The right to justice vs. policies of oblivion: Uruguay's transitional justice domestic developments and the inter American court of human rights' Gelman case sentence (2010-2011)

Uruguay has gone from having the highest per capita rate of political imprisonment and torture in the world to one of the best records in human rights in the developing world –in a region that has gone through an intensification of justice accountability processes. The presentation will provide an analysis of the development and latest challenges brought by the civic struggle for accountability and justice and the dismantling of institutionalized policies of oblivion and impunity in Uruguay (1986-2005) concerning gross human rights crimes committed during the civic-military dictatorship (1973-1985), and the overturning of the expiry law which sheltered perpetrators of gross human rights abuses after 25 years of institutionalized impunity. ‘Politics of Oblivion’ are here understood as dominant state policies and practices purposefully oriented to blocking targeted civilian-victim’s path to seek accountability, truth and justice for gross human rights state crimes of the authoritarian period during the transitional regime (1985-2005), policies and institutionalized practices which have recently been challenged both by domestic civic social and legal as well as regional mobilization. The impact of exemplary social and legal mobilization legal cases on these developments will be examined, such as the Elena Quinteros (2008-2010) and Julio Castro case (2011-2012) and the Gelman vs. Uruguay case, heard before the Inter American Court of Human Rights (IACrtHR) in 2010 and sentenced in March 2011, in disabling impunity regime’s central legal piece, a 1986 Expiry law (Ley de Caducidad) after twenty-five years.