Paths of Citizenship and the Legacy of Human Rights Violations: The Cases of Redemocratized Argentina and Uruguay

Through a comparison of redemocratized Argentina and Uruguay, this article shows how distinct historical paths of citizenship affect the strategies and practices enacted in different political communities. The analysis focuses on the societal confrontation with the legacy of human rights violations as the new democratic governments attempted to balance normative principles with political contingencies. Embedded in their particular paths of citizenship, both societies adopted different strategies of post-dictatorial justice and reconciliation, with Argentina achieving a tenuous institutional resolution of this confrontation, while Uruguay achieved a shared resolution, bolstered by popular mobilization and debate, which reinforced the component of civility in its collective identity.