The Political Transformation of Human Rights in Argentina, 1955-83 By
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Between National Law and International Norms: The Political Transformation of Human Rights in Argentina, 1955-83 By Lynsay B. Skiba A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Mark A. Healey, Co-chair Professor Daniel J. Sargent, Co-chair Professor Margaret Chowning Professor Saira Mohamed Spring 2015 © 2015 Lynsay Brooke Skiba All rights reserved. Abstract Between National Law and International Norms: The Political Transformation of Human Rights in Argentina, 1955-83 by Lynsay B. Skiba Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Berkeley Professor Mark A. Healey, Co-chair Professor Daniel J. Sargent, Co-chair This dissertation examines Argentina’s late twentieth-century transition from military authoritarianism to democracy in the broader context of the globalization of ideas about international human rights. With a focus on events between 1955 and 1983, I explain how Argentines came to create and support a human rights-based conception of the rule of law and, specifically, the criminal prosecution of their country’s former de facto leaders. I approach this question by reconstructing an aspect of Argentine legal and political culture that has been overlooked in existing scholarship: public debates led by the country’s prominent and politically diverse lawyers over constitutionalism, revolution, national security, and universal rights. Integrating national history and the history of globalization, I argue that the remaking of Argentine democracy was part of a late twentieth-century globalization of legal order whereby legal advocates and their nonlawyer allies wielded international human rights norms not to transcend the state, as is frequently claimed, but to transform it. This national transformation, constrained by the political and legal legacies of state violence, ultimately produced a paler version of democracy than many Argentines had once envisioned but one that nonetheless served to restrain the violence of the state against its citizens. Human rights were themselves transformed in the process: a law and politics of resistance to the state became instead the state-sponsored initiative to try perpetrators of “dirty war” abuses, an initiative that continues today, along with resistance to it. 1 Table of Contents Introduction…………………………………....................................................iii Chapter 1. Terrorism, Torture, and the Rule of Law: Argentine Legal Debates and the Fate of Democracy, 1955-65………….....................................1 Chapter 2. Constitutionalism, the Legal Establishment, and the Argentine Human Rights Tradition, 1966-72.....................................................................31 Chapter 3. Revolutionary Rights: Law, the Left, and Human Rights Advocacy in Argentina’s Cold War, 1966-72……………………...................59 Chapter 4. The Rule of Law at a Crossroads: Revisiting May 1973.................76 Chapter 5. The “Dirty War”: Human Rights as International Intervention, 1976-80……………………………................................................................109 Chapter 6. Law’s Reappearance: Habeas Corpus, International Human Rights, and the Path to Prosecution, 1977-81..................................................139 Epilogue...........................................................................................................168 Bibliography....................................................................................................177 i Acknowledgements I am extremely grateful to all of the people who helped make this dissertation possible. My research and writing benefited from the insights of an exceptionally supportive group of advisors and mentors. Margaret Chowning, Mark Healey, Saira Mohamed, and Daniel Sargent offered invaluable guidance and perspective, and they did so with incredible patience, flexibility, and good cheer. Berkeley’s intellectual community has shaped and improved my thinking in countless ways. I owe a special debt to the Berkeley Latin American History Working Group and Legal History Workshop for their members’ thoughtful feedback and suggestions on individual chapters. Among my fellow graduate students, who have been such great colleagues and comrades, I want to thank in particular my fellow Latin Americanists. I couldn’t have asked for a more collegial group of classmates, interlocutors, and friends. Berkeley has fostered my work in others ways too. I am very thankful for the financial support I have been given, including the university’s subsidized childcare program. Institutions outside of Berkeley have also played a crucial role in this project. I am thankful for the research support I received from the Conference on Latin American History James R. Scobie Award and the training provided by the Summer Institute for Conducting Archival Research (George Washington University). I am likewise grateful to all who have commented on my work at multiple conferences, and to the conference organizers who have made these fruitful conversations possible. During many months of archival research, I relied on the knowledge and patience of many wonderful archivists, librarians, and legal practitioners. I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to the staff members at Argentina’s Archivo Documental del Asamblea Permanente de los Derechos Humanos, Archivo General del Poder Judicial de la Nación Argentina, Archivo Histórico de la Cámara de Diputados de la República Argentina, Archivo Histórico de la Liga Argentina de los Derechos del Hombre, Archivo Histórico del Partido Comunista de Argentina, Archivo Institucional del Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales, Archivo Intermedio del Archivo General de la Nación, Archivo Nacional de la Memoria, Archivo Oral de Memoria Abierta, Área Centro de Documentación y Archivo de la Comisión Provincial por la Memoria, Biblioteca Nacional de la República Argentina Archivos y Colecciones Particulares, Centro de Documentación e Investigación de la Cultura de Izquierdas en Argentina, and, in the United States, the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library. I am also indebted to the Argentine lawyers who took the time to speak with me about their experiences and insights. Finally, I want to thank my loved ones: my parents for their bottomless generosity and encouragement (and my mom for her marvelous edits), my friends for their companionship and faith in me, and my husband and daughter for their hugs and everything else. Berkeley, California May 2015 ii Introduction This is the story of one country’s transition from military authoritarianism toward democracy in the context of the globalization of human rights ideas, ideas that reinvented relationships between individuals and their governments. More broadly, this dissertation examines the ideological content of human rights as it was shaped by national power struggles and international Cold War forces in the second half of the twentieth century.1 Moving from the 1950s to the early 1980s, I seek to explain how Argentines came to create and believe in a human rights-based conception of the rule of law, as exemplified in the criminal prosecution of human rights violators before Argentine courts. To uncover the Argentine conflicts human rights were a part of, I trace the public debates led by a politically influential and diverse group of people who remained engaged in these conflicts even when other sectors of society were silent: lawyers.2 My methodology takes its cue from the work of scholars who have highlighted the vital role played by lawyers in the late twentieth-century globalization of human rights and rule-of- law initiatives.3 Here, lawyers and the legal profession are protagonists, but they are not the primary unit of analysis; instead, their arguments are. Specifically, lawyers’ public statements about democracy, violence, constitutionalism, and universal rights are examined over time to open a window into broader public discussions that have been overlooked in existing scholarship.4 The actors at the center of the study are Argentina’s bar associations – conservative and progressive – and the rights advocacy organizations formed by lawyers with affiliations ranging from the political center to the revolutionary left.5 I use historical analysis to identify changes in the positions of these groups from 1955, when the military overthrew President Juan Perón and his version of the welfare state, to 1981, when democratization and human rights became centerpieces of general political debate, two years before democracy was officially restored. Relying on materials 1 For a discussion of human rights definitions that highlights the operation of ideology, see Stephen Hopgood, The End Times of Human Rights (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013), Introduction. 2 For the argument that no human rights consciousness existed in Argentina before the late 1970s, see especially the work of sociologist Sebastián Carassai: “Antes de que anochezca. Derechos humanos y clases medias en Argentina antes y en los inicios del golpe de estado de 1976,” América Latina Hoy 54 (2010): 69-96; and The Argentine Silent Majority: Middle Classes, Politics, Violence, and Memory in the Seventies (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014). 3 This literature illuminates the professional development and political battles of members of the legal profession in Argentina and other Latin American countries who joined the international