Left in Transformation: Uruguayan Exiles and the Latin American Human Rights Networks, 1967 – 1984

Abstract

Written in clear and comprehensible language, this book constitutes an important contribution to the study of transnational politics. It follows the political and ideological transformations of Uruguayan exiles during the years of their expatriation, when they were increasingly drawn into international human-rights networks. Vania Markarian provides an outstanding account of the motives and arguments at stake as exiled Uruguayan leftists and opposition activists sidelined their revolutionary rhetoric, if not their ideals, as part of the struggle to undermine the legitimacy of Uruguay’s authoritarian regimes. The author combines a careful reading of archival documents, interviews, published documents, and testimonies with a thorough knowledge of the literature on Latin American political history, international relations, and human rights. She traces the inner debates, tensions, and plurality of positions on the struggle against military rule, which eventually resulted in a progressive but only partial transition to a public discourse dominated by universal human rights.One cannot study late twentieth-century Uruguayan history without taking account of its diaspora of economic migrants, expatriates, and exiles. Between 1964 and 1981, nearly 14 percent of the population left the country due to the combined effects of economic crisis and political disarray. Yet, until recently, exile has been studied — as the author correctly indicates — mainly through a demographic optic. Such an optic downplays the role of individual actors and networks, particularly those who were politically motivated. In parallel, legal approaches on human rights tended, until recently, to decontextualize the implications of adopting such a discourse, sidelining a key research issue: namely, how the cultural and political landscapes were transformed by the changes experienced by the political opposition, particularly the Left, which previously had rejected human rights as a vacuous individualistic vision used by the United States in its confrontation with Communism during the cold war.Markarian stresses that participating in the work of human-rights networks “required revising the traditional heroic language of the left that made repression and abuses part of their expected political experience and eluded legalistic references and denunciations in order to stress social and economic claims” (p. 7). Her research reveals, however, that the leftists did not totally replace their worldview, as most maintained their ideology. Yet their exposure abroad and their perception of the changing global and domestic politics in the 1970s brought them to participate in the transnational human-rights network in order to denounce the repressive government of the homeland in the new global setting.The book traces in detail the progressive awareness — among both the exiles and the repressive government — of the idioms used in the global arena to gain or contest legitimacy. Transnational human-rights activism was increasingly viewed as providing “a common ground in the face of persecution and in the dispersed conditions of exile” (p. 105). Markarian shows how exiles remained politically fragmented in the 1970s and did not find common ground for a permanent unified action, as they disagreed on political strategy. However, they began to participate in local committees and solidarity groups, which thrived from 1976 to 1980, favored by changes in U.S. foreign policy and increased international interest in human rights. Yet, Uruguayan’s human-rights activism “did not rise above partisan exile politics to sustain common political action” (p. 108).Accordingly, although their actions against the Uruguayan military government would erode the regime’s international credibility, the exiles proved unable to articulate an alternative transitional plan for Uruguay. Their very success in raising awareness of human-rights violations caught them (and the government) by surprise, and they interpreted the isolation of the Uruguayan regime as the result of their own political activism and not as the result of change in U.S. or OAS policies. True enough, the exiles’ lobbying was a major factor. But exiles still characterized this activism in revolutionary terms, while projecting a contrasting external discourse of human-rights protection. They used the legitimizing discourse of human rights to convince European lawyers and American congressmen to aid their struggle against the authoritarian government. The discussion of whether the exiles perceived this tension and whether and how they tried to reconcile — or seclude — these separate agendas is one of the most interesting parts of the book.Similarly engaging is the chapter on the exiles’ return to Uruguay and the balance between political parties and human-rights activists between 1981 and 1984. Markarian shows how many leading politicians and the major parties, willing to negotiate the transition to democracy, hoped to set aside human-rights issues they viewed as detrimental to the process of negotiation (pp. 143 – 76). The exiles, who had been pioneers in adopting the language of human rights to talk about repression, also “ended up privileging national party strategies over transnational human rights work” (p. 183).Markarian is to be commended for taking up a systematic and “thick” analysis of the political exiles; her study has important implications for understanding the domestic limits on the universally acclaimed idiom of human rights. She manages not only to lay out the relationship between the domestic and the international arena in large strokes but also to trace the roles of individuals and organizations in promoting or hindering this transformation of the public spheres. She does not examine only the Left, in a strict sense, including politicians such as Wilson Ferreira Aldunate and Zelmar Michelini, but also transnational networks of solidarity, political-party organizations, domestic NGOs, and international organizations such as the OAS and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. She thus succeeds in presenting a clear and broad picture of the many and often contrasting voices that led, in unintended ways, to this political and cultural transformation. The book constitutes a major contribution to the scholarship on Uruguay’s recent political history, as well as an important resource for researchers and students of the evolution of human rights, international relations, and transnational networks.