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Justice Beyond Borders
The Plan Condor trial that began on March 5, 2013 in Buenos Aires is an unprecedented opportunity for many victims of the human rights violations committed by South American military regimes in the 1970s and 1980s to finally see justice. The regional coordination of repression resulted in hundreds of disappearances and murders of Uruguayans, Chileans, ...
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Uruguay’s Culture of Impunity Continues to Rear its Head
The decision by Uruguay’s Supreme Court of Justice to transfer Judge Mariana Mota is evidence that the country’s culture of impunity for the crimes of the 1973-85 dictatorship still endures. Co-authored with Dr. Francesca Lessa, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Latin American Centre, St Anne’s College, University of Oxford. The judge was in charge of over ...
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Desaparecidos
To mark the International Day of the Disappeared, I would like to share this poem by Mario Benedetti ‘Desaparecidos’, to which I was introduced very recently by a friend and colleague. Below, I have included a translation, albeit a rather crude one, for those who would like. Here’s to the disappeared, and to those who ...
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A Significant Confession by the Argentine Church
One of the most controversial aspects of Argentina’s last military dictatorship was the role of the Catholic Church, who for over three decades has remained largely silent over the issue. Official statements regarding the clergy’s involvement in the military’s Proceso de Reorganización Nacional (known simply as el Proceso), which killed up to 30,000 people between ...
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The Challenge of Burying the Ley de Caducidad in Uruguay
‘Without truth or justice, there is no reconciliation’ (Source: Wiki Commons) Uruguay has recently taken several important steps towards dealing with the human rights violations perpetrated throughout the civic-military dictatorship in the 1970s and early 80s. Of most symbolic importance, last October the left-wing Frente Amplio government, headed by the former-guerrilla José Mujica, successfully revoked ...
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Nunca Más: An Introduction
‘Nunca Más’ has become a mantra, a warning. Although the phrase was originally coined as the name for final report of the Argentine Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas (National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons – CONADEP), which illustrated the crimes of the outgoing military dictatorship in 1984, it has been adopted by numerous countries in Latin ...