Acknowledgments
This book grew out of a conversation I had as a graduate student with my dear friend Ximena Medellín, during a coffee break outside the Hesburgh Library at the University of Notre Dame. It is certainly not common for a lawyer and a political scientist to be interested in the same questions, but there we were, braving the cold, cigarette in hand, equally puzzled by a phenomenon that we had both recently come across: Judges in Latin American countries with different histories of violence and state repression were beginning to respond in very similar ways to victims’ demands for criminal accountability. In the process, judicial actors were reconfiguring the region’s legal tradition by making an unprecedented use of international human rights law. Looking back at that conversation, it is remarkable how a few minutes came to shape my long-term obsessions, revolutionize my social networks, and lead me to incur many debts. Let me begin repaying some of them.
During my time at Notre Dame, Daniel Brinks, Michael Coppedge, Frances Hagopian, Scott Mainwaring, Monika Nalepa, David Nickerson, and Guillermo O’Donnell were wonderful advisers. They all cared deeply about my intellectual growth, well-being, and professional success. I will always be grateful for the time that they shared with me, and for their words of wisdom along the way. When this book was still an unwritten dissertation my graduate school friends were also an invaluable source of support. Juan Abarracín, Sandra Botero, Rodrigo Castro, Laura Gamboa, Craig García, Lucrecia García Iommi, Víctor Hernández, Chad Kiewiet de Jonge, Esteban Manteca, Ximena Medellín, Carlos Meléndez, Javier Osorio, and Nara Pavao all offered constructive feedback on this and other projects, and generally made my time in South Bend unforgettable.
The Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE) in Mexico City offered the perfect environment to begin the challenging process of turning the dissertation into a book. I was lucky to have the opportunity to start my professional journey in such a supportive and stimulating community. I completed the manuscript after I moved to Oxford, where my colleagues in the Department of Politics and International Relations and Nuffield College were incredibly welcoming. Ben Ansell, Nancy Bermeo, Des King, Leigh Payne, and Laurence Whitehead deserve special thanks for guiding me through the intricacies of the publishing world.
Over the years I benefited immensely from the feedback I received at seminars at the Due Process of Law Foundation in Washington, D.C., FLACSO Mexico, the University of Chicago, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Buenos Aires, and the University Torcuato Di Tella. Karina Ansolabehere, Sandra Botero, Eduardo Dargent, Matthew Ingram, Ximena Medellín, Paula Muñoz, Virginia Oliveros, Julio Ríos Figueroa, and Mariela Szwarcberg read parts of the manuscript, sometimes more than once, and gave me thoughtful and constructive comments.
Funding for this project was provided by the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Doing fieldwork can be a frustrating and confusing experience, but I was fortunate to come across generous and effective gatekeepers, including Mariclaire Acosta, Milagros Campos, Martín Costanzo, Eduardo Dargent, Sol Déboli, María Amparo Hernández, Juan Pablo Iriarte, Francesca Lessa, Vladimir León, Ximena Medellín, Carlos Meléndez, Paula Muñoz, Leigh Payne, Xisca Pou, José Carlos Requena, Julio Ríos Figueroa, Juan Pedro Rosolén, Fabián Sánchez, Milagros Sanz, Lucrecia Servini, Jessica Sircovich, María Sirvent, Catalina Smulovitz, Karina Tchrian, and Sofía Tiscornia. I am also grateful to everyone at the Instituto de Democracia y Derechos Humanos of the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, especially to Víctor Quinteros, José Alejandro Godoy, and Orieta Pérez Barreto, who gave me the institutional support I needed to infiltrate the Peruvian judiciary. Vanesa Baldino, Itzel de Haro, Marco de la O, Tomás Quesada, and Esteban Valle Riestra were excellent research assistants both in the field and back in the office. A special thank you goes to the Argentine, Brazilian, Peruvian, Mexican, and Uruguayan judges, prosecutors, and clerks who made room for me in their incredibly busy schedules. After learning about the conditions in which some of them work, and the pressures to which they are often subject, I cannot but express admiration for what they do.
At Cambridge University Press John Berger was immensely supportive of this project from the very start. Helen Francis and Susan Thornton provided helpful editorial assistance. The comments I received from two anonymous reviewers were simply outstanding, and greatly improved the quality of the final product. At Oxford, Fay Clarke and Claire Peacock did a wonderful job proofreading the entire manuscript.
Some of the material in Chapter 3 was originally published in “Persuade Them or Oust Them: Crafting Judicial Change and Transitional Justice in Argentina,” in Comparative Politics, and is reprinted here with kind permission from the editors.
I met Matt when we were both struggling to finish our first books. He revolutionized my world, often guiding chaos into order, and generally making me laugh. I am very lucky to have him by my side, and hope this is just the first of many dedications. My brother Pedro and the two amazing women who raised me, my grandmother Esther and my mom, María Ester, are the three most important people in my life. My mother deserves more than just a few lines of acknowledgment. Her courage and self-respect will always be an inspiration. For my family, letting me go at the age of eighteen, when I decided to embark on a still ongoing academic adventure that took me away from Argentina, first to the University of Cambridge, then to the United States, and then back to Britain via Mexico, was indeed difficult. It was especially tough for my aging grandmother, whose eyes in every farewell concealed the doubt of whether that would be the last one. But their incommensurable love led them to support me every step of the way. I will be eternally grateful because without their encouragement it would have been much harder to pursue my dreams. For these and many other reasons, this book is dedicated to the memory of my grandmother, who passed away when I began working on this project, and to my mother, who always has my back.
