Chile: From Truth to Trials

Abstract

Chilean human rights lawyer Hugo Gutiérrez posed this pointed question at the turn of the millennium. A decade later, Alexandra Huneeus drew attention to another apparent paradox: “Why did so rightsaverse a judiciary suddenly place itself in the thick of the country’s most contentious rights issue, at times pushing beyond the government in its zeal for prosecution of the very claims it once denied?” (2009, 3).

How can Chile, which has a constitution written by its ex-dictator, an operative amnesty law guaranteeing the military impunity for all political crimes, and a political elite that has demonstrated no particular degree of goodwill toward the human rights issue, still be the country in Latin America that is arguably now one of the leaders in dealing with the abuses from its dark past through legal processes?

—Hugo Gutiérrez¹