Forgive & forget?:
Neild, Rachel
FORGIVE & FORGET? A COUNTRY CONFRONTS ITS PAST After four months of drought in Uruguay it poured with rain all day Sunday, April 16, as people stood in lines, sprouting umbrellas like rows of...
...The Armed Forces told political leaders that they would not comply...
...With the requisite number of signatures validated, the refer-endum was set for April 16, 1989...
...Taking advantage of a constitutional clause, unique in Latin America, that allows a referendum on a law if 25 percent of the electorate sign a petition within a year of its being passed, the wives of murdered Senators Ruiz and Michelini formed the National Pro-Referendum Commission...
...The streets of Montevideo were plastered with bright green smiley faces and banners that proclaimed "Equal Justice Under Law...
...CONAPRO stated that failing to investigate human rights violations and allowing violators impunity "constitutes a grave risk for the real protection of human rights in the future...
...In the square, trees dripped on four horses turned loose to graze and on three men bent under the hood of an old car...
...They saw that the yellow vote was made for reasons of political pragmatism, and made with a heavy heart...
...On that Sunday the vote went ahead peacefully and the yellow vote won by 57 percent to 43 percent...
...Article 4 of the law mandated investigations into disappearances, but in an action universally repudiated by human rights organizations, Sanguinetti nominated an active-duty military prosecutor to carry them out...
...Uruguay had the highest percentage per capita of political prisoners and some of the worst prison conditions in the world...
...Given these beliefs, why was the law upheld...
...Afterwards no one protested or celebrated, at least not in public...
...In what was a traditionally antimilitaristic society the Armed Forces are now a political actor...
...The Pro-Referendum Commission was faced with the task of verifying 23,000 signatures in order for the referendum to be held and by the date set by the last weekend before Christmas when all Uruguay goes to the beach for summer vacations...
...The impunity law had been passed to avert a constitutional crisis-would not overturning it simply precipitate another one...
...The years of military repression in Uruguay had affected everybody to some degree...
...Between June and November political parties presented three proposals for partial and total amnesties...
...Not only was there no judicial accounting for violations, but there was no official investigation or clarification of the fate of the "disappeared...
...In effect the law meant that the state resigned its right to try the military...
...The government campaign was largely on TV, which the green vote could not afford...
...Faced by a constitutional crisis, and apparently persuaded of the need for military appro-bation in order to have a hope of ruling in the future, the Blanco Party reversed its position, and the so-called impunity law was passed two days before the subpoenaed officers were due to appear...
...Many Uruguayans who had suffered did not want to present their personal cases...
...In the most sinister "Brave New World" fashion, all citizens were given ideological rankings of A, B, or C. Aperson classified as "C" was barred from public sector employment and not allowed a passport...
...Amnesty International estimated that one in every fifty Uruguayans had been arrested and that one in every sixty-one had been tortured...
...Then, in November, 1986 the Supreme Court upheld civilian jurisdiction over the cases which had been challenged by the military...
...A human rights lawyer told me: "They were happy to be wit-nesses, but there was a tendency to say 'my case is not impor-tant.'" The total number of military and police personnel implicated was between 180 and 200, but this was too much for the Armed Forces...
...I came out of a vote count in El Cerro, a working-class neighborhood of Montevideo, at 9 P.M...
...the green observers were all volunteers, the yellow were paid 3,000 pesos-about three dollars-for the day...
...At the vote each side had the right to have observers...
...In the office kitchen the analysis had begun: "No one is supporting impu-nity...
...No one thinks that what the military did was a good thing, just that this time what has been done is better stood by than reversed...
...Unfortunately, official rhetoric following the plebiscite has presented it as the end of the problem, with the implication that the political inertia will continue on the question of regulating civil-military relations...
...People here are supporting politi-cians who are saying that at this time we have no other solution...
...He specifically excluded violators of human rights from an amnesty for most remaining political prisoners, and stated to the UN that human rights violations would be clarified and perpetrators tried...
...RACHEL NEILD"disappeared...
...RACHEL NEILD...
...Under pressure from the military, Sanguinetti started to examine other options...
...On the radio the results were being announced and it became clear that the "yellow" vote (to uphold the law) was winning over the "green" (to overturn it...
...Although the military budget and personnel were cut after the elections and some reforms were made in the education system, intelligence mechanisms remain largely intact and the national-security mindset responsible for the human rights violations of the past has not changed significantly...
...Half a million people had fled this country whose total population is under four million...
...A COUNTRY CONFRONTS ITS PAST After four months of drought in Uruguay it poured with rain all day Sunday, April 16, as people stood in lines, sprouting umbrellas like rows of black mushrooms, to vote on whether to uphold or overturn a 1986 law giving amnesty to military personnel responsible for gross violations of human rights during the 1973 to 1984 regime...
...These facts seem likely to go unacknowledged while the familiares face the fact that they are now unlikely ever to find out what happened to their "disappeared...
...Civilian politicians have yet to assert their authority and define the proper peace-time role and mission of the military...
...However, a declaration was issued two months later by a group called CONAPRO (National Programmatic Alliance) that incorporated all political parties and organizations repre-senting diverse social sectors...
...Participants maintain that the question of human rights was not broached...
...During 1987, they managed to collect more than the required 555,000 signatures, only to face a bitter and confrontational verification process that dragged on through 1988...
...the young voted green...
...In 1986, thirty-eight cases were before the courts-very few cases, given the extent of the repression...
...The old voted yellow...
...A poll taken in Montevideo in 1986, shortly after the impunity law was passed, showed that 53 percent of the population not only believed that the measure failed to resolve the constitutional crisis, but that it debilitated democratic institutions...
...The official conclusion proclaimed that the referendum demonstrated Uruguay's ability to solve problems democrati-cally and was therefore a victory for all...
...They were all rejected...
...The popular reaction to these events demonstrates how far the political debate had drifted from people's feelings on the issue...
...While some believe that there was a secret agreement, others argue that silence itself, given the experience the country had just lived though, constituted a tacit agreement not to prosecute human rights violators...
...this is not like Argentina where some people thought the military did the right thing...
...Before the November 1984 elections, informal talks took place between members of the military command and political parties...
...The impunity law was upheld...
...This was the policy course that President Julio Sanguinetti appeared to be set on following the elections...
...The autonomy of the military, however, remains unchal-lenged...
...The kitchen debate circled the fact that both green and yellow votes were votes against a return to military rule...
...Thousands of signatures were nulli-fied for increasingly trivial reasons, and many were suspended for later confirmation...
...It also reflects the inability of the green vote to answer the question, "what happens if you win...
...It was an impressive democratic decision, all the more so because it was fought against official resistance...
...The officer declared that there was insufficient evidence to implicate military offi-cers and closed down investigations...
...I believe that the yellow victory reflects a loss of faith in the ability of politicians and democratic institutions to provide another solution...
...Since the 1984 elections that ended eleven years of military rule, the human rights debate has been constantly in the press...
...The yellow vote perceived a still fragile democracy, a society in need of reconciliation, wanting to put the past behind and deal with the problems of the future, with the debt and unemployment, with the exodus of young people from an economically depressed country...
...Back at the office of SERPAJ Uruguay (the human rights organization, Peace and Justice Service) thefamiliares, family members of the disappeared, were watching the results on TV, quiet and tense as they saw the green vote losing...
...Opinion polls have shown that a consistent and large majority oppose amnesty for the military (78 percent in 1986...
...The results re-flected Uruguayan social divisions...
...The green vote said that justice is the only path to peace and democracy, and that without accounting for the past, the future can never be secure...
...in the countryside the yellow vote won overwhelmingly, while in Montevideo the green vote had a small majority...
Vol. 116 • June 1989 • No. 12
