Truth and Justice in Uruguay

...But public opinion was growing increasingly sympathetic to the demands for truth...

...voters-in favor of the referendum...

...Though lacking the broad support it enjoyed during the referendum campaign-and unable to demand justice given the existence of the impunity law-the human rights movement renewed its efforts around the "right to truth...

...By contrast, in Argentina and more recently in Chile, some judges broke out of the straightjacket imposed by official amnesty laws by interpreting forced disappearance as a permanent and ongoing crime, thus opening up the possibility of legal action...

...Though not yet in place, Batlle's proposal consists of a commission of notables led by the Archbishop of Montevideo that will receive testimony and information about the disappeared...

...Sanguinetti's successor, Jorge Batlle, perhaps aware that this issue will not easily go away, has taken a very different approach since his inauguration as president earlier this year...

...Translated from the Spanish by NACLA...

...Even an international campaign on behalf of vindicate th the granddaughter of Argentine barbarity a poet Juan Gelmin, who was born in captivity in 1976 in a clandestine Uruguayan jail and was presumably given to a military family, failed to move Sanguinetti...

...It should be noted that during 1985, a congressional commission received information about the disappeared, and this information was provided to the executive and legislative branches...

...But in tary threats, the Commission organized nearly 500 Uruguay, no military officer has appeared before a civilgrassroots committees and mobilized tens of thou- ian court, and there has been no official recognition of sands of brigade leaders who visited 420,000 homes the state terrorism practiced by the dictatorship or invesand obtained 634,702 signatures-29% of registered tigation of the crimes committed...

...The truth is possible and necessary...

...While the organization of relatives has recognized Batlle's goodwill, it continues to demand an exhaustive, impartial and public investigation...

...against military and police officers implicated in The government and the military used all the tools at human rights abuses during the military dictatorship their disposal to assure that the referendum failed, (1973-1985...

...This defeat for the human rights movement seemed to While the newly elected government of Jos6 Maria mark the end of the political transition begun in 1984, Sanguinetti (1985-89) had hoped to brush the human and lent an air of legitimacy to impunity in Uruguay that rights issue aside, the Commission's efforts to collect made it seemingly impenetrable...

...This is a crucial issue the movement has yet to confront, involving the question of how the history of state terrorism will be written about and taught in our schools, in a country whose armed forces-which were never purged or retrained-continue to vindicate their acts of barbarity as heroism...

...But a decade later, new winds have revived the struggle for truth and given new hopes to demands for justice...

...In Uruguay, Article 4 seemed the only tool available to human rights activists, and in 1996, its implementation became their primary demand...

...While some see Article 4 as means of keeping the struggle for human rights and justice alive, others have come to view it is an end in itself, a way to obtain the truth about the disappeared...

...Legal action seemed impossible given the timidity of the Uruguayan judiciary, which remained vulnerable to military pressure...

...After all, it limits the "truth" to what the Executive and the military are willing to tell, circumscribes the crimes to be investigated only to forced disappearance-not the primary mode of repression in Uruguay-and it obviates the question of justice altogether.s Events like the arrest of Pinochet in London and the ongoing trials of military officials from the dictatorship period in Argentina and Chile suggest that in Uruguay it may also be possible to demand truth and justice...

...For the first time in 15 years of constitutional government, a head of state met with the relatives of the disappeared...

...4 It will prepare a report for the President, who will then meet personally with military leaders to obtain information about what happened to the disappeared...

...See Servicio Paz y Justicia, Uruguay Nunca Mhs: Human Rights Violations 1972-1985 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992...

...2 overturn an unpopular law...

...Finally there is the question of "how much" truth should be sought...

...But the government-again led by Sanguinetti, who was elected to a second term in 1995-refused to acknowledge that a problem existed...

...A variety of strategies were deployed to this end: appealing to public opinion, organizing protest marches and presenting constitutional writs of petition to the President...

...The group brought a petition before the civil courts on behalf of the mother of Elena Quinteros, a teacher who was disappeared during the dictatorship, based on her "right to truth" concerning the fate of her daughter, and arguing that Article 4 and Uruguay's international obligations mandate an investigation...

...invoking international conventions and treaties that have been applied with renewed vigor in recent years elsewhere in the region...

...Within a month, Gelmin's daughter, now 24 years old, was found and returned to him...

...those who had been allegedly detained and disappeared by state agents, particularly the 12 children abducted with their mothers or born in captivity and given to families close to the military dictatorship...

...They are Sim6n Riquelo (See "Looking for Sim6n," p. 38), Fernando y Beatriz HernAndez, and the daughter of Blanca Altman, who was born in captivity...

...Truth and Justice in Uruguay 1. For an excellent account of the dictatorship, the impunity law, and the referendum campaign, see Lawrence Weschler, A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts With Torturers (New York: Pantheon Books, 1990...

...4. Notably, the commission is being called a Peace Commission rather than a Truth Commission, highlighting the nature of its limits and objectives...

...Defying the long-standing policy of his own party, the Colorados, and of his coalition partners, the Blancos, to defend military impunity, Batlle has promised to find a solution to the question of the disappeared...

...In December 1986, amidst great tension and conflict, the Uruguayan Congress approved the so-called "Law Nullifying the State's Claim to Punish Certain Crimes"known more commonly as the "impunity law"-effectively Relatives of the disappeared at a night vigil through the streets of Montevideo carry a bringing an end to all trials banner that reads, "Where are they...

...Rights activists continued to Vol XXXIV, No 1 JuLY/AUGUST 2000 37REPORT ON HUMAN RIGHTS demand that the state fulfill the terms of Article 4, but the referendum defeat had left the human rights movement very isolated...

...5. Thousands of prisoners were systematically tortured in Uruguay, and there were only about 160 cases of forced disappearance...

...In Argentina, there signatures to hold a referendum forced the human were trials of the junta leaders, and both Chile and rights question onto the political agenda...

...Indeed, Batlle's formula-while a significant opening-seems directed at completing what the impunity law could not: achieving a "full stop" for the issue of human rights...

...Can we be content with learning the fate of the disappeared, or should we be struggling on broader terms to reconstruct the historical memory of this period in Uruguayan history...

...iven the evolution of alternative human rights strategies throughout the region and the world, the strategy employed until very recently by the Uruguayan human rights movement-the implementation of Article 4--may no longer be the only or most desirable path...

...She is also a member of the Steering Council of SIPAZ, a human rights group based in Chiapas...

...This raises thorny issues for the human rights movement, however...

...Dialogue and negotiation are paramount in the latter case, while in the former, at issue are larger legal and political battles at both the national and international levels, which might demand other forms of struggle...

...During the dictatorship, Uruguay had the highest number of political prisoners31 per 10,000 inhabitants-worldwide...

...The Executive will recognize the general responsibility of the state for these crimes, to be followed by laws dealing with specific issues, such as reparations...

...The answer lies somewhere inbetween...

...In June, the Appeals Tribunal upheld the finding of the lower courts, which ruled in favor of the mother-a promising first legal victory...

...3. Of the 12 Uruguayan children, only four have yet to be located and returned to their biological families...

...Batlle had barely set up his office in the government palace when he announced that he was taking personal responsibility for the Gelmin case, and that the issue of the disappeared-especially the childrenwas now an official concern...

...Within a Argentina created official truth commissions aimed at year, and in a climate of political hostility and mili- establishing who the dictatorships' victims were...

...which mandated that the Executive investigate the fate of Maria Delgado is a founding member of the Uruguayan branch of Servicio Paz yJusticia, a human rights network with offices in eight Latin American countries...

...Suddenly, human rights was once again on the political agenda...

...It was probably Despite the sweeping impunity granted by the the most massive and grassroots campaign in favor of impunity law, it also contained a clause-Article 4human rights in all of Latin America...

...He The Urugua rejected an offer by the Catholic forces cor Church to mediate...

...Within a month of the law's passage, a including intimidation and threats-powerful stimulants broad and pluralistic coalition of social and political to a population that had just emerged from a dictatorship groups formed the Pro-Referendum Commission, that was a virtual totalitarian state, 1 On April 16, 1989, whose goal was to submit the impunity law to a Uruguayans voted 57% to 43% against the referendum, plebiscite, the only mechanism available to citizens to and the impunity law was left on the books...

...Then the data will be transmitted in a "discrete" manner to the relatives...

...Meanwhile, other strategies are being devised...

...2. In Montevideo, where the electorate tends to vote for more progressive options, the referendum won with 56.4% of the vote...

...3 Yet three successive postdictatorship governments refused to carry out such investigations...

...The resurrection of this issue in neighboring Chile and Argentina may have convinced Batlle that it is better to deal with it quickly and discretely so as to avoid noisy public trials, and to ensure that it does not affect the armed forces, whose impunity has remained intact to this day...

...Things began to change in the mid- 1990s in relation to unfolding events in neighboring Argentina-in particular the confessions of former navy captain Francisco Scilingo about the "death flights" employed during the dictatorship to dispose of suspected subversives, and the apology of the commander in chief of the Army, General Martin Balza, for the military's human rights crimes...

...The question is how to calibrate both demands, for only by constructing a unified bloc against impunity can we hope to defeat an enemy that has yet to lose a single battle...

...The Human Rights Secretariat of the National Workers Confederation (PIT-CNT), for example, is pursuing the possibility of seeking truth without renouncing justice by yan armed itinue to ieir acts of s heroism...