The Social Process and the Transgenerational Transmission of Trauma in Chile

Abstract

At the end of the Chilean dictatorship, one could have expected that a central political goal would be the active participation of the population in the democratization process. But this clearly did not happen. To the contrary, in the process of transition toward democracy, it became obvious that the internalization of political threats and the mechanisms of self-repression maintain themselves after the end of the dictatorship. Repressive processes that were open during the military government are being converted into less visible but even more effective authoritarian structures in the new democracy. There is no real social and political participation. People succumb and wait to see what the government will do. A society of alienated subject develops, in which participants feel distant and mistrustful toward the political process, even more so, because they wrongly supposed that they might be central to the new order.