The legal challenges filed against former President Donald Trump this spring in New York and Georgia may be historic in the United States, but Latin America has decades of experience prosecuting former top political leaders.
Although former presidents from Peru to Argentina to Brazil have been charged with crimes or imprisoned in recent years, confidence in the justice system has not increased along with convictions and investigations.
Why did we write this?
Latin America has decades of experience holding some of its top leaders accountable for crimes and corruption. Why, then, do not more citizens trust the judicial system?
Successes in holding the powerful to account contrast with the politicization of the legal system here, while high rates of impunity for crimes that most often affect ordinary citizens undermine judicial credibility. If restoring confidence in the justice system in Latin America is possible, lawyers say, it will require stronger judicial independence as well as public accountability.
“Trust cannot be restored just by launching more legal investigations,” said Clara Lucarella, a lawyer at the Civil Association for Equality and Justice in Buenos Aires. What matters is “how these proceedings are conducted and whether the public has access to information to know what is going on.”
Prosecuting or imprisoning former political leaders is increasingly common in Latin America, with recent cases ranging from presidents accused or convicted of crimes in Peru to Argentina and Brazil.
Despite the conclusion that even the most powerful are not above the law, the court cases that have erupted in the region over the past two decades have not led to a corresponding increase in citizens’ trust in judicial systems.
Now that the world’s attention is focused on the historic impeachment of a former president of the United States, the history of Latin America is emerging as an example of how complex the concept of justice can be.
Why did we write this?
Latin America has decades of experience holding some of its top leaders accountable for crimes and corruption. Why, then, do not more citizens trust the judicial system?
Successes in holding the powerful to account contrast with the politicization of the legal system here, while high rates of impunity for crimes that most often affect ordinary citizens undermine judicial credibility. If restoring confidence in the justice system in Latin America is possible, lawyers say, it will require stronger judicial independence as well as public accountability.
“Trust cannot be restored just by launching more legal investigations,” said Clara Lucarella, a lawyer at the Civil Association for Equality and Justice in Buenos Aires. What matters is “how these proceedings are conducted and whether the public has access to information to know what’s going on,” he says.
Victor R. Kaivano / A.P
“The judicial system needs structural reforms that cannot be implemented by a single government. These should be agreed upon and debated issues that engage citizens to think about what kind of judicial system we want for society.”
“Reporting Agents”
The fall of Latin American dictatorships in the late 1970s and 1980s brought the judicial reforms necessary for democracy to take root. Truth and reconciliation commissions in places like Argentina, Chile, and Guatemala allowed fledgling democracies to gain credibility and lay the groundwork for journalists and civil society to operate with considerable freedom. From Mexico to Brazil, international investment in technical training and 21st-century reforms has boosted judicial professionalism and independence.
“Courts almost universally across Latin America began to become more independent, acting as accountability agents willing and able to challenge or address corruption and enforce the political rules of the game,” said Bruce Wilson, a political scientist at the university. Central Florida.
However, in recent years the dividing line between judicial processes and politics has begun to blur in many countries, undermining this sense of independence.
For example, in the months before Nicaragua’s 2021 presidential election, Daniel Ortega’s government arrested more than a dozen political rivals, many of them on baseless charges of treason. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva spent 18 months in prison before his conviction was overturned, which the Supreme Court said was politically biased. Peru’s Pedro Castillo is one of the last seven presidents to be either jailed or investigated for corruption, and while Peruvian prosecutors have been praised for their anti-corruption probes, they have also been criticized for moving too quickly to pretrial detention. Only one of these former Peruvian presidents has been convicted of a crime.
The judicial system “can start to become a tool”, says Mr Wilson. “Everybody’s corrupt if you’re trying to get them out of office.”
According to Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer, about 21% of Latinos trust their government, while 27% of Latinos trust their courts. Distrust can come from one’s own experience with the justice system, said Luis Pasara, a Peruvian lawyer and senior fellow at the Due Process of Law Foundation in Washington.
If petty robbery or neighborhood violence is not investigated professionally or regularly, faith in the justice system can be undermined at the citizen level. For example, when the former president of Peru, Alberto Fujimori, was sentenced to prison for a series of crimes, there was a positive response, but not a lasting one, Mr. Pasara said. “Ordinary experiences weigh more heavily on the citizen’s conscience.”
Martin Mejia/AP/File
Latin American citizens perceive high levels of corruption among their government officials, according to LAPOP Lab’s AmericasBarometer, with the highest levels of perceived lawlessness in Peru and Brazil. And impunity is a much bigger problem in Latin America than in the US, Canada or Europe, according to the 2022 Global Impunity Index. Honduras, Paraguay and Mexico are among the countries where the fewest crimes are detected. According to Human Rights Watch, only 1.3% of crimes committed in Mexico are disclosed.
When Argentina’s Vice President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was found guilty of fraud in public works contracts late last year, Juan Manuel Peralta, a businessman in his 30s in Buenos Aires, barely batted an eye. He is not the first, or even the second or third, former president to be prosecuted in his lifetime.
“When the party changes, the new government follows the previous administration,” he says. “What should remain unchanged is justice.”
He says he would be more likely to trust the courts if Argentina’s politicians were not protected by the immunity that protects former presidents who continue to serve as senators or in other public offices.
“The maximum will be a conviction, but you will never see a politician in prison. That’s what makes you angry,” he says.
Populism and polarization
Each case is different, but the war of narratives that have emerged reflects a theme common to all countries where prosecutions of politicians are frequent: citizens are unsure when or whether to trust the judicial process itself.
Populist politics and polarization fuel deeply divided perspectives that increasingly revolve around loyalty to the individual, while access to reliable public information about the trials is limited.
“No one even believes journalists anymore,” says Mr. Peralta.
The way judicial systems in Latin America carry out their work “reinforces and perpetuates a culture of secrecy… generating a high degree of mistrust and distance from citizens,” according to a report published earlier this year by the Regional Alliance Network. civil organizations throughout Latin America.
Erica Page/The Christian Science Monitor
Costa Rica and Argentina have made progress on data transparency and accessibility by making information about court proceedings available online. And 16 countries in the region have signed up to the Open Government Partnership, a global network that requires members to publish and report on their implementation of national action plans in the areas of transparency, accountability and public participation.
Meanwhile, high-level political convictions continue to matter little to people like Félix Díaz, president of Argentina’s Indigenous People’s Participatory Consultative Council.
“We don’t have justice, we don’t have human rights, or money to hire a lawyer,” says Mr. Diaz as a steady stream of tourists snaps photos of the Casa Rosada, Argentina’s presidential palace, with their backs turned. to the tent where he and 11 others have been living for the past three years, demanding political and legal support for indigenous communities.
“We still haven’t found a reason to trust.”