“Truth” and Truth Commissions in Latin America

Authors

  • Rachel May Institute for the Study of Latin America and the Caribbean, University of South Florida, Estados Unidos

Keywords:

Truth commissions, Human rights, Transitional justice, reconciliation, Governmental investigations

Abstract

This paper is a consideration of four major truth gathering projects —Argentina, Chile, Guatemala and Colombia-.  This descriptive study applies a “typology of truth” to these 4 historical projects and considers how these truth commissions defined the notion of “truth” in the context of the highly politicized context of transitional justice.

Author Biography

Rachel May, Institute for the Study of Latin America and the Caribbean, University of South Florida, Estados Unidos

Director of the Institute for the Study of Latin America and the Caribbean (ISLAC) at the University of South Florida. She is an Associate Professor of Latin American studies and international human rights. Before coming to the University of South Florida, she was a faculty member of the University of Washington, Tacoma.

References

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Chilean National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation. (1991). Report of the Chilean National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation.Washington DC: United States Institutue of Peace.

Comisión para Esclarecimiento Histórico. (1999). Guatemala. Memoria del silencio: Tz’inilNa ‘Tab’al. Guatemala: CEH.

CONADEP. (1986). Nunca más: A Report by Argentina’s National Commission on Dispapeared People. London: Faber and Faber.

Feitlowitz, M. (1998). A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture. New York: Oxford.

French, P. (2003). You Must Remember This/We’ll Always Have Paris. Unpublished manuscript. Keynote Address, 22nd, Annual Conference of the Western Humanities Alliance.

García Márquez, G. (2006). One Hundred Years of Solitude. New York: Harper Perrenial Modern Classics.

Hayner, P. B. (2001). Unspeakable Truths: Confronting State Terror and Atrocity. New York: Routledge.

Malamud-Goti, J. (1996). Game Without End: The Politics of State Terror.Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.

REMHI (1999). Guatemala: Never Again (The Official Report of the Human Rights Office). Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.

Rodriguez, N. ( 2009). “No somos comisión de verdad”. El Espectador.com.

Sánchez Gómez, G. (2007). "Plan Área de Memoria Histórica" (Grupo de Memoria Histórica de la CNRR, Februrary 20, 2007). http//memoriahistorica-cnrr.org.co/arch_plan_estrategico_v1.pdf

United States Institute for Peace. Commission of Inquiry: Chile 03. n.d. http://www.usip.org/publications/commission-inquiry-chile-03.

United States Institute of Peace. Truth Commission: Chile 90. n.d. http://www.usip.org/publications/truth-commission-chile-90 (accessed December 2011).

United States Institute of Peace. Truth Commission: Guatemala n.d. http://www.usip.org/publications/truth-commission-guatemala

Vidal-Lopez, R. (2012, July). Truth-Telling and Internal Displacement in Colombia. Case Studies on Transitional Justice and Displacement. New York: International Center forTransitional Justice and Brookings-LSE.

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Published

2013-11-29

How to Cite

May, R. (2013). “Truth” and Truth Commissions in Latin America. Investigación &Amp; Desarrollo, 21(2), 494–512. Retrieved from https://rcientificas.uninorte.edu.co/index.php/investigacion/article/view/5541

Issue

Vol. 21 No. 2: Jul - Dic (2013)

Section

Reflexion Articles

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