Restoring or Creating Human Rights: The U.S. Response to Argentina (1976-1983) and El Salvador (1980-1992)

• In Event: 536 - Section on Human Rights Paper Session. Human Rights and Inequality

Abstract

After the U.S. Congress legislated that human rights become a consideration in U.S. foreign policy decisions, in the 1970s, Congress targeted the regimes in power in Argentina (1976-1983) and El Salvador (1980-1992), citing human rights concerns. Existing scholarship has examined the U.S. responses to HRV by using either a realist lens—national security—or a pluralist lens—emphasizing the power of transnational advocacy networks to pressure U.S. officials to respond to HRV. However, these approaches have told us little about how U.S. policymakers responded to HRV. Based on a content analysis of over 160 Congressional hearings pertaining to either Argentina’s dirty war (1976-1983) and El Salvador’s civil war (1980-1992) I find that U.S. policymakers’ analysis of what I call a “key historical event” in the offending society’s recent history was the lens through which they understood HRV in each society. In the case of Argentina U.S. policymaker’s lens created Argentina as a democratic society, suffering from “grim” “periods” of repression, while U.S. policymakers lens created El Salvador as a society predicated on the violation of human rights. These distinctions dramatic consequences for U.S. policymakers’ response to HRV to each rights violating regime. In the case of Argentina (1976-1983), U.S. policymakers developed what I call a “restoring human rights policy”; while in the case of El Salvador (1980-1992), U.S. policymakers developed what I call a “creating human rights policy.” The results of this paper have important implications for how we understand the role of human rights in U.S. policy.

Author

• Angela Elena Fillingim, University of California-Berkeley