In March, during Francois Hollande’s visit to Argentina, the president of France planned to meet with the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, an organization dedicated to finding children stolen during the Argentinean dictatorship. Only 48 hours before Hollande’s arrival, the country’s new president, Mauricio Macri, unexpectedly visited the former Officers’ Mess at the Navy’s Petty-Officers School of Mechanics (ESMA)—a former clandestine Detention Center renamed the “Space for Memory and for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights” in 2004. The very next day, Macri met with the Grandmothers and Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo at the presidential home Quinta de Olivos, having declined to receive them until that point due to lack of time.
These sudden visits follow criticism from citizens and human rights groups that the new president has been dismantling the country’s hard-won human rights mechanisms. Macri is an engineer, wealthy businessman and the first “new right” leader in Argentina since the return to democracy in 1983. He assumed the presidency on December 10, 2015 with a margin of 2.68%, following twelve years of consecutive presidencies by Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. During the Kirchner period, executive, legislative and judicial powers worked together in unprecedented ways to investigate and try people accused of crimes against humanity. Between 2006 and 2015, the courts conducted 153 oral hearings about crimes committed by the dictatorship. The courts have condemned 660 persons, absolved 60 others, and are still investigating a further 353. As a result, the local human rights movement acknowledges the Kirchners’ commitment to transforming the demands of the Memory, Truth and Justice process into actual state policy.
Macri seems intent on distancing himself from human rights policies to emphasize his commitment to “change”Macri, however, seems intent on reversing much of this work, distancing himself from human rights policies to emphasize his commitment to “change”—a key word in his campaign. Macri’s term in office had barely begun when the administration began referring to the former Detention Center as a “campus” rather than as a memorial. The day after Macri assumed the post, the widely read, right-wing newspaper, La Nación, criticized the ongoing human rights trials as “scenes of vengeance” and demanded that they end. A wide range of activists, civil society and journalists immediately repudiated the publisher. Like philosopher Verónica Torrás has said, the broad level of consensus about the judicial process is a foundational covenant to Argentine democracy. To disrupt that is to disrupt everything.
