Truth, Justice, and Legal Impunity: Dealing with Past Human Rights Violations in Chile

Dealing with past human rights violations has been a difficult issue in various Latin American democratization processes.Within the academic and political field of "transitional justice", similar questions have been asked in various countries in Latin America and elsewhere.Under what circumstances can perpetrators be prosecuted?When is reconciliation and pardon possible?Should truth and justice be sacrificed so that fragile democratization processes are not undennined?!Even though Latin American transitions from military to civilian rule took place mostly during the 1980s, impunity still continues to place many restrictions on democracy in various countries of the region.The reproduction of impunity works through both formal and infOlmal mechanisms.In Chile, a country with a relatively legalistic political culture, dealing with the past during civilian rule has been strongly conditioned by the legal framework created by the militalY regime (1973)(1974)(1975)(1976)(1977)(1978)(1979)(1980)(1981)(1982)(1983)(1984)(1985)(1986)(1987)(1988)(1989)(1990).The Chilean Constitution of 1980 and the amnesty law of 1978 are shielded by various mechanisms created to "protect" democracy.When the possibilities for judicial prosecutions were greatly limited, the new civilian government of Patricio Aylwin (1990Aylwin ( -1995) ) decided to put more emphasis on extrajudicial means of dealing with the past.The Comision Nacional de Verdad y Reconciliacion (CNVR, National Truth and Reconciliation Connnission), which was working during 1990-1991, was an important mechanism that despite its various limitations helped to establish some shared understandings of the repressive era.The CNVR, known as the Chilean Truth Commission, has also been used as a partial model for some later democratization processes such as the South African one?, The author \\Quid like to thank the Journal's anonymous referee for connnents on an earlier version of this article.