Reconstruction of Temporality and the Rule of Law: The Never-Ending Transition in El Secreto de sus Ojos

Abstract

This article argues that expectations about transitional justice contribute to widespread ideas in mainstream comparative law contending that Latin American law has failed. We believe that these expectations are the result of understanding transitional justice as a mythological narrative that aims to interrupt time. To criticize this perspective, we “read” the 2009 Argentine film El Secreto de sus Ojos (The Secret in their Eyes) underscoring how the movie questions the notion that transitions break with the past. El Secreto de sus Ojos showcases a nonlinear reconstruction of time, its non-progressive ascension, and the continuity of the past in the present: the past-as-present. Following this cue, we question how the movie’s understanding of a Latin American legal system evidences a blind spot of mainstream transitional justice discourse. Our analysis thus challenges assumptions about the law in the Global South, offers a nuanced and reconstructed cultural understanding of law through its relationship with time, and proposes to use films as sites of critique for assumptions about time and space in comparative law.