Abstract:
This study analyzes different pathways through which Portugal, Spain, Argentina and Brazil with regard to the prosecution of human rights violations committed under exceptional regimes in four countries. The general objective of the research is to identify elements that help to understand why countries that have gone through similar transitions to democracy have established different legal strategies regarding the judgment and punishment of crimes committed by authoritarian regimes. This is a study carried out with a qualitative method, based on documental, bibliographic and database research, which performs a first comparison of the four cases. Based on the transitological studies, the hypothesis that guides the research was formulated. The hypothesis suggests that countries that have gone through transitions by rupture are more likely to punish crimes committed by a dictatorship, while countries that have gone through negotiated transitions have greater difficulties in doing so. The data compiled and analyzed in the article demonstrate that the hypothesis is partially correct, since the type of transition, in isolation, does not determine the pattern of judicialization of crimes committed by dictatorships in the countries selected for the study.
Keywords:
national securiy dictatorships; francoism; salazarism; politics of memory; judicial power