Justice, Truth and the Future of the Past: Inheritance and Responsibility in Argentina's 1983 Political Transition By Judith Smith, Bachelor of Arts (Hons.), Carleton University, 2005 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs in partial fulfillment for the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Legal Studies Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario ©2010, Judith Smith Library and Archives Bibliotheque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de 1'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON MAOISM OttawaONK1A0N4 Canada Canada Your We Votre r6f6rence ISBN: 978-0-494-71696-0 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-71696-0 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non­ support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. •+• Canada Abstract Between 1976 and 1983 Argentina was ruled by successive military juntas in a period of power referred to as the 'Dirty War.' Clandestine operations to suppress 'subversion' in the population included the enforced disappearances of 30,000 Argentines. Objects including forensic reconstructions, statistics, and a commission's report, were used to establish the truth of the 'Dirty War' in Argentina's transition to democracy. Here, boundaries between objects and experience are problematized as the intangibility of experience is transformed into tangibility that purports to achieve truth and justice. Given the techniques of science and law used to make these objects 'speak,' important questions arise regarding how these representations interact with the question of human agency and inter-subjectivity. Drawing on Levinasian phenomenology and Derridean post-structuralist theory, primary human rights documents, and secondary literature on the political violence, this paper examines these interactions and what justice and truth means in the face of violence. n Acknowledgements Thanks where many thanks are due ... Thanks to Christiane Wilke for her expertise, and whose supervision was measured and patient. I am greatly appreciative for her challenging me throughout the process, making it a better paper than it would have ever been without her guidance. Thanks to Yana for her exceptional company and unparalleled conversation during the last few years, as well as for good times passed. Thanks to Sarah for her unwavering support and faith throughout the writing process, and whose passion for the archivial I find truly convivial. Thanks to Steph for being the finest friend I could have throughout, and the most modest scholar I know. Thanks to Mum and Dad for being there for me. And last but certainly not least, thanks to Rachael whose British wit and frankness helped me to see past the trinkets and the baubles. in Table of Contents Introduction Rendering Absence Present: Epistemology & Truth in Argentina's Transition ... 1 Chapter Two 'The Military Period': Intransigence, Radicalization, & Organic Society ... 26 Chapter Three The Trace: The Ethical Relation in Reminder and Representation ... 56 Chapter Four Reconstructing the Past: Positivism and the Semiosis of Evidence ... 93 Conclusion Archive, Memory & Responsibility: Ethical Truth & the Specters of Justice ... 128 Bibliography ... 144 IV List of Figures Secret detention centers at Las Flores, Monte Pelone, Olavarria, 'The Commonest Itinerary Imposed on the Prisoners' ... 106 Introduction Rendering Absence Present: Epistemology & Truth in Argentina's Transition To look for lessons about haunting when there are thousands of ghosts; when entire societies become haunted by terrible deeds that are systematically occurring and are simultaneously denied by every public organ of governance and communication; when the whole purpose of the verbal denial is to ensure that everyone knows just enough to scare normalization into a state of nervous exhaustion .... when the whole situation cries out for clearly distinguishing between truth and lies, between what is known and what is unknown ... when people you know or love are there one minute and gone the next; when familiar words and things transmute into the most sinister of weapons and meanings .... To broach, much less settle on, a firm understanding of this social reality can make you feel like you are carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders.1 In its 1983 transition to democratic rule, Argentina was faced with the challenge of affecting a break with a violent past that would allow social and political relations to begin anew. This break simultaneously required a reckoning with the events that had gone before, and a promise of justice and stability for the future to come. The violence to be acknowledged by this process was the result of the imposition of a very different type of order to address an economically and politically unstable past. Seven years prior, in March of 1976, a military junta had seized power by way of coup and had instituted their own vision for Argentina's political and social system. Framed in a rhetoric that promised economic and political stability, the military's reign instead yielded unprecedented state- sponsored violence. As the basis of their power they relentlessly persecuted individuals using an amorphous conception of 'subversion.' Abduction, torture, and rhetoric were the mainstays of their rule. The term 'Dirty War' was used by the military to denote that they were battling guerilla warfare with its attendant tactics such as kidnappings and Avery Gordon, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2008) at 64. 1 2 murders.2 Its use has been maintained by scholars, Argentines and journalists as it is useful stressing that it was a war waged against the population, and further that it was one without declaration, and therefore resisted temporal, spatial and material location. During the seven year period, the population, its collective memory, and the means it used to understand itself was indelibly marked by the state sponsored violence. While the junta was initially welcomed as a means of instituting stability in the face of serious political and social unrest, their increasing violence eventually forced people into hiding in their helplessness while the spectacle of the military's power played itself out in full visibility before them. The use of enforced disappearances throughout the junta's reign of power peaked during the years of 1976 to 1978.4 The victims, thought to total thirty thousand,5 were 'disappeared' by the military to Centros Clandestinos de Detention (Clandestine Detention Centers), interrogated and tortured, and their corpses were disposed of in mass graves or thrown from airplanes into the ocean. The military junta began to lose its hold over the country beginning in the early 1980s due to a combination of increasing international pressure and human rights protest, as well as a growing economic instability. The regime had failed in its war against 'subversion' by any standard and regardless of whether the 'subversion' it aimed to 2 Argentina's National Commission on Disappeared People (CONADEP), Nunca Mas (Never Again): A Report by Argentina's National Commission on Disappeared People (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1986) at xiii. 3 Marguerite Feitlowitz, A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) at 32. 4 Equipo Argentino de Antropologica Forense (EAAF), "EAAF 2000 Annual Report" (2000), online: <http://eaaf.tvpepad.com/pdf72000/04Argentina2000.pdf> at 10. 5 The disputed number of disappeared in Argentina is a politically contentious issue. For a discussion of some of the implications of, and limitations associated with quantitative measures in human rights cases see: Thomas B. Jabine & Richard P. Claude, eds., Human Rights and Statistics: Getting the Record Straight (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992) and Alyson Brysk, "The Politics of Measurement: The Contested Count of the Disappeared in Argentina" (1994) 16:4 Hum. Rts.