Condena a todos los genocidas, justicia por todos los compañeros. Luchas politicas en el juicio a Miguel Etchecolatz

In 2006 the oral and public trial against Miguel Etchecolatz took place in La Plata, Argentina. Etchecolatz was the Commissioner General of Police for the Buenos Aires Province during the last military dictatorship. He was
accused of eight cases of illegal freedom deprivation, torture and murder. This was the first trial with legal consequences after Punto Final (Full Stop) and Obediencia Debida (Due Obedience) laws were abolished. Moreover, it was the first trial which involved complaints from different social sectors. In this thesis, I study the struggle for justice developed by social and political actors that participated in the trial. The claim for “justice”, “truth” and “memory” represents the aim of the Argentinian movement for human rights that has been trying to achieve the conviction of those who implemented state terrorism in 1976-1983. Military aggressors, in turn, have been trying to avoid their sentence. In this sense, I consider Etchecolatz trial a crucial moment at which the struggles by historically important actors with different future expectations manifest themselves. I analyse what actors are involved in this dispute and so become justice entrepreuners. Moreover, I explore their legal and political strategies, their political discourse and their conflicting conceptions about the past of human rights violation during the trial. By means of interviews with key informants, witness statements and sentencing considerations, personal notes, audiovisual records and news stories, this thesis rebuilds and analyses the trial scene and the senses atributted to the past object of debate by the actors involved during the trial.