Against Impunity: Justice Entrepreneurs, Operation Condor, and Accountability in South America

• In Event: Accountability Advocates: The Long and Winding Road to Justice in Latin America

Abstract

In recent decades, South American countries have lived through long-lasting transitions to democracy, endeavouring to consolidate democratic governance while simultaneously shedding light onto the unspeakable atrocities perpetrated during state terror. While some countries have successfully implemented policies to investigate the crimes of the recent past, others significantly lag behind and, in fact, some even lean in favour of impunity. Scholars have explained these different accountability outcomes referring to numerous variables, including veto players, international pressure, and judicial leadership.
In this paper, I introduce the concept of “justice entrepreneurs” as an additional and necessary variable in understanding the variance between transitional justice pathways in South America. Justice entrepreneurs draws attention to the micro-level dynamics of transitional justice, rather than the traditional macro-level focus adopted in the existing scholarship. It underscores how justice entrepreneurs do not exclusively come from civil society, although they mostly do, but cut across different variables and sectors, including the government and the judiciary. The paper largely focuses on the case study of the Operation Condor trial, which took place in Rome between 2015 and 2018, as well as insights from other prosecutions regarding Operation Condor in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay.

Author

• Francesca Lessa, University of Oxford