Argentina and the case of Baltasar Garzón

Baltasar Garzón is probably the internationally best known judge working on a national level. The Spanish judge was born in Torres de Albánchez in the Province of Jaén in Andalusia. After a side trip into politics in 1993, when he ran for the Spanish parliament on the list of the left PSOE party, he quickly dedicated himself to his career as a judge. Baltasar Garzón is currently the examining magistrate of the Juzgado Central de Instrucción No. 5 of Spain’s Central Criminal Court, the Audiencia Nacional. In this position he is in charge of judging Spain’s most important criminal cases.

Baltasar Garzón is considered one of the most active judges in using the principle of universal law and was one of the driving forces that constituted Spain's role as the nation with one of the widest interpretations of universal jurisdiction worldwide*. He is probably best known for issuing an international arrest warrant against the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet who had previously profited from a life-long amnesty as a member of the Chilean senate. The arrest warrant was eventually enforced by the United Kingdom but extradition to Spain was denied on health grounds.

Baltasar Garzón also tried to lift Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's immunity from prosecution at the Council of Europe in April 2001 and repeatedly expressed a desire to investigate the involvement of the former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the killings of leftist opposition figures in the Southern Cone in 1975, known as Operation Condor. Additionally he opened investigations on systematic torture in the cases of former prisoners at the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay.
It is rather obvious that Garzón has a knack for taking up spectacular and sensational cases, an approach that is not beyond criticism for a judge who should act on purely legal considerations. Nevertheless his actions in strengthening universal law highlighted cases of impunity and furthered the notion of the primacy of the rule of law worldwide.

But Baltasar Garzón is also an inconvenient judge on the national level. With his investigations into the party financing of the Spanish Conservative Party, the Partido Popular (PP), and against a PSOE minister involved in creating death squads to fight the ETA terrorist organisation between 1983 and 1987, he has made himself enemies in both political camps. This fact is currently backfiring on him as he has come under fire for allegedly exceeding his authorities in the scope of an investigation.

Baltasar Garzón started investigating the crimes of the Franco regime during the dictatorship even though an amnesty was democratically passed in 1977. Three organisations, including the radical right wing party Falange, have sued him for perversion of justice. The Spanish High Court has opened the trial against him and the administrative body of the Spanish judges will decide on Thursday if Garzón will be stripped from his office. Scores of Spanish victim's and civil society organisations, including film stars and directors like Pedro Almódovar, are protesting against the proceedings.

It is an obvious scandal that right-wing parties can not only fend off investigations into crimes committed during the dictatorship but even put the judges investigating these crimes under pressure. Internationally the acceptance for amnesties is rapidly diminishing, a development emphasized by the creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Rome Statute, establishing the ICC, has already been signed by over 110 states with obvious repercussions on the validity of amnesties covering war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocides. Passing the 1977 amnesty would be all but impossible nowadays. An amnesty could only be possible if concrete steps to investigate the crimes are taken and the truth is brought into the open. Those directly responsible for the crimes could not completely evade punishment and the victim's rights would receive considerably more attention today.

In an ironical twist of history, the Argentinean attorney Carlos Slepoy has now declared that he will apply for taking up criminal proceedings in connection to crimes against humanity or even genocide committed by the Franco regime. Ironically, Garzón himself had started investigations against Argentinean Junta leaders in the past, thus contributing to their amnesty being revoked. Now it is possible that we will witness the first case in which Argentina applies the principle of universal jurisdiction itself, another indicator that the relation between Europe and Latin America is changing. Latin America's democracies are sufficiently self-confident today to teach European states a lesson in respecting victim's rights, a thought that will surely cost some Europeans to adapt to.

A victim's organisation has started a collection of signatures against the indictment of Baltasar Garzón at http://www.afeco.org/

*Even though the use of universal jurisdiction has increasingly been limited due to the political fallout of the cases. The criteria for the cases having a direct relevancy for Spain have been strengthened, reason for the failure of the attempt to start investigations into the Operation Cast Lead of the Israeli Defence Force in Gaza by the end of 2008 in Spain.

What Europe and Latin America can learn from each other

In 2010 many Latin American states are celebrating their 200 years of independence anniversaries, called 'bicentenario' in Spanish. Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela and Colombia are preparing their respective celebrations with growing enthusiasm. In Mexico there will be a soccer tournament to celebrate independence and Colombia sports its own 'bicentenario' hymn. The celebrations also mark a point in history at which the relations between Latin America and Europe were transformed in a decisive way. Simon Bolívar, Francisco de Miranda in Venezuela and Miguel Hidalgo in Mexico, to name a few, all played their part in liberating Latin America from Spanish domination from 1810 onwards. Nevertheless the independence wars were mainly an elite revolution fought by the influential criollos (people of mixed Spanish and indigenous descent) for their own liberty. They did not bring liberty to the indigenous people of Latin America who were still considered of lower social status by the criollos.
The accumulation of independence anniversaries in 2010 is a welcome opportunity to have a look at how Europe and Latin America have fared since the former Spanish colonies gained their right to self-determination.

Europe has witnessed a fundamental transformation during the last 200 years. The ideas of the French revolution were still fresh and the consecutive waves of change were still rippling the political framework of the 'old continent'. The reality of Europe was still dominated by powerful nation states engaged in antagonistic relations and competing for influence within and outside of Europe. Balance of power politics and changing allegiances, accompanied by regular outbursts of war, shaped the relations between Europe's nations.

Today, the continent has grown together politically and economically in the scope of the European Communities. Only small patches of the continent remain outside the Union, either out of their own choice (Switzerland, Norway) or because they are not yet fulfilling the criteria for acceptance as Member States. While non-EU states like Switzerland and Norway are politically and economically integrated despite lacking membership, states like Croatia and Serbia are on their way towards accession.
But political crises like the fallout of the financial and economic crisis show that the cultural differences between European countries remain and sometimes lead to quarrels and misunderstandings. Germans are complaining about the mentality of sloppy accounting of southern Member States like Greece and do not want to pay other people's bills. France is pointing at German selfishness when addressing the growth of the German economy bought at the cost of wage sacrifice and the competitiveness of neighbouring economies.
Every European who has lived for some time in another Member State or has family in another European country has made his experiences with cultural differences. Most of the time these encounters are enriching experiences, opening our eyes for different cultural contexts. But sometimes it is frightening to see how easy it is to be misunderstood when out of one's own cultural context. Add to this mix of European cultures the cultures of the migrant groups living in many European cities and you have a huge variety of different cultural backgrounds crammed together on a relatively small continent. It is probably not surprising that the cultural cohabitation between Europeans of different nationality and migrants from different origins does still not run smoothly.

Latin America on the other hand is still in the process of economical and political cohesion. The difficulties in covering the large distances between Latin American states (intracontinental plane flights are not affordable for a large portion of the population) and the pervasiveness of political conflicts between them are a clear indicator for this. Even though Latin American integration is advancing, there is still a very long way to go. Culturally, on the other hand, Latin America is a remarkable example for a unique continent-wide culture including African, European and Latin American roots. Nobody who has read books by authors from different Latin American countries can deny the closeness in style and the same cultural roots of, say, Colombia's Gabriel García Marquez and Uruguay's Juan Carlos Onetti. The continent shares a common Iberian linguistic heritage, defying the trend of accepting English as the global 'lingua franca'. And the mix of cultures to be found on the continent is a herald of things to come with the advancing globalization. The strength Latin America can draw from its rich cultural heritage in the globalized world of tomorrow is considerable.

On a shrinking planet, the political, economical and cultural cohesion of regions is key for ensuring their influence on a global scale. While Europe has advanced on the political and economical level, it has a lot to learn from cultural cohesion in Latin America. The mix of cultures that respects African, European and indigenous roots could be a blueprint for a culturally unified Europe that does not overwrite its unique and diverse cultures by some kind of standardized culture, but produces a synthesis that is larger than the sum of it's parts. Growing together on a cultural level does not imply to lose the respect for the cultural roots of the different Member States. Latin America is the living example for this.