La eficacia simbólica de los juicios por crímenes dictatoriales: los casos Fujimori y Ríos Montt

• Main Author: Maira Ixchel Benítez Jiménez
• Format: Article
• Language: Spanish
• Published: Groupe de Recherche Amérique Latine Histoire et Mémoire 2020-01-01
• Series: Les Cahiers ALHIM
• Subjects: symbolic efficacy of Trials; transitional justice; genocide and crimes against humanity; legal mobilization; dictatorship; memory
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/alhim/7878

Which is the significance of the trials against prominent political figures in contexts with a legacy of political violence? This article seeks to emphasize the consequences linked to the configuration of meanings generated by legal victories and focuses on the experiences of the main advocates of the judicial cases. By taking up the notion of «symbolic efficacy of law» by Mauricio Garcia Villegas (1994) I show how emblematic trials generate effective symbols and resources to produce ideas of change and legitimacy regarding the recognition of the victims. More specifically, I reflect on the meanings, which the agents of transitional justice —survivors, relatives and lawyers— attribute to the sentences in the context of their mobilizations and battles for justice. At the same time, the contents of the verdicts can represent important frameworks of meanings to confirm the legitimacy of the pro-justice agents’ demands and justify their organizational presence in the subsequent phases of political mobilization. The empirical analysis is based on the trials against the ex-presidents Alberto Fujimori in Peru and Efraín Ríos Montt in Guatemala for human rights violations and genocide, which represent milestones in the struggle against impunity in Latin America.