Confronting the Past: “Never Again” in Argentina

Raúl Alfonsín was Argentina’s first elected president following the 1982 collapse of the ruling military junta. As president from 1983 to 1989 he oversaw the complex and difficult process of dealing with the human rights violations that had occurred under the dictatorship. This article is adapted from a longer paper that he presented at the Salzburg Conference on Justice in Times of Transition, held in Salzburg, Austria, in March 1992 under the sponsorship of the Charter 77 Foundation (New York). Portions of this material were also presented in an address to the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., in April 1992.