The collective catastrophes imposed by regimes of authoritarian nature, be they of racist character like apartheid in South Africa, or be they of strictly political character like the military dictatorships in Argentina, Brazil and Chile, require daily efforts of reflection as well aspolitical action. These governments were characterized by the systematic violation of their citizens’ rights by brutal military and police institutions.(Worst of all.) The whole scheme was set up and maintained by the state which institutionalized the imprisonment, torture, disappearance 2) and murder of political opponents, as well as people without any link to, or participation in, resistance movements. Although in these countries, transitions to democracy have been negotiated, often with the dictators in their public offices, their societies see themselves confronted with the problem of how to reconcile the painful past with a democratic present, and still manage the conflicts that don’t end with a mere institutional passage from a dictatorial government to a democratic one. Human rights violations were not limited to the political institutions, but went beyond; they reached individuals, and they altered the subjectivity of those societies significantly. The question remains: why after more than three decades of the crimes, and even twenty years of democratic construction, does a considerable portion of the Brazilian society call for justice and for freedom of communication including the opening of the files recording the repression? What are the limits of the agreed-upon transitions? The attempts to answer these questions, although different in each country, show the importance of the fact that, even with every pressure for forgiveness, pardon, amnesty and national reconciliation, the investigation of the past is needed within the new democracies.
Negotiated Transitions
The authoritarian regimes of the twentieth century have demonstrated an outstanding element of modern time: the dissolving of memory. In societies that discard tradition and the past in favor of a future objective, memory doesn’t influence the process of legitimizing political power. If tradition and the events of the past do not seem to be the criteria of social stability anymore, then the model of the social contract, i.e., the consent of the majority becomes more important. Volitional capacity, i.e., the ability to make rational choices, doesn’t have a social history and its formulation seeks a natural process to be accomplished by institutional regulation and political action. The depreciation of memory in modern times is not due to a mere lapse, but to the rise of certain concepts and principles of action for political power, e.g., sovereignty, the general will, efficiency, etc.
For modern thought each person’s behavior, public opinion and institutions have become elements of a calculated political logic, transforming action into a process that follows predetermined stages. The technique of the action is the consequence of the specialization of politics, a procedure in which only those qualified by the technique are enabled to participate. In current democracies, the citizens have distanced themselves from the public dialogue, not only due to the lack of practicality (there is great difficulty in gathering all of the individuals at the same time), but because they have distanced themselves politically as well (the current indifference for political issues is more than obvious). They also lack a particular knowledge of the political process which is reserved for their representatives, the professional politicians.
In turn, although dictatorial regimes have usurped freedom of expression and imposed a severe control of information in the public realm, the imposition of forgetfulness was perpetrated by intervention in the most hidden spheres of society. Governments that violated human rights turned the manipulation of information into an efficient tool of social submission; because the inverse of this, i.e., the use of memory narrated freely, would become an inopportune instrument of resistance and condemnation of these regimes. Therefore, any attempt to return to the plots of the past would be rendered as an act of sabotage against the negotiated transitions.
(In)justice in the New Democracies
In certain countries, those responsible for the repression allege that they received a superior official’s orders (e.g., Argentina); in others, the most usual allegation is that only some uncontrolled or undisciplined sectors committed abuses (e.g., Brazil). These are used to excuse the charges. In most of the transitions to democracy, the unequal balance of power affected the negotiations of the amnesties. However, more and more the legality of such amnesties is put into doubt . Let us look at the Argentinean case, in which the Supreme Court cancelled Ley del Punto Final (Law of the Final Point) and Obediéncia Debida (Owed or Proper Obedience) in 2004. In Brazil, the Law of Amnesty excluded political and related crimes from legal prosecution, including the practice of torture, disappearances and political murder. The exiles returned to the country and clandestine militants and persecuted people received full rights, but in compensation those responsible for these crimes didn’t have to face any lawsuits. According to international law, in which the concept of “crimes against humanity”3) is used, crimes concerning human rights violations are considered separately from those crimes which benefited from amnesty laws.
Trecho de artigo publicado em HannahArendt.net, Reseach Notes 2/06.
