New responses to state terror

Crimes against humanity are characterized by being visible, major, and systematic acts of aggression performed with the aim of terrorizing, paralyzing, and subduing through fear (Rojas, 1999). These actions include particularly severe crimes, such as extrajudicial executions, disappearances, and torture conducted in a deliberate and widespread pattern (Méndez and Mariezcurrena, 1999). When crimes against humanity are committed with the objective to destroy or debilitate an ethnic, religious, national, or other community, they constitute genocide, for instance, as, it is argued, occurred in Guatemala in the 1980s. Such crimes call for a response from the international community. In the case of Latin America, the responses of the international community have included prosecutions before international tribunals and the exercise of extraterritorial civil and criminal jurisdiction by domestic courts. The result has included the prosecution of military officials outside the countries where their crimes were committed.