Transitional Justice in the Americas

Abstract

Abstract Transitional justice (TJ) has been broadly understood as a set of exceptional, selective, temporary, and transitory peace-building mechanisms—legal and otherwise—employed in the aftermath of extreme situations of conflict or tyranny. Implicit in this framing, however, lies a specific way of conceptualizing the types and temporalities of political violence, through which certain processes are rendered legible under international law while others are rendered relatively invisible before the eyes of the law. In this chapter, we interrogate some of the exclusions that have characterized past processes of TJ in some parts of the Americas. As an example, we argue that the traditional understanding of these mechanisms has tended to elide questions of racial discrimination and political economy—especially in relation to the plight of First Nations, Indigenous, and Afro-American Peoples. Then, we highlight some of the present challenges that these exclusions have brought. Finally, we conclude with some future questions that we suggest haunt TJ, insofar as they push us to reckon with the ways we have adopted to come to terms with legacies of widespread violence in an increasingly illiberal world.