The EconomistJune 29th 2019 The Americas 472
Bello Peace or justice?
S
ome areelderly and frail. Others are
merely greying. Some thought they
were untraceable, having invented new
identities in other countries. Some were
generals, others subalterns. Over the past
few years executioners and torturers
from Latin America’s dictatorships of the
1970s and 1980s have at last been brought
to account, despite amnesty laws that
were the price of democracy. And that is
producing a backlash.
Take El Salvador, where civil war
between Marxist guerrillas and the army
killed 75,000 people between 1980 and- In one of the most heinous crimes
of the cold war in Latin America, an
American-trained army unit slaughtered
almost a thousand unarmed civilians,
mainly women and children, at the
village of El Mozote in 1981. The perpetra-
tors were protected by a blanket amnesty
decreed in 1993 as part of a peace accord.
Since then international law has
changed. It has moved towards the prin-
ciple that crimes against humanity
cannot be amnestied. In 2016 El Salva-
dor’s supreme court adopted that doc-
trine. A score of retired officers, includ-
ing the former defence minister, are now
on trial for the massacre. That has
prompted an attempt to pass a law reim-
posing the amnesty, backed by both the
main political parties, whose roots lie in
the opposing sides in the war. They
worry that reopening the past will aggra-
vate political conflict.
The bill is likely to fail. El Salvador’s
new president, Nayib Bukele, who was
born months before the massacre, has
promised to veto it. Yet the issue of what
to do about the crimes of Latin America’s
past dictatorships and guerrilla insur-
gencies is unlikely to go away until the
last war criminal dies.
Any civilised society must try to
punish such horrors. But in ending in-
ternal conflicts, peace, reconciliation and
truth are as important as justice. There is
often a trade-off. Rebels and dictators
often refuse to give up unless they are
promised amnesty. Moral imperative is
thus tempered by political feasibility. And
the politics is not getting much easier.
The most straightforward requirement
is that perpetrators of crimes tell the truth,
which allows victims’ relatives some small
relief. In this Latin America was a pioneer,
with truth commissions in Argentina and
El Salvador. Colombia’s peace agreement
of 2016 between the farcguerrillas and a
democratic government was also pioneer-
ing in applying current international law,
but through restorative justice. Provided
guerrilla commanders confess their
crimes and offer at least symbolic rep-
aration they will not face jail (though
many Colombians think that too soft).
Attempts to achieve justice in older
cases have been patchy. Self-bestowed
amnesties by military regimes were re-
pealed in Argentina and unpicked by the
courts in Chile, but not in Brazil. Uru-guayans twice voted for an amnesty in
referendums. Argentina and Chile have
jailed some military butchers. So has
Guatemala, though conservatives there
are now trying to free them by extending
what was a partial amnesty.
To go back 30 years or so requires
judges to strike down amnesty laws and a
change in political conditions, notes José
Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch,
a pressure group. “If these guys are still
alive they should face justice and tell the
truth,” he says.
Retroactive justice is more proble-
matic if it is seen to be one-sided. Under
left-wing governments Argentina’s
judiciary convicted military leaders but
left guerrilla crimes unexamined. With
less cause, proponents of amnesty in
Guatemala invoke political bias.
There are other reasons why undoing
amnesties might be bad. Although El
Salvador’s peace process was successful,
the country has not been. Like much of
Central America, it suffers from criminal
violence. Some citizens might argue that
establishing the rule of law in the present
should be the priority.
That some countries have torn up
amnesties may make achieving peace or
democracy harder in others. In Venezue-
la the opposition has offered amnesty to
generals who turn against the dictator-
ship of Nicolás Maduro. But “most high-
ranking officers...don’t believe in the
amnesty,” according to Caracas Chroni-
cles Political Risk Report, a newsletter.
Political debate in Latin America is
too often focused on the past. A region
that has fallen behind the rest of the
world economically and technologically
can ill afford that luxury. None of this is
an argument against applying justice
where possible. It is to recognise that it
carries risks.Tearing up amnesties raises big questionsfear they will lose their harvest in July,
when about a sixth of the crop is picked.
According to Villavicencio’s chamber of
commerce, the blocked road is costing the
region more than $15m a day. State gover-
nors are asking the national government to
declare a state of economic emergency and
suspend sales and income taxes. Prices
might rise in Bogotá, too.
Colombia is a road-builder’s nightmare.
The Andes split into three ranges at the
southern border. The mountains can climb
to 4,000 metres (13,000 feet) from sea level
in less than 100km. Colombia gets morerain than any other country in the world,
which makes maintenance difficult. Cur-
rently 12 major roads are blocked by mud-
slides. In a ranking of 137 national road net-
works by the World Economic Forum,
Colombia’s comes 110th.
Short of cash, the government has given
private firms concessions to build roads.
Vía al Llano, among the earliest projects
built under concession, has been accident-
prone. Recently a crater opened up in
Guayabetal, near the site of the biggest
mudslide. Under the terms of the contract
the government, not the concessionaire, isresponsible for carrying out the work need-
ed to prevent mudslides. It will now have to
do that, expensively.
To relieve los llanos’s isolation in the
meantime, Satena, a state-owned airline,
and EasyFly have announced more flights
between Bogotá and Villavicencio. The
government has suspended passenger fees
on flights between the cities. Tolls on the
two alternative roads will be halved. But
what the plains need most is a road that can
cope with Colombia’s treacherous, rain-
soaked topography. That goes for much of
the rest of the country. 7