Argentine earns respect on rights

BUENOS AIRES — A week before President Nestor Kirchner’s inauguration last year, rumors swirled that he would broker a backroom deal with the Supreme Court, definitively sealing the immunity enjoyed by military and police officers who committed atrocities during the 1976-1983 dictatorship.

In the previous two decades, all three of his democratically elected predecessors had blocked efforts to bring these officers to justice in order to obtain the support of the armed forces. Many Argentines expected the same from Mr. Kirchner, elected by a slim margin as the candidate for the dominant Peronist party.

But to the surprise of nearly everyone in Argentina, including members of his party, Mr. Kirchner has done the opposite. Since taking office on May 25, he has led an unrelenting campaign to redress the abuses committed during the military regime, which tortured and executed between 9,000 and 30,000 people.

In the process, the president has won broad public backing and turned skeptical human rights activists into his most fervent supporters.

“It seems too good to be true,” said Tati Almeida, who for 23 years has spent nearly every Thursday afternoon in the Plaza de Mayo, the square in front of the presidential mansion, demanding that the government prosecute those responsible for “disappearing” — kidnapping and killing — her son Alejandro.

“For so many years, we’ve been going to the presidential mansion and getting the door shut in our faces,” said Mrs. Almeida. “Now, we’re in frequent contact with the president. He actually calls us directly to ask for our advice. We’re finally achieving what we had asked for so many times, for so many years, something we never imagined would ever happen.”

Mr. Kirchner began winning over human rights groups on his second full day in office, when he forced the retirement of half the country’s generals and admirals in an attempt to purge the military of its old guard.

He has since signed a decree permitting the extradition of Argentines responsible for crimes during the dictatorship, leading to the arrest of dozens of officers accused of genocide, torture and terrorism by Spanish investigative Judge Baltasar Garzon.

Mr. Kirchner also had Congress cancel two amnesty laws pardoning lower-ranking officers and setting a date after which wrongdoers from the dictatorship could not be prosecuted. The constitutionality of the two laws and the fate of military and police officers shielded by them will be settled by the Supreme Court.

Most recently, the president opened a museum of remembrance at the site of the dictatorship’s most notorious concentration camp. In a scorching critique of the elected governments that preceded his, including the 1989-1999 presidency of fellow Peronist Carlos Menem, he asked “forgiveness for the shame of having been silent about so many atrocities during 20 years of democracy.”

Observers say Mr. Kirchner’s efforts to bring human rights violators to justice are unprecedented in Latin America, where the abuses of repressive regimes are rarely punished, even after a transition from dictatorship to democracy.

“It’s not so much that Kirchner has taken a strong stand on human rights, but that he’s taken a stand that is so principled and so much reflects what the most vocal people in the human rights movement have been calling for,” said Sebastian Brett, who monitors Argentina, Chile and Bolivia for Human Rights Watch.

“It’s extremely rare, if not unique, that a president simply takes up the flag from the human rights movement,” Mr. Brett added.

Efforts to redress atrocities committed under authoritarian regimes are also under way in Chile and Mexico. But human rights groups in both countries complain that government action has been slow and halfhearted, hobbled by the continued power of the military. In Brazil, rights activists say the government has been reluctant to disclose information about the massacre of leftist guerrillas in the 1970s to mollify the armed forces.

Mr. Kirchner, meanwhile, has faced little resistance to his offensive against the upper echelons of the armed forces. Since the end of the dictatorship, the military budget and personnel have been greatly reduced.

And in contrast to other Latin American states, uniformed soldiers are rarely seen on the streets of Argentina, a sign of the widespread contempt in which the military is held here.

“Kirchner can make these moves without a genuine fear of instability,” said Mr. Brett. “People in Argentina are more or less united 100 percent in support of the victims of human rights violations. There’s no sense that a sector of the community is actually supporting what the military did — which is not the case in Chile.”

Mr. Kirchner has complemented his aggressive human rights policy with an assault on the country’s discredited institutions, forcing out three Supreme Court justices, purging the top ranks of the federal police and investigating the state-run health fund for retired people.

Many Argentines associate the immunity granted to the military with the corruption and malfeasance of their politicians, whom they blame for the country’s deepest depression ever.

After hitting rock bottom in 2002, the economy is now showing signs of recovery, and Mr. Kirchner’s approval rating has risen above 80 percent, among the highest of any president in Latin America.

“Public opinion in Argentina right now favors a president with convictions, not compromises,” said Marcos Novaro, a Buenos Aires-based political analyst. “Kirchner has appeared as a leader who affirms moral values. He has presented an image of a guy who is decided, and who has bulletproof principles.”

But the president’s human rights crusade is beginning to earn him enemies among conservatives, including many Peronists who feel he has swung the party too far to the left.

Last month, five Peronist governors refused to attend the opening of the museum of remembrance. Soon after, a Peronist convention degenerated into a shouting match when Mr. Kirchner’s wife, a Peronist senator, obliquely insulted the wives of two party bosses, including former President Eduardo Duhalde.

Mr. Kirchner was elected with the backing of Mr. Duhalde, the unofficial Peronist leader. Several prominent Peronists chosen for leadership posts at the convention, including party President Eduardo Fellner, have since resigned their posts, apparently under pressure from Mr. Kirchner.

The dust may have settled for now, but analysts warn that this recent spat may augur a more serious rift in the months to come.

Mr. Kirchner was a political outsider before becoming president. He was governor of a sparsely populated province in Patagonia — the southern stem of the continent that reaches toward Antarctica.

As president, he has strong popular backing but a weak base of support within his party, which controls the Senate and a majority of governorships and mayoralties. So far, the Peronists have supported Mr. Kirchner and given the president considerable latitude.

But analysts say his go-it-alone style and his tendency to make alliances with non-Peronists while criticizing members of his own party chafes many influential Peronists.

“The president and his party have separated,” wrote political columnist Joaquin Morales Sola recently in La Nacion, the conservative Buenos Aires daily. “The president is alone, accompanied by nothing more than the polls, which represent one of the most fickle and inconstant societies we know.”