Human Rights In Chile Research Articles

Archival operations in post-dictatorship novels: memory and Chilean human rights records

ABSTRACT The junction between the memory of violence of the past and fictional registry is a dimension of post-dictatorial society’s cultural dynamics. While the testimonial narrative is dominant in the literary sphere, the archive as a repository of memory and documental inscription, with the capacity to iterate and transit from one social field to another, challenges regimes of truth and lineal temporality of official memory. This article identifies, characterises and compares the way in which records are employed in contemporary Chilean post-dictatorship narrative. The archive enables us to problematise and contextualise the relation to the recent dictatorial past and the opening up of new fields of reflection. The incorporation of records in four recent Chilean post-dictatorship novels (Puño y Letra by Eltit; Sprinters, Los Niños de Colonia Dignidad by Larra; La Dimensión Desconocida by Fernández and Monte Maravilla by Lafferte) is achieved through quotes or theme development. Such resources bring to light the fascination as well as the scepticism that archives generate in literature, as well as their effectiveness for expressing the intricate, and even contradictory, mechanisms of memory.

The Mediatization of Human Rights Memory in Chile

Abstract The current pandemic-imposed reliance on media-centered forms of civic engagement underscores the need for empirical mediatization research on the relationship between media, partisan conflict, and political culture. Drawing from critical Latin American media scholarship, mediatization theory, and Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), this article proposes a framework for comparative political communication research that centers on media practices and sociocultural change. By analyzing how a 1988 political advertising campaign in dictatorial Chile instantiated a peculiar vision of democratic transition, this article provides an examination of the disjuncture between televised representations of cheerful political reconciliation and abominable human rights abuses as the initial stage in the mediatization of Chilean human rights memory (HRM).

Chilean Human Rights Prosecutions: Jurisprudence and Case Analysis 1990-2019

Chile is one of a handful of countries worldwide that has attempted significant, sustained domestic prosecution of past crimes against humanity and other massive human rights violations. This publication summarises the legal and political significance of 40 principal case verdicts and other milestones in Chile´s post-dictatorship transitional justice trajectory. Major Supreme and lower court verdicts, Inter-American Court jurisprudence, and other justice milestones occurring between 1990-2019 for atrocity crimes committed between 1973 and 1990 are described and analysed in detail, highlighting their significance for national and international criminal justice. The precise data supplied allows researchers to further locate the original case verdicts. This rolling publication is part of a decade-long, and ongoing, research effort to map and analyse all aspects of Chile's post-transitional justice trajectory.

SIGNIFICACIONES DE JÓVENES UNIVERSITARIOS SOBRE DERECHOS HUMANOS

El presente artículo da cuenta de los principales resultados de una investigación sobre significaciones que atribuye un grupo de estudiantes universitarios a los derechos humanos en Chile. Entre aquellos, es posible adelantar que los jóvenes manifiestan una postura favorable con respecto a algunos principios referidos a los derechos humanos, como la libertad de creencias, la igualdad, el respeto a la diversidad, el papel del Estado como garante de derechos, entre otros. Junto con ello, se incorporan nuevos elementos a la discusión, a partir de tres categorías centrales que cruzan investigaciones similares en el nivel internacional, agrupadas en prácticas pedagógicas, gestión educativa, justicia social e inclusión. En cada una de ellas, a su vez, se hará referencia a tres variables intervinientes en la educación en derechos humanos: cognitivas, afectivo-conductuales y contextuales.

Defensa de DDHH en Chile en el contexto transnacional del movimiento de defensa de los derechos humanos, 1973-1990

El artículo aborda el movimiento en redes de defensa de los DDHH en Chile que se desarrolló bajo la dictadura cívico-militar de Pinochet entre 1973 y 1990 en un contexto transnacional. Además de las buenas relaciones que el gobierno de la Unidad Popular había establecido con diversos gobiernos a través de sus embajadas, se plantea que hubo otros factores que incidieron en el pronto apoyo internacional a los organismos que en Chile se crearon para auxiliar a los perseguidos por el régimen. Se sostiene que tanto el conocimiento y los contactos a nivel internacional que habían adquirido algunos representantes de iglesia en materia de refugio durante la Unidad Popular, como sobre todo el impacto que generó en sectores progresistas de Europa y América Latina el golpe de estado y la muerte del presidente Allende, coadyuvaron a la inmediata respuesta en red del movimiento internacional de apoyo a la defensa de los DDHH en Chile. De modo que las bases de cómo se llevaría a cabo la cooperación internacional –por parte de agencias donantes, organismos de Naciones Unidas, el Consejo Mundial de Iglesias y gobiernos y ONGs de diversos países- se sentaron en los primeros meses después del golpe manteniéndose y desarrollándose a lo largo de los casi 17 años de dictadura. El conjunto de estos organismos crearon verdaderas redes transnacionales de apoyo a las víctimas de la represión que traspasaron las fronteras de Chile y actuaron a nivel regional y global. En este lapso, los organismos de defensa de los DDHH en Chile apoyados por el movimiento internacional, realizaron diversos aprendizajes de cómo actuar lo más eficazmente posible, creándose un modus operandi así como una cultura de DDHH, que tuvo repercusiones a nivel internacional. Lo anterior se ilustra a través del caso de FASIC. Finalmente, se sostiene que esa cultura ha dejado su huella en los movimientos sociales actuales, donde sectores de la sociedad civil, sobre todo juveniles, luchan por reivindicaciones sociales, culturales y de género que habían sido largamente postergadas.*** Defesa de DDHH em Chile no contexto multinacional do movimento de defesa dos direitos humanos, 1973-1990 ***O artigo aborda o movimento nas redes de defesa dos Direitos Humanos no Chile que se desenvolveu no período da ditadura cívico-militar de Pinochet, entre 1973 e 1990, em um contexto multinacional. Além das boas relações que o governo da Unidade Popular havia estabelecido com os diversos governos através de suas embaixadas, se propõe que houve outros fatores que incidiram no rápido apoio internacional aos organismos criados no Chile para auxiliar aos perseguidos pelo regime. Argumenta-se que tanto o conhecimento quanto os contatos em nível internacional que alguns representantes da igreja adquiriram em termos de refúgio durante a Unidade Popular – , sobretudo durante o impacto que gerou em setores progressistas da Europa e da América Latina, o golpe de estado e a morte do presidente Allende –, levaram à resposta imediata da rede do movimento internacional de apoio para a defesa dos direitos humanos no Chile. Deste modo, as bases de cooperação internacional por parte de agências doadoras, dos organismos das Nações Unidas, do Conselho Mundial de Igrejas e de governos e ONGs de diversos países sentou-se nos primeiros meses após o golpe e se desenvolveu ao longo dos quase 17 anos de ditadura. Todas essas organizações criaram redes transnacionais reais para apoiar as vítimas da repressão que cruzaram as fronteiras do Chile e atuaram regional e globalmente. Durante este período, as organizações de defesa dos Direitos Humanos no Chile apoiados pelo movimento internacional, aprendeu a agir de forma tão eficaz quanto possível, criando um modus operandi e uma cultura de Direitos Humanos, que teve repercussão internacional. O precedente é ilustrado através do caso do FASIC. Finalmente, argumenta-se que essa cultura deixou a sua marca nos atuais movimentos sociais, onde setores da sociedade civil, especialmente os jovens, lutam por reivindicações sociais, culturais e de gênero que foram adiadas por muito tempo.Palavras-chave: Direitos Humanos. Ditadura. Redes ecumênicas. Igreja Católica e protestante.

Mental health policies tackling violation of children's human rights in Chile

In August, 2018, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child reported on the plight of thousands of at-risk children who are subject to extreme neglect, leading to endangerment and human deterioration in Chile. 1 UN Committee on the Rights of the ChildInforme de la investigación relacionada en Chile en virtud del artículo 13 del Protocolo facultativo de la Convención sobre los Derechos del Niño relativo a un procedimiento de comunicaciones. https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/CRC/CRC_C_CHL_INQ_1.pdfDate accessed: February 25, 2019 Google Scholar This alarming report noted that the human rights of children living under court protection and deprived of liberty (ie, those living in the National Children's Service, Sename) are being systematically violated. It also highlighted that nearly 70% of these at-risk children have at least one untreated mental disorder. In the report, the Chilean Health Ministry acknowledged that, despite this high prevalence of mental disorders among children living in institutions, these children have little or no access to mental health services. Additionally, it revealed a systematic lack of access to most diagnostic and health services: 68·6% of adolescents aged 14–18 years show symptoms associated with depression, but, of those, 45·3% have not been evaluated by a psychologist or psychiatrist. The Committee concluded that Chile lacks a plan to treat mental health issues in children and adolescents. 1 UN Committee on the Rights of the ChildInforme de la investigación relacionada en Chile en virtud del artículo 13 del Protocolo facultativo de la Convención sobre los Derechos del Niño relativo a un procedimiento de comunicaciones. https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/CRC/CRC_C_CHL_INQ_1.pdfDate accessed: February 25, 2019 Google Scholar

Reports on categorization and classification of human rights violations in Chile (1974–1978)

This study analyzes socio-discursive categories used to define and classify the political violence exerted in Chilean human rights reports (1974–1978) to understand the emergence of the repertoire of repression and the construction of victimhood as a social recognition and communicative process in Latin America during the 1970s. These reports are addressed as a professional discursive genre produced by non-governmental organizations whose purpose is to denounce the violation of human rights in the context of political controversies as well as in the Chilean totalitarian context. The discursive genre is characterized by objectivity, the credibility of the information, the event-based approach, the use of statistics to establish the type and magnitude of the violation of human rights. The corpus analyzed consists of 44 reports belonging to human rights archives. The statistical section and comments were coded according to narrative categories (participants, action, cause, time and space). The results show the predominance of the legal perspective to classify the violation of human rights, the emergence of the category of enforced disappearance, the relationship with the socio-political context and the categories elaborated to identify patterns of violation of human rights.

Identidades y memorias en Londres 38, Paine y Chacabuco (Chile)

Este artículo estudia la relación entre identidad y memoria, entendida esta última en una doble dimensión: como continuadora de identidad y como constructora de identidad. Desde esta perspectiva, el texto indaga la relación identidad-memoria en cuatro organizaciones que denuncian la violación de los derechos humanos y el terrorismo de Estado en Chile luego del golpe militar de 1973. Se analiza la relación entre la manifestación pasada de estos grupos y su expresión presente y la identidad, que se define como una sutura y un posicionamiento estratégico que permite historizar las expresiones de memoria y reflexionar respecto a ellas más allá de una aproximación contingente. A través de la memoria militante de Londres 38, la memoria campesina de Memorial Paine y la comunidad hecha memoria en el caso de Chacabuco, se postula la doble dimensión que se mencionó y se explica cómo esta permite entender las distintas aproximaciones a un hecho aceptado por las organizaciones analizadas. Así, sus características y sus particularidades, su acción y su devenir llevan a reconocer las diferencias, manifestaciones y posibilidades de estas organizaciones para mantenerse en el espacio de las narrativas sociales sobre el pasado y el presente y, principalmente, sobre las identidades de las que son expresión. Por ello, en este trabajo se señala la relevancia de reconocer la doble dimensión de la memoria. Al mismo tiempo, invita a reflexionar e indagar sobre la relación identidad-memoria mayormente aceptada y acerca de la manifestación de esta en el espacio discursivo de los nuevos contextos sociales en los que se produce y a los que cada grupo debe hacer frente.

The Chilean Human Rights Archives and Moral Resistance to Dictatorship

The Chilean Human Rights Archives and Moral Resistance to Dictatorship

Entre la culpa y la responsabilidad: La respuesta del Chile postdictatorial a las violaciones a los derechos humanos desde una lectura de Hannah Arendt

This paper seeks to understand how the concepts of guilt and responsibility are addressed in three reports that were produced in response to outstanding issues of human rights in Chile (the Rettig Report, Valech Report and the Declaration of the Mesa de Dialogo sobre Derechos Humanos). This research project draws on Hannah Arendt’s conceptualization and problematization of collective responsibility, collective guilt and individual guilt in post-conflict societies. It seeks to answer the following question: Is the institutional treatment of responsibilities in post-dictatorial Chile achieved by mere trial or does it correspond to a political-moral self-understanding? In other words, does the institutionalized truth imposed by the Chilean State convey that the country assumed a process of individual guilt or collective responsibility?

Sites of Memory in Spain and Latin America: Trauma, Politics, and Resistance ed. by Díaz de León, et al.

Reviewed by: Sites of Memory in Spain and Latin America: Trauma, Politics, and Resistance ed. by Díaz de León, et al. Julia Riordan-Gonçalves Díaz de León, Aída, Marina Llorente, and Marcella Salvi, eds. Sites of Memory in Spain and Latin America: Trauma, Politics, and Resistance. Lanham: Lexington, 2015. Pp. 177. ISBN 978-1-4985-0778-3. The power of memory—to reclaim, to alter, to challenge, to reshape—links the present and the past in a continuous cycle of remembering, forgetting and reconstruction. In Sites of Memory in Spain and Latin America: Trauma, Politics, and Resistance, editors Aída Díaz de León, Marina Llorente and Marcella Salvi gather a series of essays that aim to inform the present by reevaluating the past, through the recuperation of historical memory. Building on Pierre Nora’s study of lieux de mémoire as well as Maurice Halbwach’s concept of collective memory, this collection explores the plurality of memory sites and their dynamic connection to the past and the present. The section titled “From the Repertoire to the Archive: Memory in Chile after Pinochet” includes two essays that take a close look at the performative nature of memory in Chile’s past and present. Liliana Trevizán highlights the importance of the practice of democratic ideals, particularly among women’s social movements and political groups, during the years of the Pinochet dictatorship. She finds that the memory of democracy through its everyday performance allowed for a more inclusive post-dictatorial democratic system that has committed to remembering the past and prioritizing human rights. An interview with Ricardo Brodsky, the Executive Director of the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Chile, is included in the following chapter. Brodsky shares with interviewers Oscar D. Sarmiento and Liliana Trevizán the museum’s mission to educate the public by providing a plurality of memories, with the common goal of fostering respect for human rights. The next section considers the role of literature and other artistic and cultural products in the recovery of “forgotten” memories. Marcella Salvi analyzes how literature, film, songs and other mass cultural products enable the recovery of personal and collective memory in Carmen Martín Gaite’s El cuarto de atrás. For Marina Llorente, Antonio Crespo Massieu’s Elegía en Portbou is a literary site of memory, recapturing and recognizing the Spanish Republican exile that was erased from the official collective memory for many years. She explores how the poems [End Page 680] locate traumatic memory in Spain by linking it with the exile and death of Walter Benjamin and the haunting monument to him in the cemetery of Portbou, Spain. Reflecting on the role of literary translation in the recuperation of historical memory, Steven White offers examples of his translations of Spanish, Nicaraguan and Chilean poetry. Here, translation is an important tool in preserving literary testimony and revitalizing it. Mallory N. Craig-Kuhn explores how memory and identity are linked in Osvaldo Soriano’s Una sombra ya pronto verás. In post-dictatorship Argentina, because a shared memory of past violence goes unacknowledged in favor of economic development, individual and collective identity are destabilized, as an uncertain future looms in the distance. The following two essays give voice to those who have been pushed to the margins of collective memory in order to legitimate a particular historical narrative. George Ciccariello-Maher looks back to the Caracazo of 1989 in Venezuela, showing how this event catalyzed a new process of continued struggle and renegotiation that depends upon the preservation of memory, despite the objections of those who would prefer to bury it. Turning to Mexico, Martha I. Chew-Sánchez and Alfredo Limas Hernández examine the nature of contested historical memory as embodied by the Cotton Field Memorial in Ciudad Juárez. The memorial was built by the Mexican state only after it was legally compelled to do so, in the face of a judgment finding the state negligent in its response to the hundreds of women murdered in the city. For the women’s families, the memorial is incomplete in its representation of historical memory, and insufficient as it...

MEMORIALES, MONUMENTOS, MUSEOS: MEMORIA, ARTE Y EDUCACIÓN EN LOS DERECHOS HUMANOS

Resumen El texto se refiere a la posibilidad o imposibilidad del arte de representar situaciones extremas relacionadas con la violencia o las violaciones de los derechos humanos, y la manera en que el Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos en Chile, ha trabajado estos conceptos desde el arte contemporáneo.

Historicizing Injustice: The Museum of Memory and Human Rights, Santiago, Chile

Focusing on the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Chile, this article examines the intersection of psychology and history as they bear on conflict, memory, and justice. The museum commemorates victims of mass detentions, disappearances, and human rights violations during the Pinochet dictatorship (1973–1990). This article discusses historical precursors to the coup, including United States involvement in Chilean politics. Utilizing the construct, scope of justice, it discusses representations of moral exclusion and moral inclusion in the museum's exhibition. Museum professionals who developed the exhibition describe the challenges of their work because opposing political perspectives about the dictatorship persist. The article suggests that historical museums on injustice can serve as sites that engage such clashing viewpoints. Surfacing narratives and counternarratives about the past and airing tensions and haunting questions can offer insight into social issues, policies, and conflicts that persist today.

CONSTRUCCIÓN SOCIAL DE LA MEMORIA: PRESENCIA DEL IMAGINARIO DEL HOLOCAUSTO EN TESTIMONIOS LATINOAMERICANOS

The reconstruction of everyday life for political prisoners, starting with the cases of violations of Human Rights in Chile and Uruguay, supposedly occurs in the memory—with its plurality, diversity and hesitations—as the principle area of understanding that contributes to recreating and reassigning those images evoked. Knowing the reality and the memory that reconstruct them as social constructs, including the realizations of common sense, the text warns against the process of transfers and deformations present in the testimonies illustrating this with the presence of the Holocaust imaginary in the testimonies of political prisoners in the Southern Cone of Latin America.

The 1973 Chilean coup and the origins of transnational human rights activism

AbstractThe 1973 Chilean coup gave rise to an unprecedented growth in a global human rights consciousness. In its aftermath, transnational activists from a diverse array of political and ideological backgrounds found common cause – indeed, a common language of human rights – in campaigns to ameliorate the repressive acts of the Chilean military junta. This article focuses on two models of activism in particular: Amnesty International, whose 1973 investigative mission set the terms of the global debate about human rights in Chile; and transnational solidarity activists, especially Chilean exiles from leftist parties, whose vision of social activism narrowed as their interest in human rights surged. These campaigns – while not without tensions over the role of politics in the moral appeal to human rights – both articulated a transnational discourse of human rights and created new activist techniques to foment moral outrage by revealing the prevalence of torture through the power of personal testimony.

Human Rights Prosecutions in Chile During and after the 'Pinochet Years'

This article reflects on the Chilean experience of recent accountability actions, namely the attempted prosecution of perpetrators of past human rights violations. While acknowledging the undoubtedly substantial impulse provided by the dramatic October 1998 UK arrest of former dictator Augusto Pinochet, it focuses on domestic actors and drivers in a post-1998 revival of such attempts. The article examines the extent and limitations of recent change in the area of prosecutions in Chile, noting that these have been undertaken at the insistence of private actors rather than the state. It also notes that the self-amnesty law of 1978 is still textually intact despite advances in restricting its application with regards to certain categories of internationally proscribed crimes. Finally, the article examines some explanatory factors for both recent advances and remaining blockages in the Chilean human rights accountability scenario.

The Chilean National Institute of Human Rights: its challenges to advance towards an integrated vision in the discourse and practice of human rights in Chile

When they are set up, domestic mechanisms that promote and protect human rights need to not only deal with issues of management and institutional positioning that all new organisms face, they must also deal with the context into which they are inserted and with the history that precedes them in matters of human rights. It is within this framework that the National Institute of Human Rights set as a goal for its first term the addressing of three sets of issues that, from a discursive and a practical standpoint, limit an integrated vision of human rights in Chile: the difficulty faced by Chile to incorporate international human rights law in the context of globalization; the existing tension between the historical experience of human rights lived by Chileans during the dictatorship and the need to widen the field of the promotion and protection of human rights under democracy; and the absence of a broad understanding of human rights that takes into account their indivisibility and interdependence within a discursive framework that denies the validity of economic and social rights as rights and that fails to significantly take into account a modern view of the principle of equality and non-discrimination that is geared towards the protection of structurally discriminated groups.

Searchers in a Desert Nostalgia for the Light Patricio Guzmán, Director Atacama Productions, Blinker Filmproduktion, and Cronomedia, Chile/France/Spain/Germany, 2010. (U.S. distributor: Icarus Films, New York.) 90 minutes. http://icarusfilms.com/new2011/nost.html

Drawing on intersections among astronomy, anthropology, and human rights in Chile's Atacama desert, Guzmán's film reflects on the ways we create meaning from history.

Comparative and International Education: A Bibliography (2009)

Comparative and International Education: A Bibliography (2009)

Human Rights Trials in Chile during and after the 'Pinochet Years'

This article reflects on the recent Chilean experience of accountability actions, particularly the attempted prosecution of perpetrators of past human rights violations. While acknowledging the undoubtedly substantial impulse provided by the dramatic October 1998 UK arrest of former dictator Augusto Pinochet, it focuses on domestic actors and drivers in a post-1998 revival of such attempts. The article examines the extent and limitations of recent change in the area of prosecutions in Chile, noting that these have been undertaken at the insistence of private actors rather than the state. It also notes that the self-amnesty law of 1978 is still textually intact despite advances in restricting its application with regards to certain categories of internationally proscribed crimes. Finally, the article examines some explanatory factors for both recent advances and remaining blockages in the Chilean human rights accountability scenario.