This book offers a synthesis of the main achievements and pending challenges during the thirty years of transitional justice in Chile after Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. The Chilean experience provides useful comparative perspectives for researchers, students and human rights activists engaged in transitional justice processes around the world. The first chapter explains the theoretical foundations of human rights and transitional justice. The second chapter discusses the main historical milestones in Chile’s recent history which have defined the course of the process of transitional justice. The following chapters provide an overview of the key elements of transitional justice in Chile: truth, reparations, memory, justice, and guarantees of non-repetition.

This book analyses Chile’s “truth and justice” policies implemented between 1990 and 2013. The book’s central assumption is that human rights policies are a form of public policy and consequently they are the product of compromises among different political actors. Because of their political nature, these incomplete “truth and justice” policies instead of satisfying the victims’ demands and providing a mechanism for closure and reconciliation generate new demands and new policies and actions. However, these new policies and actions are partially satisfactory to those pursuing justice and the truth and unacceptable to those trying to protect the impunity structure built by General Pinochet and his supporters. Thus, while the 40th anniversary of the violent military coup that brought General Pinochet to power serves as a milestone with which to end this policy analysis, Chile’s human rights historical drama is unfinished and likely to generate new demands for truth and justice policies.

"This edited volume brings together both established and emerging human rights scholars and practitioners to discuss the central challenges in the areas of LGBT rights, torture and indigenous rights in the Americas. The theoretical and empirical contributions in this edited book are based on the most recent cases decided by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights against the Chilean state, namely; (a) Case of Atala Riffo and daughters v. Chile, (b) Case of Garcia Lucero et al. v. Chile, and (c) Case of Norín Catriman et al. (Leaders, members and activist of the Mapuche Indigenous People) v. Chile. Using different methodological approaches such as case studies, legal analysis and cross-national approaches, the authors go beyond the description of these three cases and reflect on the importance of the IAHRS, its increasing developments and the improvement that it has had in the region"--Publisher's website.

Sorensen investigates the manner in which Chilean media and public culture discuss human rights violations committed during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) as well as human rights problems which still exist.

1. Exile.

What is the influence of international human rights activism on authoritarian governments in the modern era? How much can pressure from human rights organizations and nations affect political change within a county? This book addresses these key issues by examining the impact of transnational human rights organizations and international norms on Chile during Gen. Augusto Pinochet's regime (1973?90) and afterward. Darren G. Hawkins argues that steadily mounting pressure from abroad concerning human rights did, in fact, make Pinochet more vulnerable over time and helped stimulate Chile's movement to a liberal democracy. Such international expectations could not be ignored by Pinochet, and they gradually and cumulatively made themselves felt. By 1975 some Chilean officials were adopting the discourse of human rights and claiming their adherence to international norms; two years later the government's security apparatus responsible for the reign of terror was reorganized, and disappearances in Chile nearly ceased. In 1980 the regime abandoned its insistence on unlimited authoritarian rule and approved a constitution that set term limits and promised future democratic institutions; Pinochet lost a constitutionally mandated plebiscite in 1988 and ultimately left office in 1990. Hawkins contends that these changes not only were internally driven but reflected an ongoing response to an international discourse on human rights. Well-researched and cogently argued, this case study further illuminates and complicates our understanding of modern Chilean history and provides ample testimony of the far-reaching effects of international human rights work.

"Analyzes how activists, legal strategies, and judicial receptivity to human rights claims are constructing new accountability outcomes for human rights violations in Chile and El Salvador"--Provided by publisher.

"When the army comes out, it is to kill."—Augusto Pinochet Following his bloody September 1973 coup d'état that overthrew President Salvador Allende, Augusto Pinochet, commander-in-chief of the Chilean Armed Forces and National Police, became head of a military junta that would rule Chile for the next seventeen years. The violent repression used by the Pinochet regime to maintain power and transform the country's political profile and economic system has received less attention than the Argentine military dictatorship, even though the Pinochet regime endured twice as long. In this primary study of Chile Under Pinochet, Mark Ensalaco maintains that Pinochet was complicit in the "enforced disappearance" of thousands of Chileans and an unknown number of foreign nationals. Ensalaco spent five years in Chile investigating the impact of Pinochet's rule and interviewing members of the truth commission created to investigate the human rights violations under Pinochet. The political objective of human rights organizations, Ensalaco contends, is to bring sufficient pressure to bear on violent regimes to induce them to end policies of repression. However, these efforts are severely limited by the disparities of power between human rights organizations and regimes intent on ruthlessly eliminating dissent.

A compelling history of the antiregime coalition forged by liberation-theology Catholics and Marxist-Left militants in Chile's urban shantytowns, with groundbreaking contributions to scholarship on human rights, mass social movements, popular protest, and democratization.