Introduction: A Civilian Response to State Terror

Abstract

This chapter introduces the book’s theme and main arguments, defines its target readership and outlines its content. The book’s main argument states that human rights organisations in Pinochet’s Chile not only provided critical services to victims of repression but also resisted the regime by documenting, disseminating and archiving evidence of military abuses. This book is based on systematic research in and on Chile’s most substantial human rights archive, the Fundacion de Documentacion y Archivo de la Vicaria de la Solidaridad. This archive contains the records of what were the earliest and the largest of the many human rights organisations that resisted Chile’s military dictatorship. Based on this research, the chapter advances the idea that the act of early documentation of atrocities—though less celebrated than public protest or judicial activism—is itself an important mode of resistance to military authoritarian rule, allowing state terrorism to become visible, knowable and traceable. Consequently, it sets out the argument that documenting human rights violations is part and parcel of the creation of the political space for human rights advocacy.