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Though many human rights attorneys know the outcome of Filartiga v. Pena-Irala—the precedent-setting legal case that paved the way for enforcing international human rights in U.S. courts—few may be aware of its genesis. The story of this tragic case began in March 1976 when seventeen-year-old Joelito Filartiga was tortured and killed under official state orders by a police inspector named Americo Norberto Pena-Irala. Breaking Silence is a dramatic chronicle of the Filartiga family’s journey to find justice, which ultimately led to the arrest and trial of Pena in New York and a $10 million damages award. Author Richard Alan White provides this account from his intimate perspective as a longtime family friend who returned to Paraguay to travel with the Filartigas on their pursuit for justice.
A death such as Joelito’s was not unusual under the Paraguayan military dictatorship of General Alfredo Stroessner, who routinely used mass arrests, torture, and extrajudicial executions as tools of political repression. Joelito’s father, Joel Filartiga, was an educated doctor from Paraguay’s aristocracy who had devoted his life to running a clinic for the poor in the rural Ybycui village. In another country his work may have been deemed an inspiration, but in Paraguay his sympathies for the impoverished were quickly targeted by the right-wing government as evidence of communist subversion. Joelito’s torture and death were part of a state kidnapping meant to intimidate his influential father.
Under Stroessner’s reign of terror, it was the unwavering refusal of the Filartiga family quietly to bury the truth of Joelito’s murder that distinguishes this story from countless unknown others. With the attention to documentation that underpins his historian’s training, White traces the story from the Filartigas’ futile struggle to bring the perpetrator to justice in Paraguay, to the redress that they finally found in U.S. courts by relying on an almost forgotten statute enacted in 1789.
This statute, the Alien Tort Claims Act (“ATCA”), allows certain civil suits arising in tort to be heard in U.S. district courts, even if both the plaintiff and defendant are non-American and the action in question occurred abroad. In the Filartiga case, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals was the first appellate court to rule that violations of internationally recognized human rights law, such as the state-sanctioned torture, constitute torts that fall within the meaning of ATCA. Since then, the Filartiga precedent has enabled foreign human rights victims to force their tormentors—their identities ranging from deposed dictators to rapists to multinational companies—to defend their actions in U.S. courts.
Breaking Silence is not only a gripping personal story, but also a powerful counterargument to critics who say that U.S. courts are an improper forum for adjudicating crimes perpetrated in other countries. White illustrates through
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the Filartiga case how U.S. courts may, in certain cases, be the victim’s sole hope for redress. Since Pena received Stroessner’s full protection, a fair trial in Paraguay was impossible. After being beaten by state agents, Pena’s relative Hugo Duarte testified to killing Joelito in a concocted crime-of-passion story. Witnesses sympathetic to the Filartigas mysteriously disappeared. The coroner’s reports omitted any reference to the electric shock and beating marks found on Joelito’s body. Outside the courtroom Joelito’s supporters became political targets. The Filartigas’ attorney was disbarred for filing detrimental motions against the government. The family received frequent death threats, and mother Nidia and daughter Dolly were imprisoned in the police’s attempt to intimidate the family into dropping their suit.
Human rights practitioners will also find the book to be a fascinating case study of advocacy in practice. As an active participant in the international movement to support the Filartigas, White shares his insights into the relationships, strategies, and even mistakes of the advocacy community—traced from Amnesty International’s first campaign to the final verdict won by attorneys at the Center for Constitutional Rights.
White’s unique access to the plaintiffs enables him to portray in rich detail the institutional and personal politics that shaped the legal strategies and arguments of the case as it progressed through the U.S. courts. The reader may desire, amidst White’s colorful retelling of the plaintiff’s position, an equally detailed account of the defendant’s perspective. The meticulous chronicle of the complicated context of the case not only underscores the Filartigas’ difficult journey, but also provides what may be one of the book’s most important legal insights: human rights law should be understood in relation to the process involved as much as it is understood in relation to the outcome.
White himself warns that “[a]mong activists it is not uncommon to get lost in the cause, fighting for humanity while overlooking human beings.” His account of the Filartigas’ unusual path to justice is a valuable addition to human rights literature, reminding the reader, in riveting style, that the urgency of recognizing human rights lies not as idealized abstraction, but as a lived reality for individuals.
Over thirty years after Joelito’s murder, Breaking Silence arrives at a highly relevant time. As recently as 2004, the Supreme Court has sought to limit substantially the application of the Filartiga principle and the reach of ATCA in Sosa v. Alverez-Machain. Perhaps there is no better occasion to revisit the Filartigas’ story.
—Nancy Chu
HLSHRJ@law.harvard.edu
This file was last modified: Wednesday, 03-Aug-2005 10:52:54 EDT