the quote comes for the platense group, for consistency throughout the text.

  10. 10.

    Clarín, May 26, 2003.

  11. 11.

    John R. Gillis, ‘Memory and Identity: The History of a Relationship,’ in Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity, ed. John R. Gillis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 9.

  12. 12.

    Pagina12, September 26, 2003.

  13. 13.

    Steve Stern, Remembering Pinochet’s Chile: On the Eve of London 1998 (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004), 120.

  14. 14.

    Philip S. Gorski, ‘Nation-ization Struggles: A Bourdieusian Theory of Nationalism,’ in Bourdieu and Historical Analysis, ed. Philip S. Gorski (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2013), 257.

  15. 15.

    Ibid., 261.

  16. 16.

    Ley 25.633, ‘Institúyense el 24 de Marzo como Día Nacional de la Memoria por la Verdad y la Justicia,’ Boletín Oficial de la República Argentina, August 25, 2002.

  17. 17.

    La Nación, March 24, 2003.

  18. 18.

    ‘Discurso Pronunciado el Día 24 de Marzo 2004,’ Discursos del Presidente Dr. Néstor Kirchner (Buenos Aires: Presidencia de la Nación, no date).

  19. 19.

    Proyecto 1151-S-2006 (Senado) ‘Modificación de la Ley 25.633 Día Nacional por la Memoria, la Verdad y la Justicia,’ Fundamentos de la Ley, April 25, 2006.

  20. 20.

    Convenio 8/2004, ‘Acuerdo entre el Estado Nacional y la Ciudad de Buenos Aires para la Construcción del “Espacio para la memoria y para la promoción y Defensa de los Derechos Humanos” en el predio de la “ESMA”,’ Boletín Oficial de la República Argentina, March 26, 2004.

  21. 21.

    For an account of the construction of the Archivo, see Michelle Carmody, ‘Archiving Human Rights in Latin America: Transitional Justice and Shifting Visions of Political Change,’ in The Routledge History of Human Rights, ed. Jean Quataert and Lora Wildenthal (New York: Routledge, 2019).

  22. 22.

    Stern, Remembering Pinochet’s Chile, 120.

  23. 23.

    Emilio Crenzel, Memory of the Argentina Disappearances: The Political History of Nunca Más (New York: Routledge, 2011), 117–120.

  24. 24.

    Clarín, January 29, 2001.

  25. 25.

    The 1995 reissue was also serialized in Página/12. Crenzel, Memory of the Argentina Disappearances, 120.

  26. 26.

    CONADEP/Secretaria de Derechos Humanos, Nunca Más: Informe de la Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas (Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 2006), 7.

  27. 27.

    Ibid., 8–9.

  28. 28.

    Ibid., 7.

  29. 29.

    Ley 26.085, ‘Incorpórarse el Día 24 de Marzo—Día Nacional de la Memoria por la Verdad y la Justicia—entre los feriados nacionales previsto por la Ley 21.329,’ Boletín Oficial de la República Argentina, March 21, 2006.

  30. 30.

    Decreto 1581/2001, ‘Cooperación en Materia Penal,’ Boletín Oficial de la República Argentina, December 17, 2001.

  31. 31.

    Javier Couso, Alexandra Huneeus, and Rachel Sieder, ed., Cultures of Legality: Judicialization and Political Activism in Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 3.

  32. 32.

    La Nación, July 8, 2003.

  33. 33.

    Sarah C. Chambers, ‘Citizens Before the Law: The Role of Courts in Postindependence State Building in Spanish America,’ in State and Nation Making in Latin America and Spain: Republics of the Possible, ed. Miguel A. Centeno and Agustin E. Ferraro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 356.

  34. 34.

    Ibid., 357.

  35. 35.

    Congress had derogated these laws in 1998, but this had not had retroactive effect. Ley 25.778, ‘Convención sobre la Imprescriptibilidad de los Crímenes de Guerra y de los Crímenes de Lesa Humanidad,’ Boletín Oficial de la República Argentina, September 3, 2003; Ley 25.779, ‘Decláranse insanablemente nulas las leyes Nros. 23.492 y 23.521,’ Boletín Oficial de la República Argentina, September 3, 2003.

  36. 36.

    See Francesca Lessa, Memory and Transitional Justice in Argentina and Uruguay: Against Impunity (New York: Palgrave, 2013), 123–126.

  37. 37.

    Página12, August 24, 2003.

  38. 38.

    Página12, August 30, 2003; Página/12, September 3, 2003.

  39. 39.

    Página/12, June 15, 2005.

  40. 40.

    Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales, Derechos Humanos en Argentina: Informe 2012 (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2012), 35.

  41. 41.

    See, for example, Ley 26,394, ‘Derógase el Código de Justicia Militar y todas las normas, resoluciones y disposiciones de carácter interno que lo reglamentan. Modifícarse el Código Penal y el Código Procesal Penal de la Nación,’ Boletín Oficial de la República Argentina, August 29, 2008.

  42. 42.

    Susana Kaiser, ‘Argentina’s Trials: New Ways of Writing Memory,’ Latin American Perspectives 42, no. 3 (2015): 199.

  43. 43.

    Instituto Espacio de la Memoria, Juicio a Megacausa ESMA, no. 2 (March 2013), 2.

  44. 44.

    Ley 26.549, ‘Código Procesal Penal: Modificación,’ Boletín Oficial de la República Argentina, November 27, 2009; Ley 26.548, ‘Banco Nacional de Datos Genéticos,’ Boletín Oficial de la República Argentina, November 27, 2009.

  45. 45.

    Kaiser, ‘Argentina’s Trials,’ 195.

  46. 46.

    Couso et al., Cultures of Legality, 5.

  47. 47.

    Stern, Reckoning with Pinochet, 288–289.

  48. 48.

    Garretón was writing in the magazine Mensaje. Quoted in Jorge Larrain, ‘Changes in Chilean Identity: Thirty Years After the Military Coup,’ Nations and Nationalism 12, no. 2 (2006): 337.

  49. 49.

    El Mercurio, December 13, 2006.

  50. 50.

    Diario Libre, December 20, 2006.

  51. 51.

    Catherine Hite and Cath Collins, ‘Memorials, Silences, and Reawakenings,’ in The Politics of Memory in Chile: From Pinochet to Bachelet, ed. Cath Collins, Katherine Hite, and Alfredo Joignant (Boulder and London: First Forum, 2013), 154.

  52. 52.

    ‘Discurso de S.E. la Presidenta de la República, Michelle Bachelet, en Inauguración del Museo de la memoria y los Derechos Humanos, 11 January 2010,’ Museo de la Memoria, Accessed 24 March, 2016, http://ww3.museodelamemoria.cl/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/discurso-presidenta.pdf.

  53. 53.

    Hite and Collins, ‘Memorials, Silences, and Reawakenings,’ 133.

  54. 54.

    El País, September 12, 2013.

  55. 55.

    Rebecca J. Atencio, Memory’s Turn: Reckoning with Dictatorship in Brazil (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014), 13.

  56. 56.

    Ibid., 17.

  57. 57.

    Quoted in Nina Schneider, ‘Breaking the “Silence” of the Military Regime: New Politics of Memory in Brazil,’ Bulletin of Latin American Research 30, no. 2 (2011): 206.

  58. 58.

    Atencio, Memory’s Turn, 13.

  59. 59.

    ‘Discurso da Presidenta da República, Dilma Rousseff, na cerimônia de instalação da Comissão da Verdade, 16 May 2012,’ Presidência de la República, Accessed March 25, 2016, http://www2.planalto.gov.br/acompanhe-o-planalto/discursos/discursos-da-presidenta/discurso-da-presidenta-da-republica-dilma-rousseff-na-cerimonia-de-instalacao-da-comissao-da-verdade-brasilia-df.

  60. 60.

    Globo, December 10, 2014.

  61. 61.

    Schneider, ‘New Politics of Memory in Brazil,’ 204.

  62. 62.

    For a discussion on the emergence of the Pink Tide and its connection to the rupture provoked by the failure of neoliberalism, see Tom Chodor, Neoliberal Hegemony and the Pink Tide in Latin America: Breaking Up with TINA? (New York: Palgrave, 2014).

  63. 63.

    Página12, March 25, 2005.

  64. 64.

    Decreto 606/2007, ‘Creáse, en la órbita de la jefatura de Gabinete de Ministros, el Programa Verdad y Justicia,’ Boletín Oficial de la República Argentina, May 28, 2007.

  65. 65.

    Speaking about the effects of the neoliberal decade on the social in Argentina, sociologist Maristella Svampa has asserted that ‘many types of changes, some foretold since the mid-1970s, underwent a hyperbolic inflection in the neoliberal policies put in motion by Carlos Menem … In this new social context, riddled with a strong dynamic of polarization, all social classes suffered grand transformations … The dynamic of social polarization and fragmentation acquired such virulence that during a large part of the decade of the 90s there were great difficulties in finding the political vocabulary to describe the experiences of decollectivization, in which different trajectories and situation were thrown together … It was no minor thing; the mutation was not only economic, but also social and political. Maristella Svampa, La Sociedad Excluyente. la Argentina bajo el signo del neoliberlismo (Buenos Aires: Taurus, 2005), 11.

  66. 66.

    ‘Mensaje del Presidente Néstor Kirchner ante la Asamblea Legislativa, March 1, 2006,’ Discursos del Señor Presidente de la Nación Argentina, Dr. Néstor Kirchner (Buenos Aires: Ministerio del Interior, 2006).

  67. 67.

    La Nación, March 25, 2005.

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  1. University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

    Michelle Frances Carmody

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Carmody, M.F. (2018). (Re)Forming the State: Recruiting the Dead and Revitalizing Transitional Justice. In: Human Rights, Transitional Justice, and the Reconstruction of Political Order in Latin America. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78393-2_6

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