Families of Perpetrators Mobilising against Human Rights Trials in Argentina

Abstract

In 2006, a new round of trials against military officers, members of the police force, and others who violated human rights during the dictatorship (1976-1983) was initiated under the legal concept of crimes against humanity in Argentina. Until now more than a thousand perpetrators have been imprisoned. This chapter examines the strategies and arguments used by mobilisations of the right-against-rights in Argentina: perpetrators’ relatives challenging the legitimacy of Argentina’s trials for crimes against humanity. The analysis aims to identify how these groups (1) try to reverse the success of the human rights movement with regard to access to justice for the victims of the dictatorship; (2) adapt the global paradigm of human rights and the universal humanitarian narrative; (3) construct an image of the victim through the appropriation of the language used by human rights defenders; and (4) resort to biological family ties to legitimise their demands for justice, in the same way as the historic Argentine grandmothers, mothers, and children of the disappeared. Finally, the chapter addresses the tensions generated by the presence of these groups that want to restore privileges and inequities in the post-dictatorship political life in Argentina.