https://www.foreignaffairs.com/south-america/overcoming-legacies-dictatorship?utm_medium=newsletters&utm_source=summer_reads&utm_campaign=summer_reads_2024&utm_content=20240721&utm_term=EUZZZ003ZX
~~ recommended by emil karpo ~~
- IMAGE number
- REU7587786
NEW DEMOCRACIES, OLD WOUNDS
“No one touches anyone,” warned General Augusto Pinochet in October 1989, two months before Chile’s first free elections since his 1973 coup. “The day they touch one of my men, the rule of law ends. This I say once and will not say again.” The old junta leader’s comment, made almost casually to reporters, cast a pall over the fiesta-like campaign atmosphere. As expected, the anti-Pinochet forces won. But the general’s warning still hangs in the air. Pinochet’s democratic successors have chosen not to call his bluff.
Pinochet’s language was unusually blunt, but the dilemma that the old tyrant’s warning created for the new Chilean republic was nothing new. One of the first questions a newly democratic nation must face is that of what to do with its old dictators. Since the French Revolution, it has been clear that the choices new democracies make—whether and how to investigate tyranny’s legacy, try its leaders, purge its bureaucrats, or touch one of its gunmen—can set the course for a nascent democratic system. But only in the past 15 years or so have nations become fully aware of what is at stake when dealing with a repressive past.
After World War II, the notion of human rights and civil liberties—previously believed to be out of reach for the citizens of most countries—was increasingly accepted by a growing number of nations. In addition, since the mid-1970s, a staggering number of
countries have turned from dictatorship to elected civilian government. First came southern Europe—Portugal, Greece, and Spain. In the 1980s, the wave hit Latin America—Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay. In 1992, El Salvador ended a war that took the lives of 75,000 civilians. In the 1980s and early 1990s, at least 15 African nations moved away from repressive one-party rule and held multiparty elections. After 1989, the Soviet bloc completed the avalanche. All are now wrestling with their repressive pasts.
There are two main reasons to confront a grim past: to heal tyranny’s victims and to alter the conditions that nurtured dictatorship in order to prevent its return. The new democracies have dreamed up a plethora of creative and often contradictory methods for fulfilling these broad obligations to past and future. They include choosing to leave the past behind and start afresh, an official apology by the new head of state, monetary reparations to the victims or their families, employment bans and purges that keep abusers from positions of public trust, truth commissions, and trials of political leaders or those who carried out torture and murder.
The instruments chosen depend on the type of dictatorial system, the types of crimes it committed, the level of citizen participation in the dictatorship, the nation’s political culture and history, the abruptness of the transition to democracy, and the new civilian government’s resources and political power. As these factors vary widely, so do the choices countries have made. While it is early to judge these choices, some general guidelines can be drawn up by comparing two large groups of new democracies: the former military dictatorships of Latin America and the former Communist dictatorships of Eastern Europe.
In the two regions, both the type of the past victim and the nature of the future threat are almost diametrically opposed. Roughly put, repression in Eastern Europe was wide, while in Latin America it was deep. And in Latin America the challenge to democracy comes from military dominance of a weak civilian government, while in Eastern Europe the danger is repression by capricious government officials unchecked by law. The challenge to both continents is to deal with past abuses of power in ways that do not replicate them.
Some nations have met the challenge. Most, although they could still change course, have merely reinforced old antidemocratic habits. The lessons of Latin America and Eastern Europe might help other countries to choose their paths: nations recently emerging from dictatorship or restricted democracy, such as South Africa, Haiti, and Malawi, and nations that are ending long and brutal wars, such as Ethiopia, Mozambique, Guatemala, and Angola. Sadly, for many countries, democracy will be only a temporary phenomenon. If they do not successfully deal with a repressive past today, future opportunities may await.
Emil's NOTE~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
the essay is long and worthwhile but may not meet your needs. I have omitted the entire middle
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Unchecked power was necessary to maintain a Communist regime. But the reverse is not true; one does not need to be a Communist to seek unchecked power. Such power in the service of anti-Communism is just as dangerous. Unfortunately, many of the measures East European governments have taken to deal with the past abuse their power. Citizens do not enjoy full due process rights to defend themselves from lustration. Decisions that affect lives, careers, and reputations are made in secret. The legal system is placed at the service of political goals. This behavior is the legacy of the past that is hardest to change. The real threat to democracy in Eastern Europe today is not Communism but the state’s unchecked power.
How can a nation deal with its history in ways that do not repeat it? Despite their great differences, the new democracies of Latin America and Eastern Europe have essentially the same task: to go as far as they can to bring past repressors to accountability without crossing the line into new injustice. The Latins must struggle to go further, while the East Europeans must resist the impulse to go too far. But Latin America and Eastern Europe share a newfound belief in tolerance, accountability, and the rule of law. For both, the best way to deal with the past is to treat it according to the democratic standards they have now supposedly embraced.
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