“It Is Not a Part of American History That We Are Proud of". Declassification Projects in the United States (1993–2002)

The article aims to explore, on a short/medium-term, the role of the US Department of State, and private research centres like the National Security Archive, in the Guatemala, Mexico, Chile and Argentina declassification projects (1994-2010). It will be focused on a) the genesis of the projects b) the official rhetoric used in the press releases c) the interaction between governmental and civil society actors on an international level. As it is widely known, the ‘critical mass’ of documents provided for these countries has helped to break new grounds not only for contemporary history and the politics of memory, but also for judiciary actions.