Journal of Interdisciplinary History, xxxix:2 (Autumn, 2008), 233244.

LEGACY OF ARGENTINE AND CHILEAN DICTATORSHIPS

James L. Cavallaro and Stephanie Erin Brewer

Never Again? The Legacy of the Argentine and Chilean Dictatorships for the Global Human Rights Regime
Thomas C. Wright. State Terrorism in Latin America: Chile, Argentina, and International Human Rights (Lanham, Rowman & Littleeld, 2007) 286 pp. $80.00 cloth $29.95 paper Sonia Cardenas. Conict and Compliance: State Responses to International Human Rights Pressure (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007) 200 pp. $65.00

Within the past three decades, human rights have moved from the periphery to the mainstream of political interest, particularly in Latin America. In international relations, and in the internal political discourse of many states, human rights have become a central, even a dominant theme. This apparent success of the human rights movement renders it difcult to appreciate the signicantly different landscape that prevailed more than thirty years ago. In 1975, only one of the eight core United Nations human rights treaties had come into force.1 Only two states had ratied the principal rights treaty in the Americas, the American Convention on Human Rights. Since then, the vast majority of the worlds states have ratied a range of universal treaties, as well as regional conJames L. Cavallaro is Clinical Professor of Law, Harvard Law School; Executive Director, Human Rights Program; Director, Harvard Law School Program in Buenos Aires. He is the author of Crime, Public Order and Human Rights (Geneva, 2003); Front Line Brazil: Murders, Death Threats and Other Intimidation of Human Rights Defenders, 19972001 (Dublin, 2002). Stephanie Erin Brewer is a Harvard Henigson Fellow, 20072008, Centro de Derechos Humanos Miguel Agustn Pro Jurez; Course Coordinator, Harvard Law School Program in Buenos Aires. She is the author of, with William F. Stafford, Jr., Jonathan Blagbrough, and Paro Chaujar, Understanding Bonded Child Labour in Asia: An Introduction to the Nature of the Problem and How to Address It (Bangkok, 2007); with James Cavallaro, Mark Jensen, Timothy Mayhle, Spring Miller, Mara Luisa Romero, and Molly Thomas-Jensen, No Place to Hide: Gang, State, and Clandestine Violence in El Salvador (Cambridge, Mass., 2007). 2008 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Inc. 1 The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination entered into force on January 4, 1969.

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ventions, that specify a broad range of individual rights and create supervisory bodies. In Latin America, ratication of some of these treaties is nearly universal. Thirty out of the thirty-four active members of the Organization of American States have now ratied the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, twenty-four have ratied the American Convention on Human Rights, and twenty-one have also accepted the compulsory jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Another recent advance, from the perspective of the enforcement of human rights norms, is the establishment by the United Nations of international criminal tribunals (icts) for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, as well as similar courts created in response to other situations of mass atrocity. The icts are the rst such courts to emerge since the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals a halfcentury earlier. In 2002, the international community advanced even further with the establishment of the International Criminal Court (icc), the rst permanent, supranational tribunal to try grave violations of, among other things, core human rights. Yet, despite this remarkable normative advance, relatively little has changed during the past thirty years concerning the means of forcing recalcitrant states to respect the most basic rights of their citizens. Now, as before, domestic factors and local activist groups, far more than international pressures or treaties, are the main driving forces motivating states to respect human rights. International pressure can be important as a stimulus for change, but its impact on the practices of individual states is limited largely by domestic political conditions. Even the icc, an institution that promises supranational justice for rights offenders, operates within the principle of complementarity, which permits the Court to engage only if and when the state in which a defendant is located is unable or unwilling to prosecute successfully. This restriction, along with a number of others, makes prosecution by the icc the exception to the basic rule of human rights enforcementdomestic resolution of the problem (prodded, perhaps, by international pressure) or no resolution at all.2
2 The icc has jurisdiction over genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes committed after July 1, 2002 (the date when the Rome Statute for the icc entered into force), only when these crimes are committed in the territory of a state that is party to the Rome Statute or by one of its nationals, unless the situation is referred to the icc Special Prosecutor by the un Security Council, or the state in question voluntarily accepts the iccs jurisdiction. See

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Given these limitations, the question for those seeking to promote the defense of human rights becomes, Under what kind of international pressure are states likely to curtail rights abuses? To answer this question, scholars have turned to the experience of Latin Americas Southern Cone in light of the regions history of military dictatorships and human rights activism. Two recent books, Wrights State Terrorism in Latin America and Cardenas Conict and Compliance, consider this issue in the context of the repressive regimes that brutalized Chile and Argentina during the 1970s and 1980s. The two narratives are similar in their broad strokes, reporting the often limited inuence that human rights advocates had on the practices of these dictatorships. But the ultimate conclusions that these works draw regarding the potential of international human rights mechanisms to deter future abuses differ in notable respects. Wright provides a comprehensive overview of stateorganized terror in Chile and Argentina during the 1970s and 1980s. He analyzes, in roughly chronological order, the political factors that gave rise to these countries dictatorships; the techniques of repression and manipulation that facilitated their continued rule; and the long, ongoing processes of transitional justice in each society. He also explores the struggles of the grassroots organizations that developed in both countries to defend human rights, exploring how domestic activists from the early stages of the dictatorships to the present day have tried to bring rights violators to justice. More ambitiously, he traces the growth of the international human rights movement from what might be termed its rst major, global challengethe 1973 coup in Chile and the atrocious abuses of the Pinochet regimeto 2006. He argues that the Southern Cone cases helped to shape the current international human rights system in ways that increase the chances of deterring would-be violators today. The issues that Cardenas examines overlap with those that concern Wright to some extent, but she focuses primarily on the causal relationship (to the extent that one exists) between international pressure and change within rights-abusing states. She nds
icc, The ICC at a Glance, available at http://www.icc-cpi.int/library/about/ataglance/ICCAtaglance_en.pdf. On a more practical level, funding limitations further restrict the potential scope of the iccs work.

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that international pressure is signicantly limited in its capacity to alter domestic practices, which, she argues, respond far more to local political factors. As a result, her analysis leads to a less sanguine view about the prospects of advancing human rights mainly through international channels. state terrorism and the development of human rights enforcement Wrights State Terrorism accurately notes several instances in which human rights pressure has correlated with improved practices in the Southern Cone. Despite such examples, however, the books characterizations of the current human rights systems ability to inuence state behavior appear to be overly optimistic. In particular, by situating his narrative within a roughly (though not entirely) linear progression from a stage of monitoring to a stage of enforcement, Wright gives insufcient weight to the more somber aspects of the events that he chronicles. Although the international recognition of human rights norms has certainly improved, accompanied by highly visible advances in efforts to hold some violators accountable for mass atrocity, the fundamental ability of international human rights mechanisms to dissuade and punish violations at a global level remains relatively low. Indeed, both recent scholarship and the current incidence of abuse occurring throughout the world suggest that the ability and resolve of the global system to limit and punish rights violations has not signicantly advanced for the past three decades. As in the Southern Cone in the 1970s, changes in human rights practices continue to be driven more by domestic political forces and the capacity of local groups to deploy human rights discourse effectively than by international pressure. the southern cone dictatorships: from human rights crisis to human rights revolution? Wright opens with an overview of international human rights treaties, monitoring bodies, and war crimes tribunals, beginning in the aftermath of World War II and ending triumphantly with the establishment of the icc. Having set forth this broad framework, he surveys the widespread human rights crisis that engulfed much of Latin America in the wake of the Cuban Revolution, explaining how governments in the region reacted to the real or perceived threat that left-wing political groups within their borders would follow the Cuban example.

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Their political strategies produced actual or de facto military regimes and grave violations of human rights in countries where the majority of the regions population lived (18). The bulk of Wrights book is an in-depth account of the Chilean and Argentine dictatorships. His cogent descriptions of their rise to power, their evolving structures, and their systematic abuses provide an excellent overview of this period, particularly for those new to the eld. Those already familiar with the mechanics of these governments human rights offenses will nd that Wrights analysis of the political and social factors underlying the initial coups and contributing to longer-term support for these regimes provides an added layer to the understanding of the domestic climate at the time. Wright next traces the alternating advances and retreats in contemporary efforts to bring to justice the government ofcials responsible for dirty-war, human rights violations. In discussing these processes, including the factors inuencing domestic public opinion for and against accountability, Wright once again offers a detailed and readable account (although, as he acknowledges, signicant scholarship already exists on this subject).3 Wrights narrative seeks to make a novel contribution to the existing scholarship in its analysis of the reciprocal relationship between the regimes in Chile and Argentina and the developing international human rights system (15). He focuses on the role of intergovernmental and international human rights bodies in exposing and pressuring the military dictatorships of the Southern Cone, as well as on how the structure and activity of these human rights bodies evolved as they responded to the Chilean and Argentine situations. Wright concludes that the interaction of these institutions with the two Southern Cone regimes led to the development of more and tougher international human rights standards and, more signicantly, the tools necessary to enforce those standards, thus fortifying the international human rights system in ways that resonate well beyond the Southern Cone (32, xv). Wrights introductory overview of the evolution of the international human rights framework seeks to support this thesis by portraying the ascendance of the international system from the 1970s, when the norms were incomplete and virtually untested,
3 For the preexisting scholarship, see, in particular, Naomi Roht-Arriaza,The Pinochet Effect: Transnational Justice in the Age of Human Rights (Philadelphia, 2005).

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to an intermediary stage of enforcement and nally to the current age of human rights (225).4 In particular, Wright hails the creation of the icc as the greatest step yet taken toward making international human rights treaties enforceable (13). Barring successful U.S. interference, Wright anticipates that the Court may usher in a new world order with effective deterrents to crimes against humanity (1314). Despite visible advances in the human rights framework, however, there is reason to doubt these optimistic characterizations of the global rights regimes potential power; many of these reasons for skepticism become clear in Wrights analyses of domestic political conditions during the Southern Cone dictatorships. Unpacking his thesis regarding the connection between events in the Southern Cone and the deterrent potential of todays human rights mechanisms requires a critical look at both the specic results of human rights pressure in the Southern Cone and the accuracy of Wrights assessment of the current global human rights machinery. Wright is correct that the Chilean and Argentine dictatorships left their mark on the structure and methods of the current human rights movement and that this movement proved valuable to domestic advances in those countries. Nonetheless, his evaluation of the power of the resulting global system to deter future atrocities through the threat of international prosecution nds less support in available data. The features and characteristic violations of the Chilean and Argentine dictatorships, as well as of similar authoritarian regimes elsewhere, certainly inuenced the content of human rights normsas seen, for example, in the drafting of United Nations and inter-American treaties specically addressing forced disappearance (125). The situation in Chile was especially instrumental in providing the impetus for international human rights bodies to rene or expand their monitoring activities and in provoking several detailed investigations and harsh condemnations of human rights practices during that era (75). Wright also notes several instances in each country when international human rights advocacy (for example, a report by the
4 Elsewhere in the book, Wright phrases these conclusions in less ambitious terms: [The inuence of the Chilean and Argentinean cases] might possibly inuence would-be repressors in any part of the world before they act, and in that small way help nudge the international human rights regime toward another stage in its evolutionthe stage of deterrence (232).

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Inter-American Commission on Human Rights) coincided with increased public opposition to human rights abuses and to improvements in the regimes practices. In such cases, robust international monitoring, reporting, visiting, etc., often result in increased advocacy opportunities for domestic activists, who may be able to leverage these activities at strategic moments to generate public opposition to government practices. In this regard, Keck and Sikkink reference the evolution of Argentinas military dictatorships practices in explaining their boomerang theory of international inuence on domestic human rights situations (107).5 In this theory, domestic advocates employ international allies to shame and pressure a government on the global stage, thus amplifying the domestic groups own demands and ultimately serving to echo back these demands into the domestic arena.6 Yet, notwithstanding the undeniable, positive contribution of the nascent international human rights system to domestic efforts in Chile and Argentina, to conclude that the human rights system has reached the point at which it can trigger greater levels of protection or accountability for human rights undervalues the persistent constraints on these responses. First, it is necessary to determine systematically when and how international human rights pressure can cause a fundamental change in the practices of a state. Cardenas study of the interactions between the Chilean and Argentine dictatorships and the international human rights system, complemented by her statistical analyses of 172 countries during a ve-year period in the 1990s, provides data for a fuller analysis of this question. Though acknowledging that international pressure led to improved humanrights practices in Argentina and Chile during the 1970s (65), she emphasizes that such inuence tends to dissipate in the face of countervailing domestic factors. She notes that even as Argentina publicly committed to international norms in 1977, its security agents forcibly disappeared more than 3,000 people that year and opened four new clandestine detention centers (69). In Chile, Augusto Pinochets henchmen intensied the use of torture in 1979 and 1980, despite growing criticism from the human rights community (6768). This pattern demonstrates that although a re5 Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, 1998). 6 Ibid., 13.

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gime might be willing to take relatively cost-free, cosmetic steps to improve its image in the face of international disfavor, it is unlikely to institute costly structural changes and substantive improvements in human rights. Cardenas argues that international pressure in the Southern Cone produced signicant effects only after the given regime had eliminated its real or perceived domestic security threats (83). As long as these forms of resistance subsisted, the benets of internal repression were more likely to outweigh the costs of human rights criticism (83). Such was the case in Chile, for example. Although violations decreased following the suppression of internal armed resistance in 1976, further violations occurred after renewed internal violence by left-wing groups in 1979, notwithstanding external pressure (7879). Likewise, in Argentina, violations declined precipitously only when internal armed groups were no longer active, and the government could no longer justify its prior levels of repression (82). In Cardenas words, the evidence casts doubt on the extent to which state sovereignty both has changed and is likely to change dramatically as a result of human rights norms. . . . Quantitative and qualitative analyses suggest that the dynamics pushing and pulling states to respond to human rights pressure in seemingly contradictory ways have remained remarkably consistent over time (131132). Wright discusses the types of correlation cited by Cardenas in a similar manner. He observes, for instance, that despite foreign pressure, Pinochet probably would not have dissolved the dina his regimes infamous secret police, responsible for countless acts of abduction, torture, and murderhad it not already essentially accomplished its mission (79). Even after dissolving the dina formally, Pinochet merely replaced it with a new intelligence institution that was a virtual replica of the old one, bestowing a new name on it to give the appearance of a genuine overhaul (79). According to Wright, the lesson that the Argentine dictatorship learned from Chile about silencing criticism was to hide violations by disappearing its enemies, not to adopt less repressive measures (108). Turning to a more contemporary example, Wright notes that Colombia, which is facing an intensied guerrilla war and drug-driven violence, is the only country that has increased its level of repression considerably since 1990 (32). The state of affairs in Colombia conrms Cardenas hypothesis that so long as in-

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ternal security threats persist, international human rights bodies wield relatively little inuence beyond fostering cosmetic measures. Turning to the post-transitional era, Wrights study demonstrates, explicitly and implicitly, that attempts to hold gross violators responsible in both Chile and Argentina achieved radically different results in different periods because of various domestic factors. Wright shows that despite public support in favor of accountability, a few threatening acts by leftist groups in Chile (including a high-prole assassination) were able to blunt the impact of a damning human rights report, largely removing the theme of human rights from public discourse (191). Similar events (including an attack on an army base) undercut public support for human rights accountability in Argentina (156). At rst glance, Pinochets 1998 arrest in London and the subsequent resurgence of efforts toward accountability might appear to support the more optimistic side of Wrights thesis: The arrest of a former head of state, unimaginable during the worst years of abuse in Chile and Argentina, may well seem to be a clear indication of a new global human rights consensus, inaugurating Roht-Arriazas age of human rights. Despite Pinochets arrest, however, the events mentioned above show that the power of the international human rights community to inuence accountability in Chile and Argentina has been far from a linear progression from modest beginnings to large-scale success. Furthermore, even the less than perfect results in Chile and Argentina were due to unprecedented levels of pressure: As Wright puts it, Chile and Argentina had developed the largest, most diverse, and most vigorous and persistent human rights movements in Latin America (xiii). In this light, it seems less likely that the international human rights framework has reached a stage of enforcement in which future human rights violators in other regions would feel deterred from committing acts of violence and repression, particularly in countries that lack well-developed domestic human rights movements. human rights enforcement in the current global context Although international pressure and the (slim) possibility of prosecution are now part of the calculus with which ofcials must reckon when deciding how to govern (or whether to travel abroad and risk arrest under a universal jurisdiction statute), the

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main forces that drive states to comply with or deviate from international human rights norms are still overwhelmingly domestic. These forceswhich include political opposition, organized crime, and real or perceived terrorist threatshave an immediacy that the distant possibility of later prosecution for human rights crimes does not. Although the relevant international legal framework has improved dramatically during the past three decades, international human rights trials have proven to be remarkably rare given the intensity and frequency of abuse, weakening any putative deterrent effects of prosecution. In real time, mass slaughter occurs in Darfur, while the icc investigates, indicts, and prosecutes a handful of war criminals. In the 1990s, the ict for the former Yugoslavia administered justice at a glacial pace while military forces and police committed wholesale massacres in the Balkans. At best, the possibility of prosecution remains just that for the vast majority of the worlds human rights violatorsa possibility, and a remote one. Many of the political dynamics that allowed Latin American dictatorships to ignore international human rights pressure are as potent as ever. For instance, Wright notes that despite a steady stream of negative reports and resolutions by both intergovernmental agencies and NGOs. . . . [t]he unagging economic and diplomatic support of the United States under President Nixon and President Ford helped Pinochet to defy international pressure without severe consequences (77). Today, the United States support of allies in the war on terror regardless of their record on human rights raises similar concerns. Witness, for instance, the mass dismissals and detentions of members of the judiciary, lawyers, and human rights defenders in Pakistan during a state of emergency that involved the suspension of constitutional guarantees. Although the Bush administration (which has provided Pakistan with billions of dollars in military aid since 2001) expressed formal disagreement with President Musharraf s political crackdown, the United States afrmed its continuing substantive support of Pakistan, publicly proclaiming Musharraf to be an indispensable ally in the war on terror and partnership with Pakistan . . . [to be] the only option.7
7 Human Rights First, Save Pakistans Courts and Constitution, Nov. 21, 2007, available at http://humanrightsrst.com/defenders/alert112107_rice.htm; U.S. ofcial: Pakistans Mush-

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An indication of the central role that domestic and political factors (as opposed to international norms) play in human rights accountability is the signicant difference between how the Pinochet affair affected Argentina and Chile and how it affected other countries, such as Guatemala. As Roht-Arriaza noted, Pinochets arrest may have revitalized efforts to prosecute rights violators in Chile and Argentina but not in Guatemala. This discrepancy is certainly not attributable to differing levels of abuse. Indeed, by all credible accounts, the levels in Guatemala were as high as, or higher than, those elsewhere in Latin America. Wright characterizes the slaughter of more than 200,000 people in Guatemala, primarily Mayan, as genocide (31). Nor can the difference in Guatemalas reaction to Pinochets arrest be associated with its failure to engage universal jurisdiction. Although Guatemalan activists encountered delays in ling suit in foreign jurisdictions (Spanish courts failed to authorize the necessary jurisdiction over Guatemalan atrocities until 2005), external investigations and prosecutions of Guatemalans, in theory, should have provoked domestic reactions similar to those in the Southern Cone. Instead, Guatemalans elected General Efran Ros Montt, their former dictator, to Congress. His party currently controls the Guatemalan legislatures Human Rights Commission, despite an outstanding Spanish warrant for Ros Montts arrest, charging him with, among other things, genocide.8 The most likely reasons for the differing impact of foreign prosecutions on Guatemala (as compared to Argentina and Chile) lie in the nature of its domestic political conditions. Wrights study might have produced more generally applicable conclusions about how domestic human rights practices, accountability, and international forces are related had he compared states with more diverse experiences than those of Argentina and Chile, neighbors in the Southern Cone.9 Wrights State Terrorism in Latin America offers a detailed, compelling, and highly useful account of the Chilean and Argentine miliarraf indispensable ally, Associated Press, 7 Nov. 2007, available at http://www.cnn.com/ 2007/POLITICS/11/07/us.pakistan.ap/. 8 Ana Luca Blas, Reparten 45 comisiones de trabajo en Congreso, Prensa Libre, 18 Jan. 2008, available at http://www.prensalibre.com/pl/2008/enero/18/214922.html. 9 Although Wright recognizes that state repression and its legacy in Argentina and Chile were not typical of Latin America as a whole from 1970 to 1990 (xii), he asserts, Despite the

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tary dictatorships; it has value for novices and experts alike. However, practitioners seeking lessons relevant to their work in the human rights eld will likely nd Wrights ultimate assessment of the international systems power to deter violations or punish violators overly optimistic. By all indications, a world order based on effective deterrents to gross human rights violations is a distant vision at best, a mirage at worst. Cardenas Conict and Compliance demonstrates the limited potential of international mechanisms to trigger advances in human rights. Her analysis of the impact of international pressure on rights-abusing states provides a sober, though accurate, guide for those who would design human rights strategies based on recent history. As Wright makes clear in his treatment of the dictatorships in the Southern Cone, the past three decades have seen the international community reach a greater consensus about human rights. Indeed, the language of human rights has become the dominant discourse of morality in international affairs, as well as in the domestic politics of many states. The chances of violators facing prosecution abroad, though slight, have increased. Nevertheless, advocacy openings created by domestic political factors and used strategically by local human rights groups (sometimes in cooperation with international organizations) continue to serve as the primary cause of change within individual states. Wrights analysis of how the domestic human rights movements in Argentina and Chile acquired political strength becomes all the more relevant considering the lack of a fully empowered international presence and constitutes his books greatest contribution.

variations from country to country, the Argentine and Chilean cases illuminate the essential elements of Latin Americas human rights crisis (xiii). Analyses of Argentina and Chile alone, however, do not necessarily allow for an appreciation of the conditions under which international pressures are likely to lead to increased accountability for human rights abuses in other countries.