MA Latin American History

Outgoing 2018

To the Universidad Nacional de San Martín (UNSAM)

Research topic: The Influence of Transnational Human Rights Activism on the Investigation of Crimes against Humanity with Economic Motivation: The Emblematic Case of Mercedes Benz Argentina.

My name is Frederik Kahl Benlloch and I am a master student of Latin American Area Studies at the University of Cologne. 

Retrospectively, human rights movements and civic engagement in their decade-long struggle for truth, justice and against impunity have been ground-breaking for Argentina's clarification process. But only in recent years criminal prosecution has expanded to non-state actors who collaborated with the dictatorship. 

My research aims, on the one hand, to investigate the network between human right-movements and -actors on both sides of the Atlantic (in Germany and in Argentina). In this regard it will be analysed what effect the criminal proceeding against Mercedes Benz Argentina had on the legal clarification of participation of companies in dictatorship crimes in Argentina. On the other hand, it will be examined to what extent the criminal proceeding against Mercedes Benz Argentina had an impact on the discourse and on the narrative of the Argentine Human Rights Movement and on public perception. 

The research scholarship allows me a comprehensive study of the global network of human rights movements, as I want firstly to interview the members of these movements in Argentina. Secondly, I have the chance to establish contact and interview the former trade unionists of Mercedes Benz Argentina and their relatives. Thirdly, I hope to exchange experience and knowledge with Argentine scholars by taking courses at the University of San Martín. Ultimately, I will take the chance to visit the archives of the DIPBA (Archivo de la Dirección de la Inteligencia de la Policía Provinical de Buenos Aires) and to carry out my own research.