Seeking Human Rights Justice in Latin America

This book studies how victims of human rights violations in Latin America, their families, and their advocates work to overcome entrenched impunity and seek legal justice. Their struggles show that legal justice is a multifaceted process, the overarching purpose of which is to restore human dignity and prevent further violence. Uncovering, revealing, and proving the truth are essential elements of legal justice, and are also powerful tools to activate the process. When faced with stubborn impunity at home, victims, families, and advocates can carry on their work for legal justice by bringing cases in courts in other countries or in the Inter-American human rights system. These extra-territorial courts can jumpstart the process of legal justice at home. Seeking Human Rights Justice in Latin America examines the political and legal struggle through the lens of the human story at the heart of these cases.

• This book is among the first to study legal justice for human rights violations in Latin America through the experiences of the participants themselves
• First book to analyze how secret government documents, such as the Guatemalan Death Squad Dossier and CIA communiques, have affected legal cases abroad and at home
• Among the first books to show that exposing the truth through secret documents and testimony are essential parts of legal justice for human rights violations