Informe Relatoria Desaparicion y Busqueda VI , 2018
Informe relatoria de paneles academicos realizados en Barcelona en 2018 en el marco de la confere... more Informe relatoria de paneles academicos realizados en Barcelona en 2018 en el marco de la conferencia academica LASA, sobre los temas 'Forensic "Technologies of Truth” from Latin American Origins to Global Diffusion' y 'Mecanismos y estándares en búsqueda, identificación, y reconocimiento', profundizando dialogos entre ciencias forenses, derecho y ciencias sociales iniciadas en el 2017. Informe dedicado a la memoria del Dr Cristian Orrego Benavente (1944-2018) QEPD. Con la participacion de Adam Rosenblatt, Derek Congram, Carolina Robledo, Leonor Arteaga, Daniela Accatino, Paloma Aguilar, Pietro Sferrazza, Hernan Hormazabal, Jo Marie Burt, y Cath Collins
Informe Relatoria Desaparicion y Busqueda V (Espanol), 2018
Informe relatoria de un evento realizado en la Escuela de Derecho Cardozo, Nueva York, en 2018 so... more Informe relatoria de un evento realizado en la Escuela de Derecho Cardozo, Nueva York, en 2018 sobre el desarrollo moderno del derecho a la verdad, los deberes estatales en busqueda de las personas desaparecidas, y el impacto de ambos en el estatus actual de los archivos de la Comision de la Verdad para El Salvador, los cuales se encuentran actualmente alojados, bajo reserva, en la sede de la ONU en Nueva York. Evento con la participacion de Benjamin Cuellar, Leonor Arteaga, Trudy Peterson, Eduardo Gonzalez-Cuevas, Kate Doyle y Jocelyn Getgen
Rapporteur Document Disappearance and Search V (Ingles), 2018
Rapporteur document of a panel event held at Cardozo Law School, New York in 2018 to discuss rece... more Rapporteur document of a panel event held at Cardozo Law School, New York in 2018 to discuss recent developments in the notion of the right to truth, state duties to search for the Disappeared, and the possible impact of both on the status of the El Salvador Truth Commission files, currently held in reserve at UN headquarters in New York. With the participation of Benjamin Cuellar, Leonor Arteaga, Trudy Peterson, Eduardo Gonzalez-Cuevas. Kate Doyle and Jocelyn Getgen
Rapporteur Document Disappearance and Search IV (Ingles), 2017
English translation of rapporteur document from a civil society workshop and two academic confere... more English translation of rapporteur document from a civil society workshop and two academic conference panels held in Lima, Peru in 2017 stimulating dialogue between relatives, activists forensic scientists, legal scholars, and social scientists around approaches to search, identification and recovery of disappeared persons. With the participation of Doris Caqui, Cromwell Castillo, Adam Rosenblatt, Cristian Orrego, Ariel Dulitzky, Rainer Huhle, Eduardo Gonzalez-Cuevas, Leonor Arteaga, Iris Jave, Silvia Dutrenit, Paloma Aguilar, Eden Medina, Daniela Accatino, John Dinges, Rodrigo Lledo, Carolina Robledo and Cath Collins
Informe Relatoria Desaparicion y Busqueda III, 2017
Informe relatoria de paneles realizados en Lima, Peru durante la conferencia LASA 2017 entablando... more Informe relatoria de paneles realizados en Lima, Peru durante la conferencia LASA 2017 entablando dialogos entre las ciencias forenses, el derecho, y las ciencias sociales en relacion a la busqueda, identificacion, y recuperacion de personas (detenidas) desaparecidas. Con la participacion de Adam Rosenblatt, Cristian Orrego, Ariel Dulitzky, Silvia Dutrenit, Paloma Aguilar, Eden Medina, Daniela Accatino, John Dinges, Rodrigo Lledo, Carolina Robledo y Cath Collins
Informe Relatoria Desaparicion y Busqueda II, 2017
Informe-relatoria de un seminario publico, co-organizado por buscadores, familiares e institucion... more Informe-relatoria de un seminario publico, co-organizado por buscadores, familiares e instituciones academicas, realizado en Lima, Peru en abril de 2017, sobre busqueda de personas (detenidas)desaparecidas en Peru, Chile, El Salvador y Sri Lanka. Con la participacion de Doris Caqui, Cromwell Castillo, Leonor Arteaga, Eduardo Gonzalez-Cuevas, Ariel Dulitzky, Rainer Huhle, y Cath Collins.
Informe-relatoria de un seminario practico, realizado en 2017 en Chile, comparando las experienci... more Informe-relatoria de un seminario practico, realizado en 2017 en Chile, comparando las experiencias de Chile y de Peru en el cumplimiento de deberes estatales en la busqueda e identificacion de personas desaparecidas durante periodos autoritarios o de conflicto armado interno. Aportes de Rainer Huhle, Cecilia Medina, Gisela Ortiz, Rafael Barrantes, Pietro Sferrazza y Cath Collins. Paneles: Deberes Internacionales y Cumplimiento; Leyes y Mecanismos de Busqueda
Libro EXPERIENCIAS SOBRE JUSTICIA, VERDAD Y MEMORIA FRENTE A CRÍMENES DE ESTADO, 2020
Este capitulo considera de manera critica los modelos y conceptos de justicia que informan el act... more Este capitulo considera de manera critica los modelos y conceptos de justicia que informan el activismo a favor de la persecucion penal de crimenes atroces en tiempos recientes en America Latina. Concluye que los multiples defectos de los sistemas de justicia penal en la region obligan a que la busqueda de justicia procure ser menos excluyente y mas concretamente provechosa para las comunidades, naciones, e incluso las instituciones involucradas, inter alia buscando fortalecer el uso de la persecucion penal para reformar y mejorar instituciones policiales, forenses y judiciales. Llama a cultivar 'microespacios' de cooperacion con operadores estatales, instalando asi enclaves de rendicion de cuentas, para contrarestar a los enclaves de impunidad. Insta tambien a que los esfuerzos de procuracion de justicia penal formal se complementen con esfuerzos en los ambitos culturales y politicos
Book 'Experiences on Justice, Truth and Memory When Facing Crimes Committed by the State', 2020
This chapter examines the attitudes to formal justice system(s), and to legal pluralism, that are... more This chapter examines the attitudes to formal justice system(s), and to legal pluralism, that are present or latent when actors in Latin America call for and achieve the present-day prosecution of past or ongoing atrocity crimes, most - but not all - perpetrated by state forces. It asks whether and how this accountability for past crimes, in the specific form of prosecution, can be made less exclusionary, more accessible and more meaningful for communities, societies and institutions, including by enhancing its functions in reforming present-day policing and justice system capacity: creating 'enclaves of accountability' where previously 'enclaves of impunity' prevailed. Exploring the potential for 'microchanges' in the form of generational replacement in justice institutions in some post-transitional societies, it also considers and values, the many home-grown innovations in legal repertoire by activists, survivors and lawyers acting in relation to domestic (not international) courts. However it notes that successful accountability activism produces pushback from perpetrators and their defenders, and calls for formal justice advances to be protected and complemented by strategies for political and cultural change.
El presente paper investiga los valores, actitudes, y practicas de las y los forenses, policias y... more El presente paper investiga los valores, actitudes, y practicas de las y los forenses, policias y abogad@s quienes, desde la institucionalidad estatal, hoy se encargan de tareas de busqueda e identificacion de las y los detenidos-desaparecidos de la epoca de la dictadura chilena. Analiza su actuar como practica(s) de justicia transicional, y revela como sus compromisos personales, identidad profesional, y cultural institucional confluye en la busqueda de verdad y justicia desde el Estado, por crimenes estatales del pasado. Se basa en entrevistas y observacion en terreno realizadas en 2014 y 2015 en el marco del proyecto bilateral “Policing, Forensic and Informational Issues in the Search for Truth and Justice”, entre Chile e Irlanda del Norte. Una version en ingles se publico en el Journal of Human Rights Practice en 2016
This article offers an empirically grounded, practitioner-focused analysis of the present-day sea... more This article offers an empirically grounded, practitioner-focused analysis of the present-day search for Chile's dictatorship-era disappeared. It treats this search as a transitional justice process within which rights and duties around truth, justice, reparations, and guarantees of non-repetition are explicitly or implicitly performed and (re)negotiated by, inter alia, state agents. Drawing on close observation of, and ongoing engagement with, the police, forensic, and legal actors who are involved in this search day to day, it provides insights into how these state actors understand their task, and manage related challenges and professional dilemmas. These include divergence in what is meant, and sought, when the terms 'truth' and 'justice' are used; the effect of generational replacement; and the necessary limits of victim-centredness within a criminal justice frame. Finally, the article argues for greater attention to this type of closely observed, supply-side analysis of how, and by whom, states' transitional justice duties are actually carried out. This is important, not least because such routinization of transitional justice functions provides learning opportunities for the field, exposing incompatibilities, gaps or contradictions in or between core transitional justice tenets.
This article analyses how judicial activity in domestic prosecution of dictatorship-era human rig... more This article analyses how judicial activity in domestic prosecution of dictatorship-era human rights violations shapes and contributes to the accumulation and verification of archival evidence. In particular, it discusses the ways in which trials challenge the status of existing sources of truth, such as truth commission findings, as well as producing new kinds of information and new sources of doubt about crimes of the recent past. The paper argues that novel 'truth orders' are produced by transitional artifices such as the truth commission and other administrative instances. Trials constitute another such order, with a separate and in some senses more socially established claim to legitimacy. It is in some senses inevitable, therefore, that competing truth claims arise when prosecutions are added to the post-transitional mix. Particular aspects of the technically challenging process of investigating long-ago crimes introduce additional professional considerations. The procedures and protocols applicable to forensic science and police work must be assimilated and evaluated by judges charged with turning old and new data into usable evidence. The particular rules of evidence, probatory value, and standards of proof that judges are mandated by law to apply challenges and transforms, in sometimes unpredictable ways, the social legitimacy or veracity previously attributed to such data. This challenge is particularly significant when the imperative of judicial truth interacts with sources of social truth. The production and diffusion of verdicts in criminal trials affects public perceptions of past and present judicial neutrality and legitimacy, and also alters relatives', survivors' and bystanders' views about past events and present responsibilities. Investigations carried out under written judicial procedure lead, eventually, to the production of a new meta-archive, a repository of tested and validated truth which may reinforce, challenge, complete or utterly discredit previous versions of events.
Collation and analysis of 50 major judicial, political and legislative milestones in three decade... more Collation and analysis of 50 major judicial, political and legislative milestones in three decades (1990-2020) of efforts, in Chile, to prosecute crimes of repression committed by the 1973-1990 military dictatorship. Each milestone is briefly described, and its significance is analysed. Data allowing the location of original texts of judicial verdicts is provided where applicable. The analysis includes relevant Inter-American Court cases over Chile. This document is ongoing and periodically updated by the team of the Observatorio Justicia Transicional of the Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago de Chile
Sistematizacion y analisis de 50 hitos juridicos, politicos y legislativos que han sido fundament... more Sistematizacion y analisis de 50 hitos juridicos, politicos y legislativos que han sido fundamentales en 3 decadas de busqueda de justicia en Chile (1990-2020) por crimenes de represion cometidos por la dictadura de 1973 a 1990. Cada hito trae una descripcion basica, datos que permiten la ubicacion del fallo judicial correspondiente, donde se aplica, y una exposicion que analiza su significado. Incluye causas resueltas por la Corte Interamericana de DDHH sobre Chile en el periodo. Trabajo colectivo del equipo Observatorio de Justicia Transicional, de periodica actualizacion
MEMORY OF NATIONS Democratic Transition Guide, 2020
The Democratic Transition Guide offers practitioner-focused studies of transitional experiences i... more The Democratic Transition Guide offers practitioner-focused studies of transitional experiences in a range of countries, to assist decisionmakers by offering a reference guide to lessons learned in areas including political and constitutional reform; transformation of the security services; justice, reparations, and the preservation of archives. The Chile chapter of the guide includes sections by Cath Collins on lustration and on prosecutions
La Guia ofrece analisis resumidos de las experiencias transicionales de diversos paises, buscando... more La Guia ofrece analisis resumidos de las experiencias transicionales de diversos paises, buscando alimentar la toma de decisiones en procesos actuales y prospectivos ofreciendo evaluaciones y lecciones aprendidas. Los temas cubiertos incluyen reformas politicas y constitucionales, reformacion y depuracion de servicios de seguridad, justicia, verdad, archivos, reparacion y etc. El capitulo para Chile incluye entradas por Cath Collins sobre Lustracion y sobre Persecucion Penal de Crimenes del Regimen
In recent years, the transitional justice field has tended to expand both the time horizons and t... more In recent years, the transitional justice field has tended to expand both the time horizons and the thematic focus of its concerns. Today, it is more likely than previously to address the mid and long-term impacts of the human, social and environmental catastrophes left behind by political violence, human rights violations, and infractions of international humanitarian law. Post-authoritarian Chile has always tended to downplay its truth and justice concerns, or even attempt to declare them a thing of the past. They nonetheless re-irrupt time and again into national public life. The impact of the 1973-90 dictatorship era and its violence is not, moreover, limited to the generations who most visibly or most directly lived through it: it also explains many of today’s social, political and economic faultlines. This year’s report accordingly focuses on the economic, social and cultural rights legacies of the dictatorship, and on the unfinished business of reparations. It does so at a time when national life is demonstrably under strain, suffering the negative and dangerous consequences of belligerent public discourse that cares little for the truth, and tends toward selective amnesia about the recent past.
Informe Anual Derechos Humanos en Chile 2019, Universidad Diego Portales, 2019
El saliente Relator Especial de la ONU sobre la promoción de la verdad, la justicia, la reparació... more El saliente Relator Especial de la ONU sobre la promoción de la verdad, la justicia, la reparación y las garantías de no repetición señaló, en 2017, la imperante necesidad de abarcar, en igual medida que la justicia penal, la verdad, las reparaciones (incluyendo indemnización civil), y las garantías de no repetición. Resaltó la “potencialidad preventiva”, en materia de justicia transicional, de una sociedad civil fuerte y lamentó, “una tendencia de los gobiernos…. de entablar relacions ... antagónicas, con la sociedad civil”. Todas estas observaciones interpelan con fuerza la trayectoria chilena actual, donde multiples defectos siguen impidiendo la realización plena de la pequenas cuotas de verdad, justicia, y reparacion alguna vez conquistadas. El Informe de 2019 pone enfasis en el deficit en materia de derechos socioeconomicos y culturales del enfoque actual, vinculandolo con las deficiencias en materia de reparacion, asimismo con la irrupcion social que hizo ver, en 2019, las consecuencias aun muy vivas del dano economico, social y colectivo que la dictadura infligio, a la par de sus acciones represivas en materia de desapariciones forzadas, ejecuciones, tortura y exilio.
This essay examines what happens when the disappeared, reappear. Using examples from various La... more This essay examines what happens when the disappeared, reappear. Using examples from various Latin American contexts, Northern Ireland, and Spain, the text contrasts the divergent truth regimes, truth claims, and sources of knowing that arise. Following Gatti, it discusses the various catastrophes – of language, and of meaning – that may persist even when a forcibly disappeared person is discovered alive. The piece considers, in turn, how disappearances are administered, how they end, and the failure of restitution of remains or identity to fully dissipate radical uncertainty. Controversies arising from the paradoxical bestowing of enhanced visibility on the absent disappeared, and the victim hierarchies this creates, are discussed. So too is the question of the positionality of the forensic expert, and the credence given to forensic expertise. I argue that any mission to turn the disappeared back into still-living persons, or safely deceased bodies, is in a certain sense doomed to fail.
Para algunos, la detención en Londres del ex-dictador chileno Augusto Pinochet, en 1998, fue una ... more Para algunos, la detención en Londres del ex-dictador chileno Augusto Pinochet, en 1998, fue una demostración paradigmática de la posible eficacia de las así llamadas «redes globales de la sociedad civil» para hacer efectiva la responsabilidad penal de ex Jefes de Estado por crímenes contra la humanidad. Sin embargo, el presente artículo cuestiona la eficacia de las acciones que pueden emprender elementos de la sociedad civil globalizada para desencadenar la persecución penal por violaciones masivas de los derechos humanos cometidas en el pasado. A partir de un amplio trabajo sobre el terreno, el artículo sostiene que los factores internos, entre ellos la presión ejercida por actores nacionales y los cambios introducidos en las judicaturas pertinentes, han influido más que el derecho o que el activismo internacional como causa próxima del resurgimiento del tema de la responsabilidad penal por violaciones de los derechos humanos cometidas en el pasado en el Cono Sur de América Latina. Por su parte, la experiencia de El Salvador revela que, no obstante el éxito de algunas iniciativas transnacionales, no se ha logrado influir de manera decisiva en la evolución del tema a nivel nacional después de la transición. Al parecer, la intervención transnacionl no es capaz de crear en forma independiente las condiciones necesarias para hacer efectiva la responsabilidad mencionada. The UK detention of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998 was hailed at the time as an unprecedented demonstration of the possible efficacy of 'global civil society' networks in holding former heads of state to account for crimes against humanity. This article nonetheless questions the concept, as well as the practical efficacy, of global civil society action or 'human rights lawyering' as a trigger for the prosecution of past human rights violations. Based on extensive field research, the article argues that domestic factors, including domestic actor pressure and national judicial change, have proved more significant than international law or international activism in recent re-irruptions of the human rights accountability issue in Latin America's Southern Cone. The case of El Salvador, meanwhile, shows that transnational initiatives, while occasionally successful in their own right, have not been able to interrupt or foreshorten domestic post-transitional trajectories to the extent of independently creating favourable accountability conditions.
Informe Relatoria Desaparicion y Busqueda VI , 2018
Informe relatoria de paneles academicos realizados en Barcelona en 2018 en el marco de la confere... more Informe relatoria de paneles academicos realizados en Barcelona en 2018 en el marco de la conferencia academica LASA, sobre los temas 'Forensic "Technologies of Truth” from Latin American Origins to Global Diffusion' y 'Mecanismos y estándares en búsqueda, identificación, y reconocimiento', profundizando dialogos entre ciencias forenses, derecho y ciencias sociales iniciadas en el 2017. Informe dedicado a la memoria del Dr Cristian Orrego Benavente (1944-2018) QEPD. Con la participacion de Adam Rosenblatt, Derek Congram, Carolina Robledo, Leonor Arteaga, Daniela Accatino, Paloma Aguilar, Pietro Sferrazza, Hernan Hormazabal, Jo Marie Burt, y Cath Collins
Informe Relatoria Desaparicion y Busqueda V (Espanol), 2018
Informe relatoria de un evento realizado en la Escuela de Derecho Cardozo, Nueva York, en 2018 so... more Informe relatoria de un evento realizado en la Escuela de Derecho Cardozo, Nueva York, en 2018 sobre el desarrollo moderno del derecho a la verdad, los deberes estatales en busqueda de las personas desaparecidas, y el impacto de ambos en el estatus actual de los archivos de la Comision de la Verdad para El Salvador, los cuales se encuentran actualmente alojados, bajo reserva, en la sede de la ONU en Nueva York. Evento con la participacion de Benjamin Cuellar, Leonor Arteaga, Trudy Peterson, Eduardo Gonzalez-Cuevas, Kate Doyle y Jocelyn Getgen
Rapporteur Document Disappearance and Search V (Ingles), 2018
Rapporteur document of a panel event held at Cardozo Law School, New York in 2018 to discuss rece... more Rapporteur document of a panel event held at Cardozo Law School, New York in 2018 to discuss recent developments in the notion of the right to truth, state duties to search for the Disappeared, and the possible impact of both on the status of the El Salvador Truth Commission files, currently held in reserve at UN headquarters in New York. With the participation of Benjamin Cuellar, Leonor Arteaga, Trudy Peterson, Eduardo Gonzalez-Cuevas. Kate Doyle and Jocelyn Getgen
Rapporteur Document Disappearance and Search IV (Ingles), 2017
English translation of rapporteur document from a civil society workshop and two academic confere... more English translation of rapporteur document from a civil society workshop and two academic conference panels held in Lima, Peru in 2017 stimulating dialogue between relatives, activists forensic scientists, legal scholars, and social scientists around approaches to search, identification and recovery of disappeared persons. With the participation of Doris Caqui, Cromwell Castillo, Adam Rosenblatt, Cristian Orrego, Ariel Dulitzky, Rainer Huhle, Eduardo Gonzalez-Cuevas, Leonor Arteaga, Iris Jave, Silvia Dutrenit, Paloma Aguilar, Eden Medina, Daniela Accatino, John Dinges, Rodrigo Lledo, Carolina Robledo and Cath Collins
Informe Relatoria Desaparicion y Busqueda III, 2017
Informe relatoria de paneles realizados en Lima, Peru durante la conferencia LASA 2017 entablando... more Informe relatoria de paneles realizados en Lima, Peru durante la conferencia LASA 2017 entablando dialogos entre las ciencias forenses, el derecho, y las ciencias sociales en relacion a la busqueda, identificacion, y recuperacion de personas (detenidas) desaparecidas. Con la participacion de Adam Rosenblatt, Cristian Orrego, Ariel Dulitzky, Silvia Dutrenit, Paloma Aguilar, Eden Medina, Daniela Accatino, John Dinges, Rodrigo Lledo, Carolina Robledo y Cath Collins
Informe Relatoria Desaparicion y Busqueda II, 2017
Informe-relatoria de un seminario publico, co-organizado por buscadores, familiares e institucion... more Informe-relatoria de un seminario publico, co-organizado por buscadores, familiares e instituciones academicas, realizado en Lima, Peru en abril de 2017, sobre busqueda de personas (detenidas)desaparecidas en Peru, Chile, El Salvador y Sri Lanka. Con la participacion de Doris Caqui, Cromwell Castillo, Leonor Arteaga, Eduardo Gonzalez-Cuevas, Ariel Dulitzky, Rainer Huhle, y Cath Collins.
Informe-relatoria de un seminario practico, realizado en 2017 en Chile, comparando las experienci... more Informe-relatoria de un seminario practico, realizado en 2017 en Chile, comparando las experiencias de Chile y de Peru en el cumplimiento de deberes estatales en la busqueda e identificacion de personas desaparecidas durante periodos autoritarios o de conflicto armado interno. Aportes de Rainer Huhle, Cecilia Medina, Gisela Ortiz, Rafael Barrantes, Pietro Sferrazza y Cath Collins. Paneles: Deberes Internacionales y Cumplimiento; Leyes y Mecanismos de Busqueda
Libro EXPERIENCIAS SOBRE JUSTICIA, VERDAD Y MEMORIA FRENTE A CRÍMENES DE ESTADO, 2020
Este capitulo considera de manera critica los modelos y conceptos de justicia que informan el act... more Este capitulo considera de manera critica los modelos y conceptos de justicia que informan el activismo a favor de la persecucion penal de crimenes atroces en tiempos recientes en America Latina. Concluye que los multiples defectos de los sistemas de justicia penal en la region obligan a que la busqueda de justicia procure ser menos excluyente y mas concretamente provechosa para las comunidades, naciones, e incluso las instituciones involucradas, inter alia buscando fortalecer el uso de la persecucion penal para reformar y mejorar instituciones policiales, forenses y judiciales. Llama a cultivar 'microespacios' de cooperacion con operadores estatales, instalando asi enclaves de rendicion de cuentas, para contrarestar a los enclaves de impunidad. Insta tambien a que los esfuerzos de procuracion de justicia penal formal se complementen con esfuerzos en los ambitos culturales y politicos
Book 'Experiences on Justice, Truth and Memory When Facing Crimes Committed by the State', 2020
This chapter examines the attitudes to formal justice system(s), and to legal pluralism, that are... more This chapter examines the attitudes to formal justice system(s), and to legal pluralism, that are present or latent when actors in Latin America call for and achieve the present-day prosecution of past or ongoing atrocity crimes, most - but not all - perpetrated by state forces. It asks whether and how this accountability for past crimes, in the specific form of prosecution, can be made less exclusionary, more accessible and more meaningful for communities, societies and institutions, including by enhancing its functions in reforming present-day policing and justice system capacity: creating 'enclaves of accountability' where previously 'enclaves of impunity' prevailed. Exploring the potential for 'microchanges' in the form of generational replacement in justice institutions in some post-transitional societies, it also considers and values, the many home-grown innovations in legal repertoire by activists, survivors and lawyers acting in relation to domestic (not international) courts. However it notes that successful accountability activism produces pushback from perpetrators and their defenders, and calls for formal justice advances to be protected and complemented by strategies for political and cultural change.
El presente paper investiga los valores, actitudes, y practicas de las y los forenses, policias y... more El presente paper investiga los valores, actitudes, y practicas de las y los forenses, policias y abogad@s quienes, desde la institucionalidad estatal, hoy se encargan de tareas de busqueda e identificacion de las y los detenidos-desaparecidos de la epoca de la dictadura chilena. Analiza su actuar como practica(s) de justicia transicional, y revela como sus compromisos personales, identidad profesional, y cultural institucional confluye en la busqueda de verdad y justicia desde el Estado, por crimenes estatales del pasado. Se basa en entrevistas y observacion en terreno realizadas en 2014 y 2015 en el marco del proyecto bilateral “Policing, Forensic and Informational Issues in the Search for Truth and Justice”, entre Chile e Irlanda del Norte. Una version en ingles se publico en el Journal of Human Rights Practice en 2016
This article offers an empirically grounded, practitioner-focused analysis of the present-day sea... more This article offers an empirically grounded, practitioner-focused analysis of the present-day search for Chile's dictatorship-era disappeared. It treats this search as a transitional justice process within which rights and duties around truth, justice, reparations, and guarantees of non-repetition are explicitly or implicitly performed and (re)negotiated by, inter alia, state agents. Drawing on close observation of, and ongoing engagement with, the police, forensic, and legal actors who are involved in this search day to day, it provides insights into how these state actors understand their task, and manage related challenges and professional dilemmas. These include divergence in what is meant, and sought, when the terms 'truth' and 'justice' are used; the effect of generational replacement; and the necessary limits of victim-centredness within a criminal justice frame. Finally, the article argues for greater attention to this type of closely observed, supply-side analysis of how, and by whom, states' transitional justice duties are actually carried out. This is important, not least because such routinization of transitional justice functions provides learning opportunities for the field, exposing incompatibilities, gaps or contradictions in or between core transitional justice tenets.
This article analyses how judicial activity in domestic prosecution of dictatorship-era human rig... more This article analyses how judicial activity in domestic prosecution of dictatorship-era human rights violations shapes and contributes to the accumulation and verification of archival evidence. In particular, it discusses the ways in which trials challenge the status of existing sources of truth, such as truth commission findings, as well as producing new kinds of information and new sources of doubt about crimes of the recent past. The paper argues that novel 'truth orders' are produced by transitional artifices such as the truth commission and other administrative instances. Trials constitute another such order, with a separate and in some senses more socially established claim to legitimacy. It is in some senses inevitable, therefore, that competing truth claims arise when prosecutions are added to the post-transitional mix. Particular aspects of the technically challenging process of investigating long-ago crimes introduce additional professional considerations. The procedures and protocols applicable to forensic science and police work must be assimilated and evaluated by judges charged with turning old and new data into usable evidence. The particular rules of evidence, probatory value, and standards of proof that judges are mandated by law to apply challenges and transforms, in sometimes unpredictable ways, the social legitimacy or veracity previously attributed to such data. This challenge is particularly significant when the imperative of judicial truth interacts with sources of social truth. The production and diffusion of verdicts in criminal trials affects public perceptions of past and present judicial neutrality and legitimacy, and also alters relatives', survivors' and bystanders' views about past events and present responsibilities. Investigations carried out under written judicial procedure lead, eventually, to the production of a new meta-archive, a repository of tested and validated truth which may reinforce, challenge, complete or utterly discredit previous versions of events.
Collation and analysis of 50 major judicial, political and legislative milestones in three decade... more Collation and analysis of 50 major judicial, political and legislative milestones in three decades (1990-2020) of efforts, in Chile, to prosecute crimes of repression committed by the 1973-1990 military dictatorship. Each milestone is briefly described, and its significance is analysed. Data allowing the location of original texts of judicial verdicts is provided where applicable. The analysis includes relevant Inter-American Court cases over Chile. This document is ongoing and periodically updated by the team of the Observatorio Justicia Transicional of the Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago de Chile
Sistematizacion y analisis de 50 hitos juridicos, politicos y legislativos que han sido fundament... more Sistematizacion y analisis de 50 hitos juridicos, politicos y legislativos que han sido fundamentales en 3 decadas de busqueda de justicia en Chile (1990-2020) por crimenes de represion cometidos por la dictadura de 1973 a 1990. Cada hito trae una descripcion basica, datos que permiten la ubicacion del fallo judicial correspondiente, donde se aplica, y una exposicion que analiza su significado. Incluye causas resueltas por la Corte Interamericana de DDHH sobre Chile en el periodo. Trabajo colectivo del equipo Observatorio de Justicia Transicional, de periodica actualizacion
MEMORY OF NATIONS Democratic Transition Guide, 2020
The Democratic Transition Guide offers practitioner-focused studies of transitional experiences i... more The Democratic Transition Guide offers practitioner-focused studies of transitional experiences in a range of countries, to assist decisionmakers by offering a reference guide to lessons learned in areas including political and constitutional reform; transformation of the security services; justice, reparations, and the preservation of archives. The Chile chapter of the guide includes sections by Cath Collins on lustration and on prosecutions
La Guia ofrece analisis resumidos de las experiencias transicionales de diversos paises, buscando... more La Guia ofrece analisis resumidos de las experiencias transicionales de diversos paises, buscando alimentar la toma de decisiones en procesos actuales y prospectivos ofreciendo evaluaciones y lecciones aprendidas. Los temas cubiertos incluyen reformas politicas y constitucionales, reformacion y depuracion de servicios de seguridad, justicia, verdad, archivos, reparacion y etc. El capitulo para Chile incluye entradas por Cath Collins sobre Lustracion y sobre Persecucion Penal de Crimenes del Regimen
In recent years, the transitional justice field has tended to expand both the time horizons and t... more In recent years, the transitional justice field has tended to expand both the time horizons and the thematic focus of its concerns. Today, it is more likely than previously to address the mid and long-term impacts of the human, social and environmental catastrophes left behind by political violence, human rights violations, and infractions of international humanitarian law. Post-authoritarian Chile has always tended to downplay its truth and justice concerns, or even attempt to declare them a thing of the past. They nonetheless re-irrupt time and again into national public life. The impact of the 1973-90 dictatorship era and its violence is not, moreover, limited to the generations who most visibly or most directly lived through it: it also explains many of today’s social, political and economic faultlines. This year’s report accordingly focuses on the economic, social and cultural rights legacies of the dictatorship, and on the unfinished business of reparations. It does so at a time when national life is demonstrably under strain, suffering the negative and dangerous consequences of belligerent public discourse that cares little for the truth, and tends toward selective amnesia about the recent past.
Informe Anual Derechos Humanos en Chile 2019, Universidad Diego Portales, 2019
El saliente Relator Especial de la ONU sobre la promoción de la verdad, la justicia, la reparació... more El saliente Relator Especial de la ONU sobre la promoción de la verdad, la justicia, la reparación y las garantías de no repetición señaló, en 2017, la imperante necesidad de abarcar, en igual medida que la justicia penal, la verdad, las reparaciones (incluyendo indemnización civil), y las garantías de no repetición. Resaltó la “potencialidad preventiva”, en materia de justicia transicional, de una sociedad civil fuerte y lamentó, “una tendencia de los gobiernos…. de entablar relacions ... antagónicas, con la sociedad civil”. Todas estas observaciones interpelan con fuerza la trayectoria chilena actual, donde multiples defectos siguen impidiendo la realización plena de la pequenas cuotas de verdad, justicia, y reparacion alguna vez conquistadas. El Informe de 2019 pone enfasis en el deficit en materia de derechos socioeconomicos y culturales del enfoque actual, vinculandolo con las deficiencias en materia de reparacion, asimismo con la irrupcion social que hizo ver, en 2019, las consecuencias aun muy vivas del dano economico, social y colectivo que la dictadura infligio, a la par de sus acciones represivas en materia de desapariciones forzadas, ejecuciones, tortura y exilio.
This essay examines what happens when the disappeared, reappear. Using examples from various La... more This essay examines what happens when the disappeared, reappear. Using examples from various Latin American contexts, Northern Ireland, and Spain, the text contrasts the divergent truth regimes, truth claims, and sources of knowing that arise. Following Gatti, it discusses the various catastrophes – of language, and of meaning – that may persist even when a forcibly disappeared person is discovered alive. The piece considers, in turn, how disappearances are administered, how they end, and the failure of restitution of remains or identity to fully dissipate radical uncertainty. Controversies arising from the paradoxical bestowing of enhanced visibility on the absent disappeared, and the victim hierarchies this creates, are discussed. So too is the question of the positionality of the forensic expert, and the credence given to forensic expertise. I argue that any mission to turn the disappeared back into still-living persons, or safely deceased bodies, is in a certain sense doomed to fail.
Para algunos, la detención en Londres del ex-dictador chileno Augusto Pinochet, en 1998, fue una ... more Para algunos, la detención en Londres del ex-dictador chileno Augusto Pinochet, en 1998, fue una demostración paradigmática de la posible eficacia de las así llamadas «redes globales de la sociedad civil» para hacer efectiva la responsabilidad penal de ex Jefes de Estado por crímenes contra la humanidad. Sin embargo, el presente artículo cuestiona la eficacia de las acciones que pueden emprender elementos de la sociedad civil globalizada para desencadenar la persecución penal por violaciones masivas de los derechos humanos cometidas en el pasado. A partir de un amplio trabajo sobre el terreno, el artículo sostiene que los factores internos, entre ellos la presión ejercida por actores nacionales y los cambios introducidos en las judicaturas pertinentes, han influido más que el derecho o que el activismo internacional como causa próxima del resurgimiento del tema de la responsabilidad penal por violaciones de los derechos humanos cometidas en el pasado en el Cono Sur de América Latina. Por su parte, la experiencia de El Salvador revela que, no obstante el éxito de algunas iniciativas transnacionales, no se ha logrado influir de manera decisiva en la evolución del tema a nivel nacional después de la transición. Al parecer, la intervención transnacionl no es capaz de crear en forma independiente las condiciones necesarias para hacer efectiva la responsabilidad mencionada. The UK detention of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998 was hailed at the time as an unprecedented demonstration of the possible efficacy of 'global civil society' networks in holding former heads of state to account for crimes against humanity. This article nonetheless questions the concept, as well as the practical efficacy, of global civil society action or 'human rights lawyering' as a trigger for the prosecution of past human rights violations. Based on extensive field research, the article argues that domestic factors, including domestic actor pressure and national judicial change, have proved more significant than international law or international activism in recent re-irruptions of the human rights accountability issue in Latin America's Southern Cone. The case of El Salvador, meanwhile, shows that transnational initiatives, while occasionally successful in their own right, have not been able to interrupt or foreshorten domestic post-transitional trajectories to the extent of independently creating favourable accountability conditions.
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Papers by Cath Collins
Con la participacion de Adam Rosenblatt, Derek Congram, Carolina Robledo, Leonor Arteaga, Daniela Accatino, Paloma Aguilar, Pietro Sferrazza, Hernan Hormazabal, Jo Marie Burt, y Cath Collins
Con la participacion de Adam Rosenblatt, Derek Congram, Carolina Robledo, Leonor Arteaga, Daniela Accatino, Paloma Aguilar, Pietro Sferrazza, Hernan Hormazabal, Jo Marie Burt, y Cath Collins