Engaging Garzón

Abstract

ENGAGING GARZÓN FERNANDO GOMEZ Stanford University Asustained engagement with Garzón, surely acontroversial and energizing personality, will make us question the historical associations between the forms ofthe letter (i.e. literature) and the mechanisms ofdiscipline, punishment, reward and neglect (i.e. legal culture). This interrogation should also include the shadowy areas, the shortcomings and blank spots, the limitations and miseries ofboth. Garzón is arguably one ofthe most distinguishedjudges in the world today, yet his name is not immediately recognizable in the United States. The array ofhis professional activities is truly astonishing; his cases are so numerous and so salient as to make a synthesis difficult, to say the least. This is one possibility: Garzón's work points towards the obsolescence ofthe self-sustaining national sovereignty model within the big picture ofpolitical and legal life. Garzón's work also inevitably calls into question the "foreign affairs" model ofengagement with the world, and its variant the "(foreign) area studies" model, not to mention the "winner ofhistory" model. In other words, his work reveals the falsity ofmany dichotomies: domestic versus international, local versus global, provincial and settled versus migrant and cosmopolitan —just as the proud invocation ofany one nationality in relation to Garzón's cases always smells strongly of fascism. It is safe to say that Garzón is an uncomfortable figure both inside and outside Spain. Yet one may wonder if productive thought and bold new practices may not come out of this quite genuine discomfort. For one thing, the Western Europe that Garzón comes from is quite different from the standard and (why not say it?) repressive Western Europe that one sees officially represented in the United States. This different Europe, let us say, is also virtually unintelligible socially, politically, historically, and emotionally without the strong ties and tensions with the vast human dimension that we shorthand as Latin America. Garzón is thus the wedge (surely just one metaphor among many others) that will help us break the political imagination open to some ofthe worst possible nightmares ofcriminality inside a total picture that includes all ofus. And here there is little comfort. My perception is that Garzón inside Spain does not have one single defining personality. No soundbite or easy labeling will do here. He has been© 2004-2005 NUEVO TEXTO CRITICO Vol. XVII-XVIII No. 33-36 BALTAZAR GARZÓN involved in cases of international drug trafficking, money laundering, terrorism (ETA), state terrorism (GAL) under the former Socialist Goverment, mass media monopolies (SOGECABLE), etc. Outside Spain, the situation is quite different. Here, especially since he sought the extradition ofAugusto Pinochet from British authorities, he is seen almost exclusively as a superhero in the defense of human rights. In the United States, silence often surrounds Garzón — except when he is in the shadow ofthe aging General. Why is this? Some have accused his celebrity' status as part ofthe problem, as though the slow wheels ofjustice inevitably required the secluded quietness ofdarker rooms innational headquarters. Still, this reduced version ofhis legal personality may actually do something good: to write in bold letters that the mockery of the human rights affects virtually all nations in Latin America today. The truth is that it is precisely the unnerving issue of systematic human rights violations that allows the so-called Third World to have a place in the academic cultures of legal and literary scholarship in the rich democracies, at least temporarily. ...