This article tries to examine what followed after the official activities of
the Argentine CONADEP(Comision Nacional sobre la Desaparicion de
Personas) and the Peruvian TRC. The Argentine example along with its official
report titled Nunca Mas was regarded as a model case that the subsequent
similar commissions would have to consult. After a long pause of forgetting and
indifference, the Argentine civilian governments succeeded in resuming the
processes of transitional justice, caring for the victims’ rights to truth and justice,
providing them with reparations, and even putting the military perpetrators on
trial. In contrast, the Peruvian case, in spite of the comprehensive
recommendations of the TRC, exemplified a complex and unfavorable situation
in which the longstanding tripartite strife hindered the successive governments
from propelling effective policies of reparations and reconciliation.
In both countries, reparations entailed acts of restoring what had been lost and
giving something, whether symbolic or material, to victims equivalent to a loss
to compensate harm. Neither truth nor justice, including economic reparations,
was able to repair the loss of victims, but such measures provided recognition
for victims and contributed to better individual and collective processes of
dealing with the tragic past.
The policy of reconciliation included not only reparations but also a continuing
dynamic confrontation with the past, in other words, an exercise of
memorialization through institutional and state-sponsored commemoration. In
Argentina and Peru, these programs of reconciliation at the level of the state
worked in the form of building monuments for victims and opening security archives, though it is too early to judge whether such development of levels of
reconciliation could be identified as solid democratization and culture of peace
and human rights.