This book explains how Argentines came to conceive of human rights after 1976—in antagonism to, in sympathy with, and with indifference toward the dictatorship that governed. It documents the emergence of human rights as a set of ideas stressing the military’s building of a chilling justification for state terror. As ludicrous as the military’s pro–human rights rationale became in the face of its horrifying record, the dictatorship narrative registered an important success overseas. By and large, Argentina was able to convince a majority of its international trade and diplomatic partners of it ... More

This book explains how Argentines came to conceive of human rights after 1976—in antagonism to, in sympathy with, and with indifference toward the dictatorship that governed. It documents the emergence of human rights as a set of ideas stressing the military’s building of a chilling justification for state terror. As ludicrous as the military’s pro–human rights rationale became in the face of its horrifying record, the dictatorship narrative registered an important success overseas. By and large, Argentina was able to convince a majority of its international trade and diplomatic partners of its fanciful pro–human rights narrative. In most countries, the Argentine military staved off the international human rights related critique that entered the language of foreign policy makers in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe. As a result, the dictatorship suffered minimal damage economically and diplomatically from human rights-related fall-out. The positive foreign relations legacy of military rule leads to one further stage of analysis. In early 1984, there was no more important factor in the transition from dictatorship to democracy than human rights. Even so, through the 1980s, the new democracy faced some of the same domestic and international pressures confronted by the dictatorship over rights. Weakened by a shaky 1980s economy, the new government often confirmed and defended the military’s international human rights record suggesting that the transition from dictatorship to democracy in Argentina was not the firm break with the past that Argentines had sought.