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Argentina⁴

The 1970s were years of unprecedented political violence in Argentina. Beginning with a campaign of assassinations initiated by the government of Isabel Perón in response to the threat of terrorist activities by several small urban guerrilla organizations, the collapse of the rule of law was completed by a coup in March 1976, in which the commanders-in-chief of the army, navy and airforce overthrew the elected government. Key articles of the constitution were "suspended," eighty percent of the judges were replaced, and far-reaching legislation was passed allowing the military forces to participate in the repression of "subversion" unencumbered by judicial oversight. Despite this array of new discretionary powers, the junta approved in addition secret plans to conduct the bulk of the "struggle against subversion" by clandestine means. A campaign of forced disappearances was begun, by which suspected subversives were abducted without warrant for arrest, taken to clandestine detention camps, interrogated under torture, and frequently summarily executed; all without admission of knowledge or responsibility by any branch of government. The vast majority of those "disappeared" were never seen alive again.

By 1980, the guerrilla groups - which had never posed a serious threat to the Argentine government - had been wiped out, together with a variety of political parties and social movements perceived by the armed forces to be leftist, which had all pursued their goals by peaceful means. However, the ill-fated attempt to capture from the British the Malvinas, or Falkland Islands, led to the demise of the military regime. A caretaker junta was put together in late 1982, to preside over a transition to an elected civilian government. During the transition, the generals published a much-derided "Final Document on the Struggle Against Subversion and Terrorism," which purported to provide a legitimate explanation for the disappearances; and in late 1983 promulgated a general amnesty for all criminal offenses committed during the "war against subversion" between May 1973 (the date of the last amnesty for political crimes) and June 1982 (when the third successive junta resigned in the aftermath of the Malvinas defeat). In an attempt to suggest that the purpose of the amnesty was national reconciliation, the law included a much more limited amnesty to benefit some of those who had taken up arms against the government. Many political prisoners immediately rejected the application of the law to them. The candidates for the presidency denounced the self-amnesty, and promised inquiries on the fate of the disappeared after the election. Raúl Alfonsín, who promised to have the law annulled, won in a landslide, with 52% of the votes cast.

Only a few days into his presidency, Alfonsín announced a series of actions to restore Argentina's adherence to the rule of law and respect for human rights. Perhaps the most significant of these measures was the appointment of a "National Commission on Disappeared Persons" (conadep), which carried out a public investigation of the policy and practice of disappearances. The Commission received testimony from relatives of the disappeared and from survivors of the camps where the disappeared had been held. Human rights organizations turned over extensive material that they had gathered documenting abuses. Branches of the Commission were established in several major cities (though little or no gathering of information took place in rural areas, leading to the belief that the numbers of disappeared were probably understated). Exiles returned from abroad to testify, and statements were taken in embassies and consulates in several other countries. Police and military facilities were inspected, as well as clandestine cemeteries; provoking complaints from military authorities and leading to pressure on conadep to exercise restraint. A powerful two-hour program was shown on television, consisting of testimony of survivors and relatives.

In September 1984, conadep delivered its report to the president. Its 50,000 pages of documentation were summarized and published separately under the title Nunca Más (Never Again), with an annex listing the names of almost 9,000 "disappeared." The report, which rapidly became a best-seller in Argentina,⁵ is a powerful indictment of the repressive policies of the military dictatorship, and of the complicity of various civilian institutions in exchange for promises of impunity.

Less successful, but perhaps more remarkable, were the government's attempts to prosecute those responsible for the crimes detailed in the Nunca Más report. The nine junta members who had ruled Argentina during the dictatorship were brought to trial in the Federal Courts of Appeal, which took over jurisdiction from the military tribunals. Although four defendants were acquitted, five were found guilty of crimes over which they had been "in control," though they had not been the actual perpetrators, and received sentences ranging from four years to life. The decision was a landmark in Argentina's history. However, even before the verdicts were delivered, high government officials were voicing concern over the more than 2,000 complaints pending against other members of the armed forces.⁶ Calls began to be made for a "punto final" (full stop/period) to prosecutions, in the form of legislation placing a time limit for new cases. Pressure on the government mounted, and a punto final law was promulgated in December 1986, setting a 60 day limit for new criminal complaints, with the exception of offenses related to the theft and irregular adoption of the children of the disappeared.

Not satisfied with this concession, at Easter 1987 a group of officers took over a military compound in Buenos Aires, and demanded an amnesty law and the dismissal of all serving generals. On Easter Sunday Alfonsín announced that the rebellion had been put down; but the major demands of the troops were met. A number of generals were dismissed, and a "due obedience law" was passed in June 1987 which had the effect of an amnesty for most members of the armed forces, by making irrebuttable a presumption (introduced when the self-amnesty law was repealed) that defendants had acted "in error as to the legitimacy of their actions" if they had simply obeyed orders, in the case of all officers below the rank of chief of security area or sub-area. The only excepted offenses were rape, theft, and "falsification of civil status" (i.e. irregular adoption); "atrocious and aberrant acts," excepted in the previous version, were not included.

The qualified successes of Alfonsín's government were undermined by increasingly severe economic problems, and the 1989 presidential elections were lost to the Peronist candidate, Carlos Menem. Three months after taking office, Menem issued a presidential decree pardoning 39 military officers accused of human rights violations, those accused of negligence during the Malvinas war, and 164 officers alleged to have taken part in mutinies against Alfonsín, together with dozens of suspected leftist terrorists. Many Argentine citizens felt betrayed by these pardons - despite Menem's claim to moral authority deriving from his own five-year imprisonment by the previous military government - following so soon after Alfonsín's punto final and "due obedience" laws.

Despite its defects, the process of accounting for past abuses that took place in Argentina was the most successful among similar attempts in Latin America. The Nunca Más report demonstrated how a democratic government, with the cooperation of human rights organizations, could take important steps toward establishing the truth about repression which took place just a few years earlier, providing the political will was there. Moreover, in the trial of the junta members, the democratic institutions of the country had been able to deal with egregious abuses of the recent past with the dignity and majesty of a court of law; subjecting men who a few years earlier had been all powerful to the treatment that suspected criminals receive in a civilized society, and conducting proceedings with scrupulous respect for Argentine law and international standards of due process. In the process the judiciary had established its independent role and made a major contribution to an understanding of the tragedy of the "dirty war" waged by the military government against its own citizens.