Roberto Bergalli: The Creation of a School of Critical Criminology once in Exile
Bergalli was born on January 23rd, 1936, in Buenos Aires. While studying Law, he came into close contact with the well-known Spanish Republican jurist Luis Jiménez de Asúa (who was in exile in Argentina). He finished his degree in 1963, and presented his first research papers, which already went beyond the limits of penal sciences, in the Centro de Estudios José Ingenieros and the Istituto Italiano di Cultura. Between 1966 and 1970, he continued his academic studies in Great Britain and Italy, where he lived through, and personally experienced, the important cultural events and movements of the time, such as the 1968 student uprisings and occupation of universities. Once he had returned to Argentina, he defended his doctoral thesis (1971). He experienced the eventful years after the end of the dictatorship, instigating, from his position in the judiciary, the closure of the Camarón (a special court that had been set up some time before for the prosecution and imprisonment of political dissidents).
Between 1973 and 1975, thanks to a German grant – Stipendium Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung -he came into contact with prominent professors such as Hilde Kaufmann in Germany, Giuliano Vassalli in Italy and Marino Barbero Santos in Spain. Once he was back in Argentina, he was kidnapped from his house by a military command a month after the coup d’état by the Military Junta of Videla, Massera and Agosti on March 24th 1976. For over a year, he was deprived of his freedom. He endured terrifying and horrendous conditions, until he was liberated in April 1977 as the result of a widespread international campaign for his release. Once freed, Bergalli returned to Germany together with his family thanks to, once again, the support of the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung. He continued his research and work at the Kriminologische Forschungsstelle, at the University of Köln, until 1979.
After preparing a second doctoral thesis (15-VI-1978) at the University of Salamanca in Spain, with Enrique Gimbernat as his advisor, and defending it before a doctoral panel presided by Marino Barbero Santos, he worked as a professor at the Institute of Criminology at the University of Barcelona, where he settled in 1980. Together with Bustos and Miralles, he published the book El pensamiento criminológico. Un análisis crítico and he edited, also with Bustos, the journal Poder y Control. Revista hispanolatinoamericana de disciplinas sobre el control social. From that moment on, he dedicated his time to disseminating, throughout Spain, Europe and Latin America, the work of Baratta, Jock Young, Pavarini, Melossi, Hulsman, Scheerer, Zaffaroni, all of whom were critical researchers of the penal system. With them, from 1984, he promoted the Common Study Programme on Criminal Justice and Critical Criminology in universities in Spain, Italy, Holland, Germany, Greece, Belgium and Great Britain. Between 1993 and 1995, he was the Scientific Director of the International Institute for the Sociology of Law in Oñati (Euskadi/Basque Country). After returning to the University of Barcelona, he was involved with us in the creation of The Observatory of the Penal System and Human Rights (OSPDH), presiding over its International Committee.
Roberto Bergalli was professor and mentor to generations of students and researchers interested in critical thinking and the sociology of law in Catalonia, Spain, and Latin America. We learnt from him that it is not possible to understand Law without taking into account and keeping in mind the economic, cultural and political transformations in our society,a society in which Law acts as a punitive power. He stressed that we must not forget the role Law has as a key player in the dominance of capital and all the injustices that the latter causes. But Bergalli was also a great friend and colleague to so many of us. His intellectual eminence, his work and books, his immeasurable determination, his ethical and moral example, and his quest for justice, have laid the foundations of an authentic School of thought which already forms part of us and which has spread across “his two souls” (Latin America and Europe), and which we hope to continue disseminate and sustain.
Héctor Silveira & Iñaki Rivera Beiras
(First published in RCSL Newsletter 2020(2), p. 6)