Argentina, 1985 & Granito: How to Nail a Dictator (Guest: Rachel López) (episode 8)

This episode examines Argentina, 1985 (2022) (directed by Santiago Mitre) and the documentary, Granito: How to Nail a Dictator (2011) (directed by Pamela Yates). Both works engage with questions of transitional justice, or how societies confront mass atrocities committed by a prior repressive regime. Argentina, 1985 depicts the Trial of the Juntas in Argentina, where a prosecution team led by Julio César Strassera (Ricardo Darín) and future-ICC chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo (Peter Lanzani), sought to bring leaders of Argentina’s former military dictatorship to justice for human rights abuses committed during the so-called Dirty War. Granito: How to Nail a Dictator depicts long-running efforts to hold accountable Guatemalan General Efraín Ríos Montt for genocide and other atrocities committed during Guatemala’s brutal civil war.  Our guest is Rachel López, Associate Professor of Law at the Thomas R. Kline School of Law at Drexel University. Professor López is a widely recognized expert on transitional justice and has studied efforts to hold former leaders responsible for mass abuses in Guatemala and elsewhere.

Timestamps:

0:00  Introduction
4:15  Defining transitional justice
6:47  The “Dirty War” in Argentina
10:04  Overcoming the public’s blind faith in the military
12:42  Appealing to multiple audiences in accountability trials
16:18 The Prosecutors in Argentina: Julio César Strassera & Luis Moreno Ocampo
21:38  Argentina’s trial of military leaders in historical context
25:46  Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo and the role of civil society
31:02  The parallels between the atrocities in Argentina and Guatemala
33:38  The challenges of holding leaders responsible (i.e., nailing a dictator)
37:56  The “boomerang effect”: universal jurisdiction and the litigation in Spain 
42:01  The significance of the genocide prosecution in Guatemala 
44:54  The risks of relying too much on trials in transitional justice
50:10  The discovery of the records of Guatemalan National Police
51:54  Investigating atrocities
53:28  The implications of failing to reckon with the past
56:06  America's role in the atrocities in Argentina and Guatemala
58:08  The trials' legacy and lessons for the U.S. 

Further reading:

Engle, Karen,  Anti-Impunity and the Human Rights Agenda (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2016)

López, Rachel E., "The (Re)Collection of Memory after Mass Atrocity and the Dilemma for Transitional Justice," 48 N.Y.U. J. Int’l L. & Pol. 799 (2015)

Guatemala: Never Again, The Official Report of the Human Rights Office, Archbishop of Guatemala (1999)

Nunca Más, The Report of the Argentine National Commission on the Disappeared (1986)

Roht-Arriaza, Naomi, The Pinochet Effect: Transitional Justice in the Age of Human Rights (Univ. of Penn. Press, 2005)

Sikkink, Kathryn, The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions are Changing World Politics (W.W. Norton and Company, 2011)

Teitel, Ruti G., Transitional Justice (Oxford Univ. Press, 2000)

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