An analysis of the effectiveness of the legal construction of criminal responsibility in the killing of Lonco Luán. The power of forgiving

Abstract

The Argentine Penal Code considers the normative prohibition about the use of the private violence, although it offers certain reduced blameworthiness (in terms of criminal responsibility) through the attenuation of pains or the declaration of incompetent, if its use comes accompanied from certain intense emotional component. The present article proposes to analyze and to evaluate these considerations as institutionalized and codified forms of “pardon”. Based on a critical reading of the file of the case “La Matanza de Lonco Luán” - and paying special attention to the declarations of the imputed ones, the technical skills, the pleas of the interested parties and the sentence of the judge –it is argued that these forms of pardon are been determined from historical courses and also they highly constitute effective devices in the establishment of social hierarchies and the process of maintenance of order. The adopted methodological perspective supposes the development of an anthropological reading of the judicial cause, analyzing it mainly like scope of sense production; as such it express the games of circulation and dispute of symbolic goods, and reinforces the structure of social positions simultaneously.