Consent of the Damned: Ordinary Argentinians in the Dirty War

5. Finding a Cynical Center

Finding a Cynical Center Over the Easter weekend of 18–19 April 1987, Argentines watched anxiously as a group of rogue officers who adhered to dictatorship-era policies and ideals tried to overthrow the government. This event became known as the Semana Santa uprising. Alfonsín ended the crisis by announcing famously that “democracy cannot be negotiated” and “the house is in order.” But when the government rushed the Law of Due Obedience into effect two months later (4 June 1987), many suspected that the president had given away the independence of the presidency in a democracy. An earlier Final Point law (24 December 1986) had established a sixty-day deadline for prosecutors to initiate cases against those accused of human rights violations during the dictatorship. If prosecutors could not prepare cases in that time frame, the officers in question would be left alone. Due Obedience pardoned all but the most senior military officers, reprising the failed Nuremberg defense that middle-ranking or junior officers were simply obeying orders when a prisoner was tortured or executed.1 5 126 · Consent of the Damned While the government likely did not negotiate with the organizers of the attempted coup, it seemed clear to many that centrist military officers sympathetic to what they regarded as the imperatives their military colleagues had faced in the late 1970s had used the coup attempt as a political wedge to demand an end to the prospect of prosecutions related to human rights. Did Alfonsín agree to Due Obedience as a way of calming tensions in the Argentine military and avoiding the prospect of further coup attempts? If Alfonsín believed that Due Obedience and Final Point marked a necessary end point in the defense of Argentine democracy, he paid a significant price for them in the realm of public relations. In November 1987, Amnesty International labeled Due Obedience a threat to the gains won with the convictions of the Argentine generals because it granted “impunity to all but the most senior officers for crimes committed during the repression.” Amnesty chapters from many countries and Argentine human rights groups denounced Due Obedience because it contradicted a February 1984 Argentine law that specifically rejected the “due obedience ” defense in cases involving “atrocious or aberrant” acts. Amnesty challenged the Alfonsín government’s international position as an ostensible leader in the advocacy of human rights, arguing that the new law undermined the United Nations Convention Against Torture, which stipulated that “an order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification for torture.”2 The Easter Week military uprising and the ensuing Due Obedience and Final Point laws marked a watershed in human rights politics in Argentina. Because the nation’s rampant inflation and other economic problems continued to increase through the mid-1980s, Alfonsín had already lost much of his post-dictatorship luster. After Due Obedience and Final Point, the national and international human rights constituencies took aim at what they felt were the president’s growing weaknesses on human rights issues. When protesters demonstrated against the new laws outside the Argentine embassy in Copenhagen, Denmark, María Teresa M. de Morini, subsecretary of human rights, advised Argentine diplomats to avoid use of the terms “due obedience” and “final point,” referring instead to the less inflammatory and less recognizable language “Law 23.492.” Morini also stated that the groups that were helping to organize the growing protests in Denmark and elsewhere included the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, Amnesty International, Finding a Cynical Center · 127 and five Danish human rights groups. Like the military government had, the Alfonsín administration now found itself watching the activities of human rights groups as a potential threat.3 On 10 December 1987, actress Liv Ullman marched with the Madres de Plaza de Mayo in front of the presidential palace to protest impunity for human rights abusers within the Argentine military. The signs the protesters carried had a picture of the Argentine president standing at attention beside a military officer, both men saluting. Some 10,000 people joined the protest, and during her visit, Ullman issued public statements condemning the Alfonsín government’s human rights record. She then visited the Villa Devoto prison in Buenos Aires, where ten political detainees were still in custody from the dictatorship era. On 11 December, the artist Sting visited the...