Synopses & Reviews
An insiders honest assessment of Argentinas human rights trials
During the dirty war” of the 1970s, the military junta that controlled Argentina was responsible for the kidnapping, torturing, and killing of thousands. In 1985, democratically elected president Raul Alfónsín decreed that former commanders of the dictatorship be tried for human rights abuses. In Game Without End, Jaime Malamud-Goti argues that, by scapegoating a few former leaders and prosecuting only certain violations, the trials helped politicize the national judiciary, whose duty it was to implement democratic principles.
As senior adviser to President Alfónsín and as solicitor of the Supreme Court, Malamud-Goti was one of two architects of the 1984 trials of the Argentine generals. In this rare insiders account of a pivotal moment in Argentinian history, he demonstrates that the trials failed to treat all citizens as equal before the law and thus perpetuated the us-versus-them mentality that enabled the junta to establish authoritarian rule in the first place.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [219]-226) and index.
About the Author
Jaime Malamud-Goti was a legal adviser to political prisoners during the 1976?83 military dictatorship in Argentina. He is author of several books including Smoke and Mirrors: The Paradox of the Drug Wars.
Libbet Crandon-Malamud was Associate Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University and the author of numerous publications, including From the Fat of Our Souls: Social Change, Political Process, and Medical Pluralism in Bolivia.