Uruguayans Call for a National Vote on Impunity Law

Sixth months before Uruguay heads to the election polls, the signatures of over 340,000 Uruguayans suggest that the country will not only be electing a new President in late October. Pending the certification of the Uruguayan election court, Uruguayan citizens will also be determining the future of a law that many human rights activists have vigorously worked to undo for over two decades.

“A Success of Democracy”

The infamous Ley de Caducidad, or “Expiry Law,” was enacted as part of the return to formal democracy after nearly 12 years of civic-military dictatorship. It has been the subject of passionate controversy since going into effect in 1986. At the time, some believed the impunity law was one means of healing the deep wounds that came out of a dark period. The law provides legal shelter to military and police officials accused of human rights violations committed during the dictatorship. Others, however, claimed the measure was both unjust and unconstitutional, and thus sought to repeal the law through a national referendum—an effort which eventually failed in 1989.

But on April 24, Uruguayans witnessed a major step towards reopening what two decades ago appeared to be a piece of closed history. Before hundreds of human rights activists, 340,000 signatures (pending certification) were delivered to the Uruguayan parliament. The signatures were later transported to the Electoral Court which now has 90 days to validate the process and formally declare that a vote will be held in October.

According to Luis Puig, coordinator of the human rights commission of Uruguay’s central labor union, PIT-CNT, the delivery of signatures symbolized “a success of democracy” in Uruguay. Indeed, activists who have been collecting signatures around the country for well over a year surpassed the number of signatures needed to initiate a national plebiscite by over 75,000.

Now the work of the Coordinadora Nacional por la Nulidad de la Ley de Caducidad—the coordinating committee of the current human rights campaign in Uruguay—will shift toward mobilizing voters for an October plebiscite. According to a recent poll conducted by the Montevideo-based polling firm Factum, 46% of Uruguayans now favor overturning the controversial impunity law. Twenty-four percent remain undecided while 30% percent still support the legislation. And in Uruguay, a country where the human rights movement has long been linked to party politics, the outcome of the vote on the Ley de Caducidad may require that Frente Amplio, Uruguay’s center-left governing coalition, embrace the cause more overtly.

Tabaré Speaks

Speaking in Costa Rica on April 23, Tabaré Vázquez, Uruguay’s popular frenteamplista president, may have encouraged just such an embrace for the first time.

“Personally, I believe that the Uruguayan people do not deserve to have an impunity law like the one we currently have. I am completely against it and have been since the moment the National Commission for the Green Vote, of which I was a member, was created,” Vázquez maintained, referencing his own participation in the 1989 effort to repeal the expiry law. However, Vázquez added that in his institutional role as president he could not, in 2009, actively participate in the campaign seeking the same outcome.

President Vázquez’s statements were warmly welcomed by Coordinadora activists.

“These statements of Tabaré don’t surprise us,” remarked Luis Puig. “He’s a democrat who has always struggled against the Ley de Caducidad, and he is showing that he’s a president who knows how to listen to his people.”

But the president’s words were received with very little approbation by opposition leaders. Calling the president a “chameleon,” Jorge Larrañaga, a presidential contender from the centrist Partido Nacional argued that the president was simply trying to stir up his base. “The president had parliamentary majorities and did not repeal the law. Rather, he applied it for four years.” According to Luis Hierro, a presidential candidate from the conservative Partido Colarado, the president’s words were “politically immoral.”

For his part, Larrañaga also criticized the rationale behind Vázquez’s statements, maintaining that the annulment of the law right now is “not going to bring more truth because those that would be tried [if the law were annulled] have already been imprisoned.”

Following his election in 2005, Tabaré Vázquez became the first Uruguayan president to use special powers granted to the executive under Article 3 of Ley de Caducidad to exempt particular human rights cases from their position of impunity. In total, nearly 50 cases have been excluded over the last 4 years and some former officials, such as General Gregorio Alvarez, are now imprisoned.

Oscar Lopez Goldaracena. Photo courtesy of La Republica.