This article will describe the contemporary scientific techniques used to excavate and identify the dead bodies of disappeared detainees from the Uruguayan dictatorship. It will highlight the developments that have led to increased success by forensic anthropologists and archaeologists in uncovering human remains, as well as their effects, both social and political, on promoting the right to the truth and mechanisms of transitional justice.
4 The concealment of bodies during the military dictatorship in Uruguay (1973–84)1 José López Mazz The political violence that occurred in Latin America during the second half of the twentieth century was deeply rooted in historic and prehistoric cultural traditions. To study it in a scientific way accordingly requires both the development of a specific set of cultural and historical methodologies and a leading role to be played by archaeological techniques and forensic anthropology. Our focus is in part on apprehending and understanding violent practices
Between 1975 and 1979, thirty-one unidentified bodies bearing marks of torture appeared at various locations along Uruguays coastline. These bodies were material proof of the death flights implemented in neighbouring Argentina after the military coup. In Uruguay, in a general context of political crisis, the appearance of these anonymous cadavers first generated local terror and was then rapidly transformed into a traumatic event at the national level. This article focuses on the various reports established by Uruguayan police and mortuary services. It aims to show how,the administrative and funeral treatments given at that time to the dead bodies, buried anonymously (under the NN label) in local cemeteries, make visible some of the multiple complicities between the Uruguayan and Argentinean dictatorships in the broader framework of the Condor Plan. The repressive strategy implemented in Argentina through torture and forced disappearance was indeed echoed by the bureaucratic repressive strategy implemented in Uruguay through incomplete and false reports, aiming to make the NN disappear once again.
ratification of the US–Russia START I Treaty reducing intercontinental nuclear missiles; the entry into force of the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty limiting troop levels all over Europe; and NATO’s Partnership for Peace programme, also including Russia. The European Union’s Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) collapsed in 1993 but was revived in a more flexible form, permitting plans for Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) to proceed. The conclusion of the Uruguay Round and the establishment in 1995 of the World Trade Organisation meant a major push for Europe toward
reformist change was under way also in Central and Eastern Europe. The ‘1992 project’ coincided with a major new effort further to liberalise world trade through the so-called Uruguay Round. A sense of new purpose in the West combined with despair in the East to produce the events leading up to the fall of the Wall of Berlin in November 1989, and to the collapse of the Soviet hold over Central and Eastern Europe. EEC enlargement The fears of the West – essentially North America, Western Europe and Japan – of an economic collapse in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis did not
Brazil and other countries such as Uruguay and Paraguay, and another one with Argentina. Venezuela did not participate in the negotiations because its protectionist approach made it particularly difficult for the country to take part. Venezuela’s restricted participation was further complicated by the fact that it became a member of Mercosur after the negotiations had already started. Considering both the views of 180 The EU’s policy towards Mercosur Evo Morales and the economic development of this Andean country, Bolivia’s potential membership of Mercosur would
security should not be forgotten; that is to say, the end of the Cold War and important negotiations in international trade through the WTO. The EU’s ultra-protectionist agricultural policy and the end of the Uruguay Round trade negotiations (which created the WTO) were additional obstacles to the development of relations between Latin America and Europe, already characterized by a lack of interest on the EU’s part. The facilitation of better relations took place through the approaches to the Commission of European business associations who formed themselves into a lobby
. Menem was the president for ten years, but just a few years later he was accused of high levels of corruption, like his colleague Collor de Mello in Brazil. Menem was the president who would sign the Treaty of Asunción that created Mercosur in 1991 on behalf of Argentina. Uruguay Although Uruguay also experienced dictatorial rule, from 1973 to 1985, it has always been seen as one of the most economically and politically stable Introduction 15 countries in South America, to the point that it has been called the Switzerland of Latin America. Apart from the
By expanding the geographical scope of the history of violence and war, this volume challenges both Western and state-centric narratives of the decline of violence and its relationship to modernity. It highlights instead similarities across early modernity in terms of representations, legitimations, applications of, and motivations for violence. It seeks to integrate methodologies of the study of violence into the history of war, thereby extending the historical significance of both fields of research. Thirteen case studies outline the myriad ways in which large-scale violence was understood and used by states and non-state actors throughout the early modern period across Africa, Asia, the Americas, the Atlantic, and Europe, demonstrating that it was far more complex than would be suggested by simple narratives of conquest and resistance. Moreover, key features of imperial violence apply equally to large-scale violence within societies. As the authors argue, violence was a continuum, ranging from small-scale, local actions to full-blown war. The latter was privileged legally and increasingly associated with states during early modernity, but its legitimacy was frequently contested and many of its violent forms, such as raiding and destruction of buildings and crops, could be found in activities not officially classed as war.
dismantled, cut into pieces to prevent its discovery, implicitly posing the question of the transportation of bodies and body parts. And the third DHR.indb 4 5/15/2014 12:51:03 PM Introduction 5 category of treatment of bodies arises directly from the process of destruction itself: usually by incineration, as in the seminal examples of the Nazi concentration and death camps and the Soviet case, but also sometimes using corrosive chemicals, as in the Argentine and Uruguayan cases.11 These complex and multidimensional questions then allowed us to identify three avenues