El discurso de la impunidad y los derechos humanos en la transición a la democracia en Uruguay 1985-1989

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is reflect on the following question: What were the conditions of possibility of the appearance during the transition to democracy in Uruguay in the period 1985-1989 of the legal discourse of impunity and what are the consequences of this one in human rights?

I propose to analyze how the judicial discourse of impunity in Uruguay, as a way of enunciating and seeing, arises from and in the context of certain social practices, around confrontations and force relations, in this case: from social practices and power relations that emanated from the agreed transition and dynamics between the main actors of the period: government, military, parliament, judiciary and social organizations.

In this paper, I am going to concentrate on the speech of one of those actors: the Supreme Court of Justice, and judgment 184/1986 as an example of the decisions that the supreme judges had to take regarding the serious human rights violations committed during the previous regime.