By Silvina Romano on December 6, 2022
photo: German Garcia Adrasti
The judicial process against Cristina Kirchner, and the latest evidence of association between the economic, media, legal and intelligence services in Argentina, once again highlight the relevance and effectiveness of political warfare through the courts.
Latin America is today, more than ever, a disputed space. Part of the conflict and political tensions seek to be settled in the legal field. Lawfare, initially associated with a “war against corruption”, has expanded to include electoral processes and financial apparatuses, including at times the script of the fight against drug trafficking and terrorism. It is a long term process that is not restricted to the instrumentalizing of the judicial apparatus for political purposes.
It is a political war through judicial-media channels, with economic, political and geopolitical interests hidden from public opinion. It incorporates judges, media corporations, journalists and opinion leaders, police, embassies and intelligence agents (local and foreign). It is characterized by the abuse of preventive imprisonment, rewarded accusations and verdicts before due process, through harassment and demoralization through the media. It includes raids on political premises and homes of militants, persecution and threats to family members, situations of exile and political refuge, manipulation and propagation of fear in those involved in certain political processes (lawfear). In recent years, these tactics have been used against dozens of leaders or former government officials and militants in Argentina, Ecuador, Brazil, Bolivia, El Salvador, Venezuela, linked to governments, programs or projects that question neoliberal orthodoxy to a greater or lesser extent.
This war operates “from above”, by means of a judicial apparatus that “rises” above the Legislative and Executive Branches, widening the margin of maneuver and power for judges, to the detriment of the loss of balance between powers, enabling a growing juristocracy and normalizing in many cases the double standard of the law. The elevation of the judicial apparatus and the selectivity in the cases is articulated with a leading role of the media, which operates for the prompt criminalization of political sectors or leaders. This dynamic is fed by the voices of specialists (many of them coming from U.S. think tanks) that have the force of truth and echo in the main media and social networks. It is striking the role of government agencies and U.S. private sector interests involved both in the judicial processes and in the results and events following them, which show the instrumentalization of the judicial-media apparatus in favor of foreign economic, political and geopolitical objectives, which share interests and business with local privileged minorities.
The lawfare process is not limited to the persecution of political parties and sectors linked to progressivism, but also advances against social protest, exacerbating the criminalization of militancy and politics, in a bid to save or strengthen neoliberalism, the technification of politics, the depoliticization of the State and the reinforcement of its repressive apparatuses.
In view of these processes, and considering the current situation of a dispute, the following text presents, in a first part, the regional and geopolitical context in which lawfare is produced, as well as the background of this strategy of destabilization and criminalization of politics, paying special attention to the role of the U.S. In a second part, specific cases have presented that account for the way in which lawfare operates: the actors, interests and dynamics involved.
Lawfare in Latin America today and its antecedents
Since the coup d’état in Venezuela in 2002, tensions between these processes of change and the political, economic and security guidelines established by the government and the private sector of the United States, which understands Latin America as its own territory or a “natural” part of its sphere of influence, gained materially and with greater visibility. Various tools of hard and soft power were deployed, embodied in destabilization processes and deliberate coup attempts (some successful, others truncated): civil-military coup, parliamentary coup, media coup, psychological warfare, hybrid warfare, with the aim of delegitimizing, demoralizing and ultimately expelling these experiences and their legacy from politics.
Source: Alai , translation Resumen Latinoamericano – US