56. The State indicated that it had formalized its adhesion to the American Convention on November 6, 1992, and accepted the jurisdiction of the Court on December 10, 1998, for facts subsequent to that date. The State asserted that the interpretation made by the Commission and the representatives regarding facts prior to Brazil’s acceptance of the Court’s jurisdiction violated the special regime of declarations limiting the Court’s temporal jurisdiction established in Article 62(2) of the Convention, because it did not take into account the State’s sovereignty and attempted to extend the Court’s jurisdiction beyond the limits declared in that article. In the State’s opinion, the proposed interpretation would equate the effects of all declarations accepting the Court’s jurisdiction, whether or not they included a temporal limitation, and this would disregard the intentions of the States and the limits that they had legitimately imposed when submitting to the jurisdiction of the Court, unless the acts were continuing, which had not occurred in this case. 57. According to the State, the Court only has jurisdiction ratione temporis to analyze possible violations relating to facts identified in the 2000 inspection, because these are the only facts subsequent to December 10, 1998. It also argued that, with regard to possible violations of the rights to judicial protection and guarantees, the Court would only have jurisdiction in relation to the criminal proceedings initiated after that date that might constitute possible specific and autonomous violations concerning denial of justice. 58. Additionally, the State argued that the Court should declare itself incompetent to examine supposed violations that occurred before September 25, 1992, date on which the State had adhered to the American Convention; that is, acts that presumably violated the Convention and that took place between December 21, 1988, and March 18, 1992. 59. The Commission indicated that, when submitting the case to the Court, it had specified that it was only providing information on events that occurred or continued to occur after December 10, 1998, date on which Brazil had accepted the Court’s jurisdiction. These consisted in acts and omissions with regard to the situation of forced labor, debt bondage and similar forms of slavery that, according to the Merits Report, were verified by the inspection that took place in 2000; as well as the acts and omissions that led to the impunity of all the facts, a situation that continued in force when the State accepted the Court’s jurisdiction and thereafter, including the disappearance of Iron Canuto da Silva and Luis Ferreira da Cruz. 60. The representatives indicated that the State had interpreted the Court’s case law erroneously and had disregarded its previous rulings in contentious cases against Brazil, because the Court had already stipulate that, when determining whether it had competence to examine a case or an aspect of a case, it had to consider the date of the State’s acceptance of jurisdiction, as well as the terms on which that acceptance had been made. The representatives also argued that the Court had indicated that it had competence to analyze violations that, having initiated before the date on which its jurisdiction was accepted, might have continued or remained following such acceptance. 61. In addition, the representatives argued that the forced disappearance of Luis Ferreira da Cruz, occurred in August 1988, continued after December 10, 1998, and subsisted to this day, so that the State continued to incur international responsibility for failing to comply with its obligation to ensure rights by not taking effective steps to find the presumed victim. 62. The representatives also alleged violations arising from the failure to investigate slave labor and forced disappearances in Hacienda Brasil Verde prior to 1998. They indicated that the State was responsible for the failure to investigate the 1988 report of slave labor and forced disappearances, reiterated in 1992, and also following the 1989, 1993 and 1996 inspections that revealed the existence of slave labor in the hacienda. 17