515 Esther del Campo García The armed forces and public opinion in latin america 7. ARMED FORCES AND HUMAN RIGHTS Another crucial problem with civil-military relations in a post-dictatorial period is the way in which the human rights violations committed by regular (and irregular) security forces during the years of dictatorship have been dealt with under democratic government. Over the course of transition negotiations, the illegitimate acts committed during the “dirty wars” by the military class and by middle-ranking officers were a complicated matter to address. Before abandoning power, those in the military tried to institutionalise a system of impunity by implementing legislation on amnesty in advance. This procedure ensured that for many years legislation on human rights violations was extremely unsatisfactory. The fact that such special legislation existed and the ease of transferring proceedings with high political impact to the military judicial system lead in practice to de facto immunity in Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras and Peru, as well as in other countries. Once again using the new AmericasBarometer data, we thus observe whether Latin American citizens believe that the armed forces respect human rights in the region today. In most countries, the majority of those questioned expressed support for this statement; in 13 of the 15 cases analysed this was above 50%. It is only in Bolivia and Honduras where a significant number of those surveyed consider that the armed forces do not respect human rights. It is once more worth stressing the “Honduran exception”, even though only 30% of Hondurans cite crime/security as the principal problem, this is fewer than half of the 61% who say the same in Venezuela (Latinoba-rómetro Corporation, 2011).44 44 Latinobarómetro Corporation (2011), op. cit., p. 71.
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