Argentina...23 years later.

Every new generation lives among the remnants of their national past. On whom does the burden fall to address a nightmarish historical legacy lingering in the collective memory of a people? Many struggle to rectify injustices that are rooted in the past yet continue to create disparities in the present. Free from responsibility and protected by a temporal shield, others choose not to acknowledge the warts on their national body. Canada is still wrestling with the plight of indigenous communities and sadly the state of their people is often cyclically conditioned, from one generation to the next, as the product of their own misfortunes. Recently, in the southern cone of Latin America, Chile and now Argentina are pursuing legal rectification for the atrocities commited under the rule of military dictatorships. Until June 2005, military and government personnel from Argentina's "dirty war" were given amnesty through the "impunity laws". The 'Full Stop' and 'Due Obedience' laws shielded human rights violators from prosecution. An initiative by a human rights NGO in Argentina successfully petitioned a judge on the unconstitutional nature of these impunity laws. A case from the summer of 2006 is the first time anyone has been sentenced for a dissapearance. These developments are touted as the ability of democracy to overcome impunity and further steps to rectify the horrible legacy of the dictatorship. These changes do have their merit since surely nobody should be legally protected for violating human rights, regardless of when the atrocity occurred. In Walsh's "Open Letter to the Military Junta" the systemic punishing and "planned misery" against millions of people through unjust economic policy was placed among the worst tactics of evil committed by the junta. Today, similar economic agendas continue to cause disparity and create poverty across the continent. It seems a more effective way to afford past and present generations some sense of ease over historical wrongdoings would be to solidify the sentiments of "nunca mas" and create institutional solutions to address the lasting disparities, impunity and corruption that often plague democracies in Latin America. Click here for the report from Human Rights Watch

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