Transitional Justice in Chilean Post-Dictatorship Film and Fiction: An Approach to Amnesty Not Amnesia

Abstract

The Chilean Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a compromise solution as it was mindful of the immense suffering borne by the victims and their families as well as the unrest caused by the prosecution of military leaders of Argentina in the 1980s. This chapter introduces the conflict between two histories: the dominant, governmental history and that of the victims; the former trying to deny the wrongdoings and the latter asserting the occurrence of brutal manifestations of power. This chapter tried to conceptualize memory and trauma while grounding traumatic testimony during the time of dictatorship in the collective memory so that individual victims might still continue to feel a sense of belonging to the collectivity.