Master Thesis Political Science: International Relations |
Nandi V. de Haas
U
NIVERSITEIT
VAN
A
MSTERDAM
RESTORATIVE JUSTICE THROUGH
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
:
A CASE STUDY OF
G
ENDERED AND
S
EXUAL VIOLENCE DURING
THE DIRTY WAR IN ARGENTINA
1
Master Thesis: “Restorative Justice through Acknowledgement:
A Case Study of Gendered and Sexual Violence during
the Dirty War in Argentina”
Political Science: International Relations
University of Amsterdam
Photo Credit: Panam Post
1Nandi V. de Haas
10896554
nandivica@hotmail.com
Human Rights and Transitional Justice in Latin America
Supervisor: Eva van Roekel MSc
Second Reader: Dr. Robert Jan van der Veen
Word count: 21.876
June 2015
1
Dubove, Adam. 2015. “Feminicidios: el feminismo consolida su agenda en Argentina”. June 5. Available at: http://es.panampost.com/adam-dubove/2015/06/05/femicidios-el-feminismo-consolidasuagenda-en-argentina/ (June 24, 2015)
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction ... 3
Chapter 2: Theoretical Framework ... 6
2.1 Transitional Justice ... 6
2.2 Gendered Violence ... 9
2.3 Sexual Violence ... 11
2.4 Acknowledgement ... 14
Chapter 3: A Background on The Argentinian Dirty War ... 17
Chapter 4: Methodology ... 18
Chapter 5: Personal acknowledgements in testimonies: the Nunca Más Report, fictional-, and non-fictional literature ... 20
5.1 The ‘Nunca Más Report’ by CONADEP ... 20
5.2 Personal Testimonies of Victims and Survivors ... 25
5.2.1 Non Fictional Personal Testimonies ... 25
5.2.2 Fictional Personal Testimonies ... 27
5.3 Discussion ... 31
Chapter 6: Acknowledgement by officials: presidential statements and the written media ... 33
6.1 1983-1989: Raúl Ricardo Alfonsín ... 33
6.2 1989-1999: Carlos Saul Menem ... 36
6.3 2003-2007: Nestor Kirchner ... 39
6.4 2007-2015: Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner ... 43
6.5 Discussion ... 47
Conclusion ... 50
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Chapter 1: Introduction
In this thesis the importance of gender, gendered violence and sexual violence against women in relation to transitional justice, specifically acknowledgement, will be discussed. These types of violence can be seen as a reinforcement of existing gender roles, especially in a patriarchic society such as Argentina (Sideris 2001, 143 ; Colombini 2001, 71, 169). The specific case that will be used is the aftermath of the ‘Dirty War’ in Argentina (1974-1983). During the Dirty War in Argentina, the military junta waged a war against ‘subversion’ in which between 8.000 and 30.000 people disappeared. Women have played an essential role during this time through women’s organizations, but also through guerilla movements. Additionally, about 30% of the people who were disappeared and held in detention centers by the government were female (CONADEP 1986, 285). Stories about women being kidnapped while pregnant or women who got pregnant during their time in detention centers and were forced to give up their children are well-known, as well as the overall assumption that sexual violence has been present in these cases of disappearances (Sideris 2001, 147). In other words, women were also specifically targeted during the Dirty War and should therefore also be acknowledged in transitional justice mechanisms. However, transitional justice mechanism has traditionally been male-dominated in its mechanisms and often certain crimes against women are only investigated or prosecuted when they also happened to men (Bastick et al. 2001, 14 ; Zavala Guillén 2013, 52).
Traditionally, within transitional justice and other reconciliation efforts, no specific focus has been put on gender issues both during the conflict as in its aftermath, as well as more peaceful periods after. Especially sexual and gendered violence during wartime has often been overlooked in these mechanisms. However, gender issues have become increasingly more prominent in the debates about transitional justice, reconciliation and healing (McKay 2000, 561). As a result of this increasing knowledge about the importance of incorporating gender justice, focus on gendered and sexual issues has increased. In addition, it is argued that acknowledgement of wrongdoing can aid in reconciliation and healing (Clark 2009, 246 ; Govier 2000, 5). Therefore, the focus of this thesis will be on the incorporation of gendered and sexual violence in acknowledgement of wrongdoing.
As will be explained further in the theoretical framework, acknowledgement of a fact, event or experience can be beneficial for healing or reconciliation (Govier 2000, 5). Therefore, it is important to acknowledge the systematic occurrence of gendered and sexual violence against women, as it is widely known that this was a systematic manifestation during the War. Argentina, and the Dirty War, are specifically chosen as a case study to research the acknowledgement of sexual and gendered violence after the war is because Argentina functions as a unique case (Bryman 2012, 70) in the
4 transitional justice debate and Latin America. This is because “Argentina is the only Latin American case in which the military leadership has publicly recognized the illegitimate character of repression and systematic human rights violation it carried out during the military dictatorship” (Acuña in Elster 2006, 207). As this paper will show, the presidents after the war have acknowledged the Dirty War and disappearances elaborately. This official recognition is unique in the region and it is therefore this thesis will focus on Argentina. In order to research the acknowledgement of a specific systematic mechanism in a war, such as gendered and sexual violence in this instance, a general acknowledgement of wrongdoing or a war is necessary.
Even though this research will focus on the acknowledgement of sexual and gendered violence against women at that time, in no way does this suggest that sexual and gendered violence against men did not happen. At times, it has been reported even that men were in fact raped, especially with an electric prod that will be much mentioned further in this thesis. Also, this kind of rape has been suggested to be do feminize the men by taking away their dignity and treat them as women, which also shows the existing power relations between men and women in this patriarchic society where women were, and perhaps still are, seen as the lesser sex. Sexual violence was systematically used against both sexes to undermine their position and to try and break them into giving information. At times however, it was an individual deciding to take advantage of the situation to use this violence to excess for his own purposes, as will be discussed in the results section. But, as women have been specifically targeted because of their gender, they constituted about 30% of the disappeared and the position of women in transitional justice has been systematically overlooked; the focus in this thesis will be on women’s experiences and the acknowledgement thereof.
So, this thesis will look at in what women have been targeted during the Dirty War based on their gender, so gendered and sexual violence, and in what way this has been acknowledged. The focus will be on government statements by looking at how presidents after the Dirty War have acknowledged gendered and sexual violence. Also, transitional justice will be analyzed through a study of academic literature as well as the ‘Nunca Más’ report written by truth commission and used as a base for the trial against the military junta. In addition written media and personal testimonies in literature will be used as main and the most relevant sources. Finally, the written media will be analyzed. These specific sources were selected because they each represent a sample of a population group with different characteristics of government, media and victims and survivors.
5 The aim of this thesis is to provide an understanding on the relationship of gender, acknowledgement and transitional justice in Argentina after the Dirty War. It will show how, even after increased knowledge on the importance of gender justice, gendered and sexual violence is still not incorporated into this transitional justice mechanism in the Argentinian case. The thesis seeks to unravel the relationship between gender and acknowledgement specifically, but does not seek to analyze the entire complex phenomena of transitional justice or all post-conflict situations. Rather, through the focus on this transitional justice element in the case of post-Dirty War Argentina a more specific contribution to the understanding of acknowledgement can be made. Also, the thesis aims to raise awareness on the importance of gender justice by showing how these issues are still not addressed properly.
The thesis will start with a theoretical framework outlining the debates on transitional justice, acknowledgement, gender, and gendered and sexual violence. Then the background of the case-study and an overview of the methodology will be given. As mentioned, the case used to research the acknowledgement of sexual and gendered violence is Argentina. Then the results of the analysis of the abovementioned sources will be given, in followed by a discussion of these findings in relation to the theoretical framework and finally a conclusion will be drawn. So the thesis outline is as followed, Chapter 2 will discuss the theoretical framework, Chapter 3 and 4 will comprise of the background of the case study and the methodology, respectively. Then the empirical chapter will discuss the acknowledgment in personal testimonies, Chapter 5, and acknowledgement in official sources, Chapter 6. Finally, a conclusion will be given.
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Chapter 2: Theoretical Framework
Traditionally in transitional justice, gender has not been incorporated or has not been seen as a separate war crime. This chapter will therefore focus on unraveling gender in relation to transitional justice as well as elaborate on the concepts gendered and sexual violence. Finally, the relevance of acknowledgement to transitional justice and gender will be clarified. Once again, the focus on these issues will provide an insight into the workings of transitional justice, which has generally been male-oriented, as well as acknowledgement. More specifically the acknowledgment of gender and gendered violence aimed at women during conflict situations. It has often been recognized that war affects women differently than men (Bloomfield et al. 2003, 56). Therefore, different transitional justice mechanisms should be adopted, for example it is argued that gender justice should be incorporated to ensure a more balanced approach to transitional justice (McKay 200, 567). Additionally, acknowledgment can lead to healing and reconciliation (Govier 2000, 5) and is therefore important to incorporate into transitional justice mechanisms.
2.1 Transitional Justice
As discussed, this thesis will focus on the acknowledgement of sexual and gendered violence against women during the Dirty War in Argentina. Acknowledgement is a form of restorative justice, which will be explained below. Traditionally, gender, gendered violence and gender justice have not been incorporated into transitional justice mechanisms (Bastick et al. 2004).
Transitional justice as a concept has become more prominent in both policy as well as academic debates after the Second World War (1939-1945). Since that time, conflict has become increasingly more intrastate rather than interstate. This has led to various discussions on how to deal with the aftermath of these conflicts and give a sense of justice or healing to the victims and survivors2 of such conflicts as well as attempt to reconcile the nation and society as a whole. One way to deal with these issues is thus transitional justice, which is a set of mechanisms that functions as “an approach to achieving justice in times of transition from conflict and/or state repression” (ICTJ, 2014). The goal of transitional justice is to create “sociopolitical conditions that will prevent the recurrence of conflict” (Wierzynska 2004, 1939). Among the various possibilities are prosecuting the perpetrators, establishment of truth commissions, reparation programs, reforming the government, the civil service and the judiciary, and institution of symbolic measures to remind the population that the horrors are not taken lightly and will not be forgotten (United Nations, 2008).
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In the Argentinian case, the ex-disappeared may identify themselves as either a ‘victim’, ‘survivor’ or perhaps both, this thesis will use both terms to describe people who have been disappeared and reappeared as “the journey from ‘victim’ to the status of ‘survivor’ is long and complex (Bloomfield et al. 2003, 86). Of course, when referring to a person who is still disappeared the term ‘victim’ will be used.
7 Additionally within transitional justice, a distinction is made between restorative justice and retributive justice. Lambourne defines retributive and restorative justice as follows, “[r]etributive justice may be defined as justice that involves punishment of the wrongdoer. It is generally associated with legal trials in the western legal justice system. Restorative justice, by contrast, may be defined as justice that restores communities or relationships. It is regarded as an alternative form of justice outside the formal judicial court system, at least according to western legal practice” (2009, 3). In other words, retributive justice is aimed more at the crime, the truth, the perpetrator and punishment itself whereas restorative justice focusses on the victim, closure and symbolic actions as well (Clark 2008, 333). The main focus of this thesis will be on restorative justice because acknowledgement of wrongdoing is in itself a restorative justice mechanisms as restorative justice includes “a variety of different practices, including apologies, restitution, and acknowledgements of harm and injury, as well as to other efforts to provide healing and reintegration of offenders into their communities, with or without additional punishment … Restorative justice is designed to remove negative stigmatization of the individual and replace it with recognition of the wrongfulness of an act, with shaming of the act, and with reintegration of the person” (Menkel-Meadow 2007, 2-5). In essence, it is argued that the ultimate aim of this kind of justice is “reconciliation and restoring social harmony” (Bloomfield et al. 2003, 112). Consequently, the ultimate goal of acknowledgement as restorative justice mechanism is healing and reconciliation.
However, transitional justice mechanisms have often been “criticised for failing to take into account the ways in which gender dynamics influence how conflict is experienced by people, and for ignoring women’s specific justice needs” (Bastick et al. 2001, 14). It has traditionally been considered as a male-dominated system for dealing with justice where “crimes against women were only investigated and prosecuted when they were also perpetrated against men” (Zavala Guillén 2013, 52). Recently, there has been more insight and attention considering justice incorporating gender (McKay 2000, 561), so it could be expected that incorporation of gender into transitional justice mechanisms could be or become more present. For example, gendered and sexual violence have been incorporated specifically in the International Criminal Tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda (Balardini et al. 2011, 184)
It is argued that “[t]ransitional justice aims to reveal the multilayered causes for violence, heal the wounds caused by this violence, and create systems to stop future human rights abuses” (Fregoso & Bejarano 2010, 23). As a result of transitional justice, especially truth commissions and legal trials, truth about what happened during the time of conflict became widely known and documented. However, in contrast with this increased knowledge and documentation, hardly any have taken
8 gendered and sexual violence against women, or the experiences of women in general during wartime, into account; except the the International Criminal Tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda (Henry 2009, 115 ; Balardini et al. 2011, 184). Taking women, and gendered issues generally, into account in these transitional justice mechanisms and other reconciliation efforts would actually be beneficial to these processes. Taking gender issues into account would unravel “some of the ‘small conflicts’ that lie beneath the main conflict and which need to be addressed in order to create a sustainable peace and democratic society” (Bloomfield et al. 2003, 13), for example gender inequality or the stigmatization on sexual violence. One of the ways in which gender can be taken into account in transitional justice is through gender justice.
Gender justice is concerned with “legal processes that are equitable, not privileged by and for men, and which acknowledge ways in which women uniquely experience harm” seen in “the context of armed conflict and its aftermath” (McKay 2000, 561). This type of justice and therefore the incorporation of gender into any justice mechanism is often disregarded within a patriarchal system that focuses on reconciliation by favoring male-dominated mechanisms and interests (McKay 2000, 561). Many advocates of gender justice, including female survivors of conflict situations and women’s rights’ activists, argue that reconciliation and justice can only be achieved if gender issues and gender justice are incorporated (McKay 2000, 562). Also, it is argued that the recognition of violence against women and its incorporation into justice mechanisms is “a necessary precursor to reconciliation” (Brunet & Rousseau 1996, 28 quoted in McKay 2000, 567). The argument for gender justice shows how reconciliation could be better achieved if gender issues would be incorporated into transitional justice and thus into acknowledgement.
Gender itself is a large and contested concept, however it is often best defined as “a category that was developed to explore what counts as ‘woman’ and as ‘man’ “ (Squires 1999, 54). This definition implies that gender is more than just the biological sex of a person; “gender is socially constructed” (Squires 1999, 61); “gender is a socially constructed category in which the performance of gender norms … is what gives meaning to the categories of the “feminine” and “masculine” (Fregoso & Bejarano 2010, 3). Therefore, gender differences are defined as “the socially constructed roles played by women and men that are ascribed to them on the basis of their sex” (United Nations quoted in Skjelsbaek & Smith 2001b, 8). In this sense, masculinity is often socially constructed as “what gives power” and femininity as “void of power” (Skjelsbaek 2001a, 71). In the context of this thesis, this means that gendered and sexual violence directed at women can at times be seen as a reinforcement of the division between men and women and within a patriarchic society such as Argentina perhaps
9 also a reassertion of the dominance of men over women, or masculinity over femininity (Sideris 2001, 143 ; Colombini 2001, 71 & 169).
The reassertion of dominance or expression of culturally defined traits of ‘manhood’ generally become most present in times at which these factors are threatened and men can feel they need to re-establish the existing norms on gender relations (Sideris 2001, 143, 151). During the Dirty War there were two sides of being a women, on the one hand women were seen by the government as apolitical and irrelevant to political life (Squires 1999, 1, 10) and were therefore one of the few social groups that were allowed to organize and take collective action, such as the Madres de Plaza de Mayo who were mothers that organized themselves to find out what happened to their disappeared children and subsequently protested every week to raise awareness for this issue; although they were continuously mocked and not taken seriously by the Military Junta. On the other hand, however, women that were seen as ideologically different were specifically targeted by means of sexual and gendered violence and kidnapping. In the Latin American societies, gender has traditionally played a role in the formulation of an individual identity and a person’s place within the society. Gender was the “fundamental category of social organization and a major means by which social relations and inequality [were] structured”. (Molyneux 2000, 38).
2.2 Gendered Violence
Gendered violence is directly linked to gender and the socially constructed roles and distribution of rights and responsibilities. Gender based violence, or gendered violence, and more specifically gendered violence aimed at women has traditionally always played been present in society and even more so in wartime. Gendered violence in essence is “misogynist violence against women for being women situated in relationships marked by gender inequality: oppression exclusion, subordination, discrimination, exploitation, and marginalization. Women are the victims of threats, assaults, mistreatment, injuries, and misogynist harm. The violence may be physical, psychological, sexual, economic, and property-related, and the modalities of gender violence may be in the family, workplace, or school; in the community; in institutions; and via feminicide” (Lagarde y de los Ríos 2010 xxii). To emphasize, gendered violence is thus not just sexual violence, as is often portrayed in debates on these issues, but included other kinds of violence based on gender as well (Franke 2005, 822). During the War, “even in torture, the gender hierarchy was reproduced” (Molyneux 2000, 62). Women were sexually abused as an expression of misogyny and men were sexually abused to feminize and therefore humiliate them.
10 Overall, gender relations have changed over the last decades. Especially within Latin America, society has been characterized for a long time by a patriarchal system in which males take a leading role both outside and within the home. Some have argued that the transition from authoritarian regimes to more democratic regimes have led to a comparable shift within households and within society especially the workforce (Waylen 1994, 337). Both genders have been subject to overgeneralization and pressure to conform to certain norms and expected patterns of behaviour (Chant 2002, 556). This overgeneralization may have led to this one-sided approach to transitional justice that do not take specific violations against women into account, as discussed in chapter 2.1. In transitional justice efforts the mechanism that is often employed is a truth commission whose aim is to find out what exactly happened and to whom. There have only been three efforts that were specifically targeted at women and women have admitted at times that the general truth commission was not accessible to them (Sideris 2001, 57). Also, it could be expected that as a result of this relatively high mobilization of women and presence women’s organisations, female specific violence during the Dirty War would be an issue open for debate and action. However, gendered and sexual violence is in most societies, including in Latin America, often still a taboo (Zavala Guillén 2013, 58). Additionally, many victims have not survived the violence inflicted upon them so it is hard to specify what happened. (Treacy 1996, 131).
Women were indeed treated differently in the Dirty War as for example by taking babies away from their disappeared mothers or by sexual abuse. However, when dealing with past atrocities, gender is often left out or has a tendency to focus on the absence of gender or on male perpetrators and victims (Fregoso & Bejarano 2010,25). However, “[t]his removal of gender from all references to prisoners obscures the number of women participating in political activities of all sorts, including female members of guerrilla groups. Moreover the de-gendering of prisoners makes unthinkable the possibility that prison could be a gendered space where male guards treat men and women in different ways” (Treacy 1996, 130-131). So as Treacy argues, the generalization of suffering and the lack of division between male and female victims overlooks the possibility that men and women were treated differently and have suffered differently.
Also, by extension, this would suggest that an inability to differentiate between male and female suffering within transitional justice mechanisms would also lead to inadequate mechanisms to deal with the crimes committed. Gender violence has traditionally not been viewed as a separate category of crime but rather as an integral part of war (Fregoso & Bejarano 2010, 1). A lack of differentiation between violence targeted at women or men specifically, could also lead to feelings that those kinds of torture or violence are not important even though they might have a completely different impact on the victim than other kinds of torture. Therefore, it is important to analyze
11 whether a division is actually made between men and women in the acknowledgement of past wrongdoing.
2.3 Sexual Violence
Gendered violence targeted at women can be expressed through sexual violence. Sexual violence is often perceived as ‘rape’ (Skjelsbaek 2001a, 70), however the term is far more multifaceted than that; “[t]he term ’sexual violence’ includes sexual threat, assault, interference, exploitation, humiliation, molestation, incest, involuntary prostitution, torture, insertion of objects into genital openings and attempted rape, including statutory rape, carried out against on women and girls or men and boys” (Colombini 2002, 167). Sexual violence can be seen as an integral part of war, as an element of male communication, as a way of reaffirming masculinity, as a way of destroying the culture of the opponent, and as misogyny (Ruth Seifert in Skjelsbaek 2001a, 79-80).
Sexual violence has at times been a taboo to consider in transitional justice and human rights processes (Zavala Guillén 2013, 58). Also, in the case of transitional justice after the Dirty War in Argentina, “when the dictatorship had just come to an end, they believed the priority was to find out what had happened to the victims of forced disappearance. Many also felt the need to conceal from their families the most shocking and private details of the horror they had experienced.”3 In addition, “[t]he scale and range of the violence in general and the specific brutality and severity of rape, sexual torture, and mutilation suggest high levels of misogyny and dehumanization of women” (Fregoso & Bejarano 2010, 7). In relation to gender justice and acknowledgement that are both beneficial to reconciliation and healing, the incorporation of gender into acknowledgement of sexual violence will illustrate and address the misogyny and dehumanization of women during the Dirty War and could provide a new framework for dealing with these issues in the post-conflict society.
Traditionally, sexual violence has often been regarded within transitional justice mechanisms as a marginal issue, as a side effect of war or even as an integral part of war (Bastick et al. 2001, 7 ; Skjelsbaek 2001a, 79 ; Farwell 2004, 389). It has been one of the crimes that is least reported (Women in the Law Project 1994, 108). However, “[s]exual violence during conflict is an act of domination, grounded in a complex web of cultural preconceptions, in particular as regards gender roles. It is used to torture and humiliate people, and to punish or humiliate an enemy group or community” (Bastick et al. 2001, 9). In addition, the consequences for victims or survivors of sexual violence, especially during wartime, are severe. They are often stigmatized and have to deal with “considerable economic, educational and socio-cultural barriers” (Bastick et al. 2001, 155, 165). In
3 Valente, Marcela. 2011. “Argentina: Shedding Light on Dictatorship’s Sex Crimes” IPS. June 28.
12 addition victims and survivors suffer serious consequences on both physical as well as mental health that also affect “the recovery of social networks and communities (Farwell 2004, 398). One of the consequences for the mental health of victims and survivors include an often described sense of shame which also generally leads to the initial underreporting of sexual and gendered violence after a conflict has ended (Women in the Law Project 1994, 109). As discussed, gender issues and sexual violence have become more incorporated into debate on justice and reconciliation. The next sections will discuss the incorporation of sexual violence into legislation and academic literature.
Sexual Violence in Legislation
Sexual, and gendered, violence has been increasingly more incorporated into international legislation. Especially the aforementioned sentences issued by the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the 1990s set a fundamental precedent by recognising various forms of sexual violence as crimes against humanity.4 In addition, important for the recognition of gendered and sexual violence as war crimes was the Rome Statute of 1998 establishing the International Criminal Court. In this statute it is declared in Article 7 and 8 that “[t]he Rome Statute acknowledges the seriousness of sexual violence, as capable of being an international crime for which perpetrators and their military commanders or other superiors may be held individually accountable. It recognizes rape and other forms of sexual violence by combatants in the conduct of armed conflict as war crimes. When rape and sexual violence are committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population (whether during armed conflict or not), they are considered crimes against humanity, and in some cases may constitute an element of genocide” (Bastick et al. 2001, 157). Finally, Resolution 1820 of the United Nations Security Council in 2008 acknowledges “rape and other forms of sexual violence” as a war crime (United Nations 2008). These acknowledgements were beneficial to both to the debate on sexual and gendered violence as well as raising awareness.
Since sexual violence has been recognized as war crime and crime against humanity, more attention has been given to the subject. However, in addition to sexual violence being a taboo to talk about and sexual violence first mostly being incorporated into “general” torture instead of being considered a separate means of torture or violence or not being considered at all (Leatherman 2007, 54), some have also argued that in comparison to the detention or other torture, rape or other sexual violence something seemed as less relevant or secondary.5 In addition to sexual violence during war, the taboo on sexual violence within the domestic environment has also been less rigorous. Since the 1990s, “[v]iolence against women and family members is increasingly seen as a
4 Ibid. 5
13 violations of human rights and therefore a policy problems, the family no longer being viewed as remaining outside the purview of state power and formal laws” (Hutn 2000, 197). Which might have led to a more open environment for discussing sexual violence during war because sexual violence is now recognized as a crime against a person rather than being ignored as a result of taboos or perhaps power relations.
Academic Literature on Sexual Violence during the Dirty War
In the academic literature on the Dirty War in Argentina it is described in depth how sexual and gendered violence was systematically present (Taylor 1997, 3). For example, Molyneux writes that “[t]he widespread use of torture against prisoners was both eroticized an sexualized. Women were routinely raped and otherwise sexually abused in ways that expressed sadistic misogyny” (Molyneux 2000, 62). In addition, Fregoso and Bejarano report how “[g]ang rape, sexual slavery, mutilation, torture and forced pregnancy were part of the ongoing and insidious forms of terrorizing imprisoned women during the military dictatorships of Southern Cone countries such as Chile, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay” (Fregoso & Bejarano 2010, 13). Additionally, they argue that “In Argentina, ‘at the height of the military dictatorship’s Dirty War, bored junior officers who were members of torture squads would cruise the streets in the infamous Ford Falcons looking for pretty girls to sequester and take back to the camp to rape, torture, and then kill’ (Hollander 1996, 63 quoted in Fregoso & Bejarano 2010, 13). Importantly, Lewis observes that torture in the detention facilities was profound to get information quickly but often torture did not accomplish that goal (Lewis 2002, 153, 155). Also, he makes mention of the commonality of raping women during or after torture arguing how sexual violence, especially rape, against women in these detention centers was a systematic occurrence and even pregnant women were not exempt from this experience (Lewis, 2002, 152, 213).
These instances show how gendered and sexual violence was an integral part of the systematic effort to control and break the disappeared in detention centers. So, the academic literature has incorporated the use gendered and sexual violence during the Dirty War in their research showing how this was a systematic feature of the effort of the repressive regime in their ‘War against Subversives’. However, the literature does not focus on the incorporation of these gendered issues into the transitional justice mechanisms installed after the war. This thesis will focus on analyzing the incorporation of these kinds of violence into one particular transitional justice mechanism, namely acknowledgement, as will be explained below. The thesis will show how the use of torture is widely acknowledged whereas the gendered and sexual nature of this torture is often overlooked. It will show how the concepts of gender and sexual violence are still not incorporated into this specific transitional justice mechanisms.
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2.4 Acknowledgement
In this thesis, the focus is on the acknowledgement of sexual and gendered violence during the Dirty War in Argentina. As mentioned in the introduction, Argentina is the only state in Latin America that has openly acknowledged wrongdoing in the past, which makes it the exception in the region (Acuña in Elster 2006, 207). Acknowledgement can have different meanings in different contexts, but is defined in this thesis as “knowledge plus a kind of marking or spelling out or admitting as significantly related to oneself, of something that is known. Thus acknowledgement requires truth” (Govier 2000, 15). Additionally, “from the point of view of the future, the acknowledgement of the facts is often more important than the simple revealing of the past … even if factual truth is established, facts do not speak for themselves. In political life, it is the interpretation that the facts are given that is most important … The crucial point is that the truth cannot have a positive effect unless it is acknowledged
“ (Clark 2009, 426). In other words, acknowledgement is the spelling out of truth or facts; the way it
is interpreted by the acknowledger. So, in order for the truth to influence the healing6 of an individual or reconciliation7 in a society, it has to be specifically acknowledged by spelling out the truth and, when it comes to politics, interpreted.
Within transitional, and specifically restorative, justice, acknowledgement plays an essential role. It is argued that acknowledgement has “tremendous power and an impact both on the healing of human beings wounded by past abuse and on their potential reconciliation with those who have wounded them” (Govier 2000, 5). In addition to healing and reconciliation, acknowledgement is also important for forgiveness, social trust and democracy (Quinn 2005, 8). Kaufman exemplifies this by referring to Sadat’s acknowledgement of the suffering of Jews in the past, which was essential in creating a more tolerant relationship between Egypt and Israel and eventually made the 1978 Camp David Accords possible (Kaufman 2006, 209). In this case, the acknowledgement of an occurrence, suffering in this case, enhanced the relationship with both parties. In relation to the focus of this thesis, one could
6 Healing is defined in this thesis as: “as any strategy, process or activity that improves the psychological health
of individuals following extensive violent conflict. Strategies, processes or activities aimed at rehabilitating and reconstructing local and national communities more broadly are also integrally linked to this process. As such, healing is not only about assisting individuals to address their psychological health needs in an isolated way, but is dependent upon and integrally linked to repairing and rebuilding communities and the social context. This implies restoring a normalized everyday life that can recreate and confirm people’s sense of being and belonging” (Bloomfield et al. 2003, 77)
7 Reconciliation is defined in this thesis as: “Ideally reconciliation prevents, once and for all, the use of the past
as the seed of renewed conflict. It consolidates peace, breaks the cycle of violence and strengthens newly established or reintroduced democratic institutions. As a backward-looking operation, reconciliation brings about the personal healing of survivors, the reparation of past injustices, the building or rebuilding of non-violent relationships between individuals and communities, and the acceptance by the former parties to a conflict of a common vision and understanding of the past. In its forward-looking dimension, reconciliation means enabling victims and perpetrators to get on with life and, at the level of society, the establishment of a civilized political dialogue and an adequate sharing of power” (Bloomfield et al. 2003, 19).
15 argue that the acknowledgement of the occurrence of sexual violence would lead to healing, forgiveness, and perhaps an increase in the social trust of victims, survivors and their relatives, as argued by Quinn (2005). Forgiveness becomes possible through acknowledgement of the crimes committed, it is “a central element of the theological ideals of restorative justice, [and] is essential to a victim's healing process. Without forgiveness, bitterness and a desire for vengeance often hold a person captive, preventing that person from healing and thus moving on, out of the cycle of violence” (Niebur Eisnaugle 2003, 231). This again emphasizes the importance of acknowledgement for the victims of a crime.
Truth commissions are one of the mechanisms that provide “public acknowledgement of victim’s suffering” (Kaufman 2006, 211-212). They are designed to uncover the truth and acknowledge it by means of for example statement or report. As Govier argues by using the example of South African’s Truth and Reconciliation Committee, which primary focus was the acknowledgement of past wrongdoings, that “[f]or victims of serious wrongdoing, to receive acknowledgement is soothing, healing and supportive. It contributes to their restoration and healing which are necessary for their full functioning in society” (Govier 2000, 20). Resulting from this argument that acknowledgement will lead to forgiveness, healing, reconciliation and social trust comes the focus of this thesis. During the Dirty Was the disappeared people were repeatedly tortured and as was widely revealed with the publishing of the ‘Nunca Más’ report by the truth commission, in Spanish in 1984 and English 1986. However, as argued, sexual violence was, and perhaps still often is, a taboo to discuss publicly (Zavala Guillén 2013, 58). Experiencing sexual and gendered violence is no less relevant than torture and it is therefore important to be treated equally with other victims of torture, thus victims of gendered and sexual violence also need acknowledgement and efforts for healing (Bastick et al. 2001, 162). Therefore, the focus will be on how far and in what way this kind of violence of torture has been acknowledged by various parties through time since the end of the Dirty War in 1983. Women who have experienced gendered and sexual violence during wartime are often subjected to “social stigmatization and marginalization” (Bloomfield et al. 2003, 13). It is therefore important that these experiences are acknowledged to give credibility to their experiences, as gendered and sexual violence are often downplayed in patriarchal and male-dominated societies (McKay 2000, 562).
However, by acknowledging this violence this stigmatization and marginalization which often comes with a sense of shame for the women who have experienced it, can be “transformed into political dignity” (McKay 2000, 564). As will be discussed in Chapter 5 and 6, the Argentinian case has shown no ‘transformation into political dignity’. At the end of the Dirty War, gendered and sexual violence was briefly acknowledged in the report of the truth commission, ‘Nunca Más’ and by President
16 Alfonsín, but then was hardly ever mentioned or acknowledged again. This shows how gendered and sexual violence are still downplayed in the Argentinian experience; the focus is more on acknowledging torture in general. This shows the point that Zavala Guillén makes that “crimes against women were only investigated and prosecuted when they were also perpetrated against men” (2013, 52).
In the next section, the context of the case study on which this thesis is focused will be discussed to get a better understanding on the circumstances in which the gendered, sexual violence took place during the Dirty War in Argentina.
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Chapter 3: A Background on The Argentinian Dirty War
In 1974 the popular and populist president Perón passed away and his wife and vice-president assumed presidency. The two years in which she ruled were marked by economic decline , chaos and increasing political violence. As a result, the military ousted her in a military coup in 1976 (Nouzeilles & Montaldo 2002, 395). This event marks the beginning of the Dirty War that is the focus of this thesis. Even before the military assumed power, political opponents were punished under the emergency decrees (Lewis 2002, 220). Since the military coup “[t]he persecution of political dissidents – which began at least two years before the coup – was institutionalized and expanded to create a systematic killing machine” (Nouzeilles & Montaldo 2002, 395). The “degree of cruelty and indifference to human life shown by the military and its supporters” (Nouzeilles & Montaldo 2002, 395) is still difficult to grasp. The military justified what they called ‘the War on Subversion’ by arguing that “organized repression as absolutely necessary to put an end to guerilla activity and defended state violence as the only means of guaranteeing political stability” (Nouzeilles & Montaldo 2002, 395).
During the Dirty War, the government took various measures to control the population, for example political activists, journalists, students, union leaders, writers and other disappeared, there was censorship, and institutions such as universities came under government control (Nouzeilles & Montaldo 2002, 395). It is estimated that between 8000 and 30.000 people were killed, of which most were ‘desaparecidos’ (disappeared), a term used by the government to describe the people who were kidnapped. The people who have survived these disappearances, the reappeared, have given horrible accounts of their kidnapping, confinement and torture (Nouzeilles & Montaldo 2002, 440). This is where the focus on this research will be. It is widely known now that many people disappeared at the hands of the government and that they were held hostage and being tortured for information about other undesirable individuals. However, as discussed earlier in this thesis, in war it is often so that women are being specifically targeted or targeted differently on the basis of their gender. Especially, gendered and sexual violence has been a specific way to torture or punish women in war circumstances. It is important to know and acknowledge to aid individual healing and national reconciliation. In the next section, the methodology to research the acknowledgement of gendered, sexual violence during this Dirty War will be described.
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Chapter 4: Methodology
This thesis will, as discussed, focus on the acknowledgement of sexual and gendered violence against women during the Dirty War in Argentina and in what way this acknowledgement has changed since the end of the Dirty War in 1983 up to the present. To do this, content and discourse analysis on gendered and sexual violence within presidential statements, the written media and victim testimonies both formal, by looking at the ‘Nunca Más’ report, and informal, by analyzing literature written by survivors will be used. Finally, process tracing will be used to determine how the acknowledgement and treatment of sexual violence has changed over time since the end of the Dirty War, during the initial transitional justice mechanisms, up to the present.
Content analysis is “a research technique for the objective, systematic and quantitative description of the manifest content of communication” (Berelson quoted in Bryman 2012, 289). The main question this thesis seeks to answer is whether sexual violence has been acknowledged since the end of the Dirty War up till the present and thus whether sexual violence is also mentioned at all and if so in what way. Content analysis in this context is a useful tool to firstly determine whether sexual violence has been mentioned at certain points over time. The use of phrases such as ‘sexual violence’, ‘rape’, or ‘violence against women’ and its frequency will provide a clear, objective insight (Bryman 2012, 304) into whether these occurrences have been mentioned at all, whether by presidents, the media, or victims and survivors.
Continuing from this objective acknowledgement of such injustices, an analysis of discourse might prove insightful to further analyze the acknowledgement and incorporation of gendered and sexual violence in addition to content analysis. For Foucault, discourse is “a term that denoted the way in which a particular set of linguistic categories relating to an object and the ways of depicting it frame the way we comprehend that topic” (Bryman 2012, 528). Discourse analysis has no clearly defined version or conceptualization. However this thesis will focus on discourse analysis as an “approach to the analysis of talk and other forms of discourse that emphasizes the ways in which versions of reality are accomplished through language” (Bryman 2012, 711). In this instance, acknowledgement is also the interpretation of truth (Clark 2009, 426) and this can be more thoroughly analyzed by utilizing discourse analysis. In the context of this research thesis discourse analysis entails analyzing certain key texts that have acknowledged the Dirty War or torture for example, and determine whether these texts also incorporate gendered and sexual violence during the Dirty War. In addition to an analysis of how language creates versions of reality, “discourse analysis looks at the way language is used and manipulated in politics” (Babb 2012, 354). So, by looking at acknowledgement of sexual violence in the Dirty War, one might expect certain claims officials make about how sexual
19 violence did or did not happen, and who is to blame for certain acts of violence. By looking at what discourses are used to describe these processes, it will determine how gendered sexual violence is viewed by the presidents, the media or victims and survivors.
In this thesis, content and discourse analysis are used as a mixed method to analyze the process of acknowledgement of gendered and sexual violence during the Dirty War in Argentina, which entails a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods to answer the research question. In order to further analyze the acknowledgement of gendered and sexual violence over time and its link to transitional justice and reconciliation, in addition to content and discourse analysis, process tracing will be employed as a method. Applying process tracing entails “finding evidence of specific causal links at the micro-level between independent and dependent variables” (Babb 2012, 421), this evidence is usually found in a case-study (Babb 2012, 99). In this thesis, firstly the change in discourse on sexual violence will be analyzed to determine a change in acknowledgement of gendered and sexual violence.
As mentioned in the previous paragraph, this thesis will use a combination quantitative and qualitative methods, more specifically content and discourse analysis in order to determine a link between variables through the method of process tracing. This mixed method approach has the benefit of looking both objective occurrence of sexual violence acknowledgement as well as the meaning of those acknowledgements, or the lack thereof, rather than focusing purely on quantitative or qualitative data.
This thesis will focus on four categories of sources to determine whether gendered and sexual violence during the Dirty War has been acknowledged in its aftermath. These categories will be: presidential statements to represent the different governments in office after the war, transitional justice by analyzing the ‘Nunca Más’ report of the truth commission, personal testimonies in literature and the written media. To look at the progress of acknowledgement the whole period since the end of the Dirty War in 1983 will be taken into account
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Chapter 5: Personal acknowledgements in testimonies: the Nunca Más
Report, fictional-, and non-fictional literature
This chapter focusses on the analysis of the acknowledgement of sexual and gendered violence in the testimonies made by victims or survivors, and at times family members. At the center of this analysis are the ‘Nunca Más’ report produced by the truth commission ‘Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas’ (henceforth referred to as CONADEP) and more personal testimonies made outside the realm of official transitional justice mechanisms. The focus here is on written testimonies of both fictional and non-fictional content. Firstly, the chapter will discuss the ‘Nunca Más’ report as it was the first document in which the atrocities of the War were made public. From thereon, it could be assumed that the facts that happened in the war are ‘known’. As shown in chapter 2, facts that are known are not enough, it is necessary for them to be spelled out more specifically in order for the victims to be able to heal. Chapter 6 will deal with the official acknowledgement of these now ‘known’ facts in presidential statements and the written media. After the analysis of how sexual and gendered violence is acknowledged in the ‘Nunca Más’ report, the focus will be on other non-fictional sources by analyzing two non-fictional, testimonial books. The first is ‘Nosotras, Presas Politicas’, which is a combined testimony of 112 women who were detained in detention centers during the Dirty War. The second book is ‘Sueños sobrevivientes de una montonera’ written by an ex-montonera who was also detained. Then, the chapter will discuss three fictional books written by ex-dissapeared who wrote these books to deal with their experience and to let what happened to them be known to a larger public. The books that will be discussed are ‘Little School’ by Alicia Partnoy, ’Steps under Water’ by Alicia Kozameh, and finally ‘A Single Numberless Death’ by Nora Strejilevich.
5.1 The ‘Nunca Más Report’ by CONADEP
The ‘Nunca Más’ report will serve as representation of the transitional justice mechanisms installed in Argentina after the Dirty War. The transitional justice mechanisms installed initially were the truth commission (CONDADEP) and the legal trials. The ‘Nunca Más’ report is the end-product of the truth commission after it had heard the testimonies and investigated the happenings during the Dirty War. Additionally, on this report the subsequent trial against the Military Junta were based. However, the truth commission is not a replacement of legal trials but merely a different transitional justice mechanism (Bloomfield et al. 2003, 123). The truth commissions are for finding out the truth and the legal trials are for bringing justice based on the truth. However, in this thesis the focus is on the testimonies given within the transitional justice mechanisms and the main testimonies will likely overlap so the ‘Nunca Más’ report will function as a representation of both these transitional justice mechanisms with regard to the testimonies given (Barkoukis 2011).
21 Early truth commissions have been critizided for no investigating or reporting on gendered and sexual violence (Bastick et al. 2001, 158). However, these forms of violence or torture have deep effects on the victims. It was, as all other forms of torture, considered a good way to break the victims (or “subversives”). In addition, it appears that some women were merely abducted or held because they were pregnant in order to give or sell the babies to members of the armed forces who were unable to have children. This is a kind gendered violence because they were being kept primarily on the grounds that they were able to be pregnant and give birth. So in this section, the way that these kinds of violence and torture were acknowledged by the Argentinian truth commission and described in the Nunca Más report will be analysed. This section will include some observations from the report that acknowledge the use of sexual and gendered violence against the women that were being detained in these centers. Overall, the acknowledgement of gendered violence constitutes three parts in this report; sexual violence and torture, detainment of pregnant women, and humiliation.
Sexual Violence
There are several acknowledgements of sexual violence in the Nunca Más report. Several testimonies quoted in the chapter about ‘Torture’ (20-51) mention rape by objects or genital mutilation. Even though these testimonies come from both men and women, the horrors described in the individual accounts that are included in the report are “typical of all of them”(CONADEP 1986, 20). It can be assumed that these practices were therefore applied to most of the disappeared that went through the detention centers and other facilities used in the operations. In general “torture was an important element in the methodology of repression” (CONADEP 1986, 20). It is acknowledged by the report that
“[t]hose in power from the very beginning of their administration award[ed] themselves special authority to plan a complete system of illicit acts. … the criminal events which took place cannot be considered ‘excesses’ or chance occurrences, undesired by their authors. On the contrary, … they were from the beginning created a part of a network of
crime with no historical precedent; this network was based on the assumption that the responsibility for planning and performing these illegal acts lay with the consciences of those who carried them out, and whose actions were checked by
no judicial or legal constraint or consideration” (CONADEP 1986, 235),
and judging from the accounts in this report, sexual torture or violence was one of the methods indeed systematically used. One former member of the Gendarmería (armed border police used in rural areas), Antonio Cruz, testifies how prisoners were tortured using the wires of a telephone that would produce an electric current: “Women were interrogated in the same manner. They were stripped naked, laid down on the bed, and the torture session would begin. With women, they would insert the wire in the vagina and then apply it to the breasts, which caused great pain. Many of them
22 would menstruate mid-torture. With them they only used the telephone, no other device.” (CONADEP 1986, 37).
Though not all testimonies given by women mention specific sexual violence, most report extensive torture in the most horrific ways. It can be assumed that most of the torture included sexual violence since, as mentioned above, the selected and elaborately described cases are typical of other cases (CONDADEP 1986, 20). Especially in cases of use of the electric prod on various parts of the body, particularly the sensitive areas, that is mentioned in most cases by both men and women. Several testimonies account how it was applied to the most sensitive parts of the female body; as Lidia Esther Biscarte recalls specifically. She describes how they used an electric prod on her, especially on her vagina, anus, mouth and armpits and then someone twisted her nipples which was extremely painful since they also used an electric prod on her breasts before (CONDADEP 1986, 43). This twisting of the nipples can be seen as an act of violence specifically targeted at the female body, in addition to the use of an electric prod on these sensitive areas. The twisting of the nipples shows an extra sadistic dimension of the gendered violence against women in these detention centers.
Another woman who wanted to remain anonymous, C.G.F., was raped with objects such as a police truncheon during her captivity and was then promised released if she had sexual relations with the man who would then release her; “I carried out his demands under threat of death, so I felt and consider myself to have been raped” (CONADEP 1986, 46). Also, she mentions how women were called to look after other women after they came out of the same interrogation rooms as where she was interrogation while sexually tortured. This case shows how women were treated differently; a man would assumable not ask another man to perform sexual favors in exchange for release. Also, men were not asked to look after each other in this way after they had been tortured. In addition to these two testimonies, the report acknowledges the testimony of A.N. who recalls how “one night a man came to her cell. He tied her up and beat her, then raped her amid threats, forbidding her to tell anybody what happened. After that he took her to the bathroom to get cleaned up”. Another women, N.B.B., reports how her she was repeatedly raped so many times that it “made her hemorrhage” (CONDADEP 1986, 65). In addition to sexual violence, women also had to endure other forms of torture such as ‘the machine’, which could cause a spontaneous menstruation. Also, the conditions in which women were kept and the constant violations and attacks on their body caused “their menstrual cycles [to be] interrupted” (CONADEP 1986, 65).
Accounts of rape and sexual violence are not limited to the ‘Torture’ chapter of the report. Most in-depth description of the kind of torture women were subjected to are described in this section as in accordance with the traditional classification of sexual and gendered violence as torture but not as a
23 separate crime or violation (Zavala Guillén 2013, 60). But, accounts of sexual violence, mutilation and rape also occur sparingly in testimonies in other sections. For example, the testimony of G. de V. in the part on a specific secret detention center, Chaco, within the jurisdiction of the 2nd Army Corps, who states that “they stripped and subjected me to tortures consisting of ‘the electric prod’ treatment and blows for a period of forty-eight hours, in front of my son… I was likewise raped and beaten on the soles of my feet with a hammer for a period of three hours” (CONADEP 1986, 174). Throughout the report references to the kind of gendered violence women were subjected to are described. So, sexual violence or gendered violence is acknowledged in the ‘Nunca Más’ report several times, but unfortunately no specific section is dedicated on women and their experiences in the detention centers.
Pregnant women
In addition to sexual violence on the basis of being a women, women being held on the grounds of reproductive ability and some women were tortured with regards to their role as a wife and a mother as well. To this form of gendered violence, a whole chapter is dedicated ‘Children and pregnant women who disappeared’ (CONADEP 1986, 286-320). For example, Elana Alfaro “was made to watch as they tortured [her] husband, another prisoner, Irma Beatriz Márquez, was forced to watch the torture of her twelve-year-old son, Pablo” (CONADEP 1986, 159). In most cases of the pregnant women, especially those who gave birth in the Campo del Mayo Hospital, it is acknowledged that “in most cases it can be presumed that the births were speeded up and performed by means of a Caesarean section” (CONADEP 1986, 295). Both these procedures can be dangerous for the women giving birth as well as the baby. Throughout the report on pregnant women it becomes clear that pregnant women were not omitted in torture and sexual violence. The case of Gladys de H. is specifically mentioned, she was “tortured in spite of being six months pregnant. Of all types of torture, she suffered the worst imaginable. She was raped, given electric shocks, systematically beaten and, as soon as she had slightly recovered, she was again given the same treatment” (CONADEP 1986, 305). These tortures have affected her and her son in later life who has had health problems as a result of the torture his mother endured while pregnant during her imprisonment. This shows how badly women were treated even if they were pregnant. The report acknowledges that torture took place during the detention of pregnant women, but only elaborates on it in in the case of Gladys de H..
Humiliation
Humiliation was also part of the treatment women received at the detention centers. Certain kinds of torture such as sexual torture is also partly aimed at the humiliation of women, especially when it happens in front of other guards. In general, “the women were obliged to use the bathroom in front
24 of the guards and constantly subjected to manhandling and rape” (CONADEP 1986, 143) and there have also been instances where “there were cases where the women were made to clean by hand the urinals in the men’s toilets” (CONADEP 1986, 66). The report stresses that the practices in these detention facilities, which thus include humiliation, rape and other forms of sexual torture and violence, “was not just a question of some ‘excesses’, if that means aberrant acts, being committed. These atrocities were common practice; the normal methods used daily during the repression” (CONADEP 1986, 448).
Summary
In general however, most accounts in the report are of men that have been held and tortured in clandestine detention centers. This could be a representation of the power relations of men and women in Argentine, especially still in the 1980s. Specifically, sexual violence at that time was still a taboo so women telling their stories including accounts of rape and sexual mutilation or specific violence against them based on their femininity might not have been deemed appropriate. In the 50.000 pages that the original report entails there are assumedly many accounts, but the commission then chose not to include them in the report and subsequent book that has been made available to the wider public. So, even though this report is indeed spelling out and acknowledging wrongdoing during the Dirty War, sexual and gendered violence is not a main focus. As will be discussed later, primarily in Chapter 6, the ‘Nunca Más’ report has actually acknowledged sexual and gendered violence often compared to the other sources analysed in this thesis.
Not only were people physically tortured, which includes sexual torture such as rape and mutilation, but also emotionally and mentally such as being blindfolded all the time and facing mock executions. All kinds of torture are of course equally horrible. Nonetheless, it is interesting to see how there is not a specific section on the treatment of women because it does appear to be different than the treatment men received. Especially considering the way in which women were supposed to take care of each other after one of the women experienced sexual violence because men were not supposed to look after each other after they were tortured. As shown, traditionally truth commissions and other transitional justice mechanisms have not included sexual and gendered violence in their work. On the one hand, this could also be argued for CONADEP and the ‘Nunca Más’ report as there is no specific section on women and sexual violence. On the other hand, throughout the report sexual violence is acknowledged throughout testimonies of victims and survivors, however this is mostly included in the ‘Torture’ chapter accordingly with the general view at that time that sexual and gendered violence was an integral part of this. Finally, Section 5.3 will elaborate on possible explanations of this lack of acknowledgement.
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5.2 Personal Testimonies of Victims and Survivors
There are several kinds of personal testimonies given by victims and survivors after the Dirty War. There are those that were made in ‘el Juicio’ [the Junta Trials] or given to CONADEP, but also those that are made more privately. Some women have made it their life’s work to let the world know what has happened or keep fighting to try and get knowledge of what happened to their loved ones and where they might be, dead or alive. A famous example of these kind of women are the Abuelas and Madres de Plaza de Mayo [Grandmothers and Mothers of the Plaza the Mayo]. Another way in which women have dealt with what happened to them is writing what happened to them down; either as a way of memory that what happened may not be forgotten or as a way of trying to come to terms with the past. This has been done in a more fictional way where stories have been written down about fictional persons but with experiences that were the writers own. Also, this has been done in a more non-fictional sense where the story is an account of what happened to them more similar to a testimony as perhaps during ‘el Juicio’ or the ‘Nunca Más’ report. It is this last type of testimonies, the ones who were written down independently, that this part of the thesis will analyze.
5.2.1 Non Fictional Personal Testimonies Nosotras, Presas Politicas
“En estas páginas contamos nuestra experiencia como presas políticas en la cárceles de país durante el período contenido entre los años 1974 y 1983”
[These pages contain our experience as political prisoners in the jails of the country during the period between 1974 and 1983] (Beguan 2006, 21)
The use of sexual violence or torture is not elaborately discussed in the testimonies of the women in this book. The testimonies focus more on the general day to day life in these detention centers and the description of these centers. On torture in general, some women elaborate a bit more. For instance, Graciela Bofelli says with regard to the detention facility in which she was held:
“las condiciones eran las de un campo de reclusión en el que se realizaban torturas. Éstas consistían en golpes, submarino, picana, simulacro de fusilamiento, y se oían los grito de los compañeros por la noche”
[the conditions were those of a prison camp in which torture took place. These consisted of beatings, submarine, prod, mock execution, and the cries of the compañeros were heard at night] (Beguan 2006, 133).
In addition, a few of the women made mention of gendered violence by specifying how they were forced to be naked at times. For example Liliana Forchetti describes: “nos hacen desnudar: de nuevo la violación de la intimidad, como para recordarnos nuestro estado de indefensión y en manos de quién estaba el poder” [They make us undress: again the violation of privacy, as if to remind our defenseless and in whose hands was the power] (Beguan 2006, 163).
