A un cuarto de siglo, reflexiones sobre el Juicio a las Juntas Militares en Argentina

Abstract

In the early eighties, after the dictatorships that plagued Latin America, the
subcontinent witnessed the restoration of democracy. Unlike what happened to the dictatorial past experiences, this time emerged the conviction that the heinous crimes committed by military governments were to be achieved by some sort of retroactive justice.
The new democratic governments promoted different initiatives of transitional justice in
Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay, Chile, Argentina.
In the case of our country, the policy of the Human Rights acquired a special character
in terms of its breadth, depth and scope over time. Since the restoration of democracy
in 1983, until today, various measures –such as the creation of the truth commission,
CONADEP, the publication of Nunca Más, the trials of the most responsible for human rights violations, the foundation of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Institute, the inclusion in school curricula, the implementation of compensation policies and the erection
of museums, among others– formed one of the most accomplished achievements in the
field of transitional justice.
Within the trajectory of Human Rights in Argentina, the military junta trial, that occurred
between April and December 1985, is undoubtedly a major milestone for its unprecedented nature and because it became the trigger of new demands that would give the process,
a dynamic that continues today. For Hugo Vezzetti, the Trial of the Military Juntas, is
a scene, a turning point in recent history because it condenses a historical framework
and, in turn, it becomes a persistent hard core on which turns the memory work. Sharing
this perspective, this study proposes to review this foundational fact of today’s Argentina,
trying to explain how it came to trial and its derivatives in the whole process of retroactive
justice which has nearly three decades.