Colombia Internacional (Jan 2019)
Las comisiones de la verdad en la batalla de la memoria: usos y efectos disputados de la verdad extrajudicial en Chile
Abstract
Based on the framework of the battle of memory, this article examines the dispute (2014-2018) regarding the state embargo of documentation and information from 2004 from Chile’s National Commission on Political Prisoners and Torture and its resistance to a collective that can question the embargo, triggering a legislative discussion. Methodology: In this article, we apply a procedural and pragmatic focus to a body of qualitatively analyzed multireferential data. We take an in-depth look at the performative approach developed by the literature on truth commissions, but shift the examination of the framework of transitional justice to the terrain of the battle of memory supported by societies when dealing with these violent pasts. Conclusions: our analysis shows that the trajectory of the battle for truth and for the construction of collective memory on the past is not incremental and is subject to setbacks. The silence regarding the documentation of the Valech Commission triggered the involvement of new actors in the battle of memory that is no longer solely configured by the State-victim dyad. Originality: This article examines the Truth Commissions (TC) from a not frequently studied perspective: the document and information archive produced by these commissions and their impact on the collaboration with justice and the uncovering of the truth. To observe the dispute over the secret of the document and information archive of the commission from the terrain of the battle of memory allows us to extend the temporal reference framework, examining the TC beyond the effects and uses contemplated by the mandating State, including other actors, and leading the commissions to talk to each other and to other management devices and artifacts of such atrocities.
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