Truth Commissions for Chile and El Salvador: A Report and Assessment

Abstract

In the Americas, Chile and El Salvador have provided the most recent experiments with truth commissions. The Chilean Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Salvadoran Commission on the Truth were formed in dissimilar political circumstances as means to recover the truth about decades of political violence, and to recommend reforms aimed to prevent its recurrence. A review of the work of the truth commissions is warranted because the human rights calamities in these two countries nearly came to symbolize the human rights situation in the Americas. More pertinently, the Chilean and Salvadoran experiences commend the concept of the truth commission to perform what should now be regarded as a critical human rights task in transitional situations: the internationally supervised recovery of the truth in the cause of justice and the protection and promotion of human rights. In this article I argue for the customary utilization of truth commissions, perhaps as part of the work of the recently established United Nations office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, by way of an assessment of the Chilean and Salvadoran experiences.' First, I examine the mandates of the two commissions and indicate how the different political environments in which the Chilean Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Salvadoran Commission on the Truth were created account for important differences between the two commissions-indeed, they constitute distinct,