Thread by @GerardoMunck

Compilation thread on #TransitionalJustice in #LatinAmerica.

Here’s a large 🧵thread that combines multiple tweets on transitional justice in Latin America.

1/7. Transitional justice – confronting past human rights violations – has been on the agenda in #LatinAmerica since the 1980s

Violence perpetrated by dictatorships & in civil wars during the Cold War in Latin America has resulted in thousands, even 100s of thousands, of victims

2/7. How might past human rights violations be tackled when political times change?

Cuba in 1959 choose revolutionary justice: show trials&executions

Latin America since the 1980s did better. It sought transitional justice: due process for the accused, truth&justice for victims

3/7. Latin America has had mixed success in the field of transitional justice. Some countries delivered, others did not. But the region has led the world in setting up truth commissions and conducting trials of those accused of human rights violations.

4/7. One of the most moving moments in the process of transitional justice is when former heads of government, who instilled fear among the population, stand on trial & are required to answer for their alleged crimes in a court of law

Such scenes make citizens believe in justice

5/7. Democracies build the rule of law partly by confronting past human rights abuses, ie, by pursuing transitional justice. More justice also makes democracy stronger.

The still-unfolding story of transitional justice in Latin America, and its lessons, are told in these books.

Burt, Jo-Marie @jomaburt, Transitional Justice in the Aftermath of Civil Conflict: Lessons Learned from Peru, Guatemala and El Salvador (2018)

Freeman, Mark, and Iván Orozco, Negotiating Transitional Justice: Firsthand Lessons from Colombia and Beyond (@Cambridge_Uni 2019)

González-Ocantos, Ezequiel A. @egocantos, Shifting Legal Visions: Judicial Change and Human Rights Trials in Latin America (@Cambridge_Uni 2016)

Jelin, Elizabeth, La lucha por el pasado: Cómo construimos la memoria social ( 2017)

Lessa, Francesca @UruguayFran, The Condor Trials: Transnational Repression and Human Rights in South America (@yalepress 2022)

Payne, Leigh A., Unsettling Accounts: Neither Truth nor Reconciliation in Confessions of State Violence (@DukePress 2008)

Sikkink, Kathryn @kathryn_sikkink, The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions Are Changing World Politics (@wwnorton 2011)

Skaar, Elin, Jemima García-Godos @JemimaGodos, and Cath Collins (eds.), Transitional Justice in Latin America: The Uneven Road from Impunity towards Accountability (@routledgebooks 2016)

6/7. The still-unfolding story of transitional justice in Latin America, and its lessons, are told in these books on transitional justice in Latin America.

Amilivia, Gabriela Fried, State Terrorism and the Politics of Memory in Latin America: Transmissions Across The Generations of Post-Dictatorship Uruguay, 1984–2004 (2016)

Collins, Cath, Post-transitional Justice: Human Rights Trials in Chile and El Salvador (2010)

González-Ocantos, Ezequiel A. @egocantos, The Politics of Transitional Justice in Latin America (@Cambridge_Uni 2020)

Lira, Elizabeth, Marcela Cornejo, and Germán Morales (eds.), Human Rights Violations in Latin America Reparation and Rehabilitation (2022)

Roht-Arriaza, Naomi @roht_naomi, The Pinochet Effect: Transnational Justice in the Age of Human Rights (2005)

Rojas, Hugo, and Miriam Shaftoe, Human Rights and Transitional Justice in Chile (2022)

7/7. Documentaries and films often bring to life the human dimension and full stakes of social and political issues better than any other medium.

Here are some documentaries and films on transitional justice in Latin America.

Argentina, 1985 (2022). On the 1985 Trial of the Juntas in Argentina. Directed by Santiago Mitre. filmaffinity.com/ar/film117089.…

The Art of Political Murder (2020). On the murder of Guatemalan Bishop Juan Gerardi, who was killed in 1998 days after the publication of a report on human rights violations. Directed by Paul W. Taylor. imdb.com/title/tt103138…

Botín de guerra (2000). (English: Spoils of War). In Spanish. On Argentina’s “Dirty War” (1976–1983) & efforts of the mothers and grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo to reunite children w/ their relatives. Directed by David Blaustein. filmaffinity.com/es/film505662.…

Condor (2007). On the Operation Condor, a secret agreement between the military dictatorships of the Southern Cone in the 1970s. Directed by Roberto Mader. imdb.com/title/tt182815…

Finding Oscar (2016). On events in a Guatemalan town in December 1982, in which Guatemalan soldiers committed terrible human rights violations. It also tells the story of the search for justice in this case. Directed by Ryan Suffern. imdb.com/title/tt571923…

Granito: How to Nail a Dictator (2011). minutes. Tells the story of human rights atrocities in Guatemala in the early 1980s and the thirty-year struggle to bring the dictator Efraín Rios Montt to justice. Directed by Pamela Yates. ff.hrw.org/film/granito-h…

Impunity (2010). In Spanish, with English subtitles. On Colombia’s 2005 Commission for Peace and Justice, charged with gathering evidence about the violence carried out by illegal paramilitary groups. Directed by Juan José Lozano. imdb.com/title/tt205796…

The Judge and the General (2008). Follows Chilean Judge Juan Guzmán, who was assigned the first criminal cases against Chile’s dictator, General Augusto Pinochet. Directed by Elizabeth Farnsworth and Patricio Lanfranco, imdb.com/title/tt126738…

The Memory of the Bones (2017). In Spanish, with English subtitles. Tells the story of the work of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team to locate and give identity to thousands of missing victims of human rights violations. Directed by Facundo Beraudi. imdb.com/title/tt564233…

The Pinochet Case (2001). The story of the attempt to bring former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet to justice. It focuses on Pinochet’s arrest in London between 1998 and 2000. Directed by Patricio Guzman. icarusfilms.com/if-pino

State of Fear: The Truth about Terrorism (2005). Tells the story of the escalating violence in Peru in the 1980s and 1990s, and the truth commission that looked into human rights abuses. Directed by Pamela Yates. imdb.com/title/tt048504…

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