A Review of Of Light and Struggle: Social Justice, Human Rights, and Accountability in Uruguay

Size matters. Somewhat paradoxically, Uruguay’s small size—a country of three million—and relative political unimportance made it a key player in international conversations about human rights in the late 1970s. In Of Light and Struggle: Social Justice, Human Rights, and Accountability in Uruguay, Rowan University historian Debbie Sharnak persuasively shows how the small country both shaped and was shaped by international human rights advocacy.

Of Light and Struggle: Social Justice, Human Rights, and Accountability in Uruguay (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023)

Uruguay became a laboratory of sorts for human rights advocacy in the late 1970s. At one point during Uruguay’s dictatorship, from 1973 to 1985, the country had “the highest rate of political incarceration in the world” (1), with one of every fifty of its inhabitants in jail. In 1976, Amnesty International (AI) chose Uruguay as the target of “its first-ever countrywide campaign against torture and political imprisonment” (5). AI’s move reflected the greater international attention on torture at the time. Just four years earlier, the organization had launched its Campaign for the Abolition of Torture, and in 1975, the United Nations General Assembly had adopted the Declaration on Torture.

For similar reasons, President Jimmy Carter selected Uruguay as a testing ground to integrate human rights into U.S. foreign policy. A focus on torture and political imprisonment resonated with the White House’s human rights priorities. Additionally, the administration felt it had little to lose politically in pushing human rights more aggressively into U.S. policies toward Uruguay. In furtherance of this goal, the “handpicked” embassy team held walk-in hours for the Uruguayan public to share information about cases of political imprisonment and disappearances (100). Sharnak notes that the Carter administration also rejected both Uruguay’s loan request and a USAID project with economic aid, encouraged opposition to the dictatorship, and worked with non-governmental organizations.

Sharnak also highlights the involvement of other groups outside of Uruguay that advocated to end the military dictatorship, such as the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), Americas Watch, the World Council of Churches and the Ford Foundation.

While Sharnak convincingly explains international interest in Uruguay, I found the story of how Uruguayans understood human rights to be even more compelling. Although Sharnak does not use the word, how Uruguayans framed human rights over time was like an accordion, expanding and contracting at various moments. Before 1973, when the dictatorship began, various groups broadly defined social justice and human rights to encompass economic and social rights. In this pre-dictatorship time, Uruguayans promoted rights that sprang not from outside ideas, such as the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights, but that were “universally recognized and embedded in historic ideas of Uruguay’s welfare state” (45). Uruguayan views came from the country’s history of providing for its people. In the early 20th century, Uruguay was frequently called the “Switzerland of South America” because of its “high literacy rates, advanced health care system, political democracy and perceived European racial makeup” (22).

Then, during the 1970s years of the dictatorship, the conversation about social justice and human rights constricted to concentrate on the violations of the dictatorship: disappearances, torture and political imprisonment. As Sharnak shows, this proved to be a double-edged sword. On one hand, these violations, which were also the focus of international human rights advocacy at the time, brought greater awareness about the conditions in Uruguay. On the other hand, spotlighting these kinds of violations meant neglecting the traditional emphasis on social and economic rights. In the process, the experiences of “other victim groups” (48), such as Afro-Uruguayans, Jews and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community were largely forgotten.

In 1980, Uruguay’s military government took the lead in promoting a limited definition of human rights. The government held a plebiscite, asking the public to increase the military’s constitutional powers. In appealing to voters, the military argued that human rights were the province of the state to enforce. At the same time, those against granting the military more power did not explicitly use human rights language to articulate their opposition. Even with this narrow dialogue about human rights, 57 percent of Uruguayan voters still rejected the measure.

During the transition period from the “no” vote to the election for new representatives in November 1984, the framing of human rights expanded. Taking inspiration from regional actors, Uruguayans established new human rights groups, and unions and student groups publicly reemerged. The discussion about human rights broadened from the 1970s dictatorship-focused violations to include earlier 1960s pre-dictatorship visions of social justice. But there were drawbacks to this approach, as Sharnak illustrates. Shifting away from the dictatorship’s abuses meant not debating accountability for those violations. In 1985 and 1986, as the country continued its democratic transition and as the parliament debated amnesty bills for the military, ideas of human rights continued to extend beyond violations of the dictatorship. 

The fight over the amnesty law saw a further growth of ideas about human rights as well as increased and more varied advocacy. As the Comisión Nacional Pro-Referéndum (National Pro-Referendum Commission CNPR) fought a court battle to hold a referendum challenging the amnesty law, Uruguay’s already existing and well-established human rights groups further developed their work, and groups by and for Afro-Uruguayans, women, and the LGBT community formed. Despite this increased human rights activity in Uruguay, the CNPR did not define its opposition to the amnesty law in human rights terms. Instead, CNPR argued the referendum was about restoring “people’s voices in democracy” (199). The approach revealed once again the fluidity of human rights over time.

The contradictions continued. In the 1989 election, 55.95 of voters in the referendum supported the amnesty law, keeping its provisions in place. At the same time, however, Uruguayans chose a former guerrilla fighter and political prisoner of the dictatorship as their president.

I appreciated Sharnak’s ability both to explain the road taken and to highlight the voices and experiences that were lost in pursuing that path. For example, Sharnak explains how Uruguay’s exile community—ten percent of Uruguayans—played key roles in spreading information about the conditions in Uruguay. Juan Raúl Ferreira, for instance, former political prisoner and son of a former senator and opposition leader, worked with WOLA. But who emigrated also mattered. The majority of exiles were not Afro-Uruguayans; instead, internal displacement was more often their fate. Consequently, Afro-Uruguayans’ perspectives and experiences were neither part of the human rights conversation nor the advocacy efforts in the 1970s.

Similarly, attention on Uruguay decreased when the United States and many international NGOs turned their gaze to the conflicts in Central America in the 1980s. Instead of Carter’s human rights emphasis, Ronald Reagan saw Uruguay in terms of its potential role in “regional debt issues, and support for U.S policy in Central America” (216). Although Uruguayans elected a civilian president in 1984, the move back to democracy was not instantaneous. Despite this, fewer international NGOs engaged in advocacy regarding Uruguay as the country debated the amnesty law.

Given this shift of attention, I wondered how Uruguayans and their supporters may have tried to integrate Uruguay back into international human rights conversations during the 1980s.  Did they borrow any successful tactics from the 1970s when the human rights conversation was more in line with what was happening in Uruguay, or did their advocacy approach fundamentally change?

Sharnak weaves together multiple actors in different places into a cohesive, easy to follow narrative. She details events within Uruguay, the country’s relationships with its regional neighbors and the broader international context. Her sources include governmental and NGO archival materials from Uruguay, the United States, Britain, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

Of Light and Struggle is thoughtfully and meticulously researched. Sharnak briefly notes that the Uruguayan military government hired a public relations firm to attempt to improve its image. I immediately wondered if it was the same entity that Anastasio Debayle Somoza hired around the same time in the late 1970s, especially since the way the Uruguayan military government described its enemies as communist sounded similar as well. In a footnote, Sharnak not only confirms the same company worked for both governments, but she also details how she made the discovery by tracking down a former employee of the PR firm. This kind of care is emblematic of Sharnak’s approach, and it is one of the reasons why I believe Of Light and Struggle is so noteworthy. Although those with an interest in Uruguay and human rights will be interested in the book, Debbie Sharnak’s clear and accessible writing style will appeal to readers with no background in these topics as well.

Theresa Keeley is an associate professor of history at the University of Louisville. Her book Reagan’s Gun-Toting Nuns: The Catholic Conflict over Cold War Human Rights Policy in Central America won the 2020 Juan E. Méndez Book Award for Human Rights in Latin America.