Memory and justification in the Argentinian process of transitional justice: from the democratic reconstruction to the ‘mega-cases’ (1983-2013)

Abstract

In the processes of institutional reconstruction of democracy in Argentina one can distinguish three conflicting contexts of justification that erupted in the public sphere when facing the transition through the criminal justice system. The first phase (1983-1990) begins immediately after the end of the dictatorship (1976-1983) and includes the preparation of the Nunca Más report (1984), the public trial of military officers (1985), with the condemnation of the main perpetrators, and the subsequent amnesty of the military through the laws of impunity. The second phase (1990-2005) begins with a policy of economic reparation and includes the expansion of the legal category of “forced disappearance”, the trials of the military responsible for the appropriation of babies born in clandestine prisons and the “truth trials” started in 1998. This phase extends to the annulment of the laws of impunity in 2005. In the third phase the trials of all repressive security forces and civilians who participated in the repression are resumed. If, on the one hand, there is a change in the concept of torture that makes it possible to individualize the cases of both victims and perpetrators, on the other, the “mega-cases” are established as a legal way of grouping more than one case on the basis of a particular circuit of repression. Our aim is to analyze the main changes in the judicialization of the transition in Argentina.

Keywords: transitional justice, military dictatorship, Argentina, Nunca Más.