Review: Memory and Transitional Justice in Argentina and Uruguay: Against Impunity

In her most recent book, Francesca Lessa provides us with an excellent analysis of the dynamic between memory politics, transitional justice, and the concept of critical junctures. The book Memory and Transitional Justice in Argentina and Uruguay: Against impunity investigates two interesting and representative case studies of transitional justice. Both Argentina and Uruguay have dealt with a repressive, military regime in the 1970s and 1980s and transitioned into democracy after this period of political violence. The countries followed different paths to transitional justice. Argentina led the way in South America by setting up a truth commission and persecuting military commanders, but steps towards national reconciliation and transitional justice were taken back and forth almost simultaneously. On the one hand impunity, which followed laws that acquitted and pardoned perpetrators, set back the process, but on the other hand, human rights committees that succeeded in finding and telling the truth, accelerated the process. In contrast to Argentina, Uruguay’s military leaders and perpetrators negotiated the end of their rule and had been able to maintain some kind of position in society for a while after the dictatorship fell. Yet, Uruguay has been making progress discovering the truth about its past and dealing with it through transitional justice mechanisms.