From one Continent to another: the Transnational Disappeared, the Humanitarian Culture and the Total Victims in Global War Times

Abstract

In recent years, in Spain, the detained-disappeared figure has been incorporated in public debate, in the experience of pro-human rights movements and, to a lesser degree, in the legislative practice. Extending the findings derived from a research on the social universes of the detained-disappeared that took place in Argentina and Uruguay from 2005 to 2008, this text investigates the peculiarities of the disappeared’s journey from the South of Latin America to the Iberian Peninsula. Without discussing whether the inadequacy or not between the Spanish case and the international humanitarian justice definition constructed about the detained-disappeared, this paper explores the Spanish and global “success” of this figure in relation to three references (the humanitarian world, the transitional justice and the humanitarian international Wright, and the idea of victim) and a context (the “global war against terrorism”). Using the formers and the latter, that is the hypothesis, it is explained the ascension of the disappeared to the highest positions in the “hierarchy of despair”, the one that organizes the global and total victims