Reparations: Attention must be paid:

...William Calley, one of the people responsible for the massacre at My Lai, already constitutes a bad precedent...

...Nobody is going to return the dead and the disappeared to their families...

...Just as personal traumas require therapy so that they can be worked through and overcome, our Latin American societies require the sociopolitical therapy of a just reparation for the genocide committed in the name of national security, and indeed, of Western civilization...

...What can and must be publicly restored is the victims' names and their dignity, through a formal recognition of the injustice of what has occurred, and, wherever possible, material reparation...

...It is clear that nobody is going to return to the imprisoned dissident his youth...

...Nor are they blindly adding difficulties to a historical process that is already by no means easy...

...Here, a few people of high rank are singled out as being the ones who are solely responsible for the damage, and of course they are always considered as individuals, not as representatives of the state or of the armed forces...

...Do we really believe that this principle can lead to the establishment of a truly democratic society...

...Further, this argument represents an offensive perversion of the military institution itself, for it presupposes that the military could never be wed to justice or function honestly...

...But there is also the living wound of all of those-probably as many or more than the number who died-who survived by suffering the cruelty visited on their own flesh by cruel prisons, endless interrogations, and refined tortures...

...A democracy that respects the argument of "greater might" will always be under the sword of Damocles, wielded by those who through their control of violence can decide on the acceptability of a legal act or a political orientation, according to their group, or even personal, interests...

...The presumed peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy, when it is not mediated by a war that establishes democratic forces as the victors, gets into great difficulty when it tries to deal with justice, and even when it takes on the simple matter of working out the past...

...Christianity calls for pardon, yes, but a pardon based on truth and justice...

...What right would we have to punish or imprison someone who steals another's goods or who kills out of personal motives, if we ignore the damage done by those who stole human lives and committed mass assassination out of ideological zeal...

...Finally, from time to time the argument of "greater might" is tried or insinuated, saying that if pardon and social forgetting are not forthcoming, there is the danger of the military rebelling against the democratic system and bringing back dictatorship...

...Consequently, as much for social convenience as for political realism, we would have to let go of any thought of laying blame on those who committed offenses in the name of national security, and to quit all claims for reparation for the personal and social damage they have produced...

...Those who clamor for social reparation are not asking for vengeance...

...Nevertheless, the problem turns on whether that pardon and renunciation are going to be established on a foundation of truth and justice, or on lies and continued injustice...

...to the young woman who has been raped her innocence...

...Finally, there is the trauma of those countless people who were threatened, harassed, and persecuted, and who, in order to save their lives and those of their loved ones, had to renounce their ideals and principles-or at least hide them-to flee, to seek refuge, and even exile themselves from their own country...

...People invoke a variety of arguments to defend the idea that all this damage should be completely forgotten, and those who committed it, unconditionally pardoned...

...The damage that has been produced is not simply in the destruction of personal lives...

...The third argument-of "greater might"-is unfortunately the one with the most political weight, although it is also the most fragile...

...Even the most traditional morality only speaks of reconciliation when joined with the "offer of compensation...

...Of course, there is the emptiness left by all those thousands of persons who have been murdered or "disappeared," an emptiness that still grieves and oppresses their families...

...to the person who has been tortured his or her integrity...

...On occasion, this argument gets wrapped in the cloak of Christian forgiveness, as if this way out were the only one consistent with Christian teachings...

...it is a problem whose nature is strictly social...

...In some cases, the argument of "owed obedience" is called up...

...The second and most common argument is that of the political necessity of getting beyond the past, so as not to perpetuate the conflict, and this requires pardon and social reconciliation...

...As for the "disappeared," restitution must be made by a full disclosure of what happened, and if possible, a return of the mortal remains of the victim-or of the person himself or herself, in the case of those children who were stolen from their families...

...But to paraphrase an old saying, it is surely the case that people who cannot confront their history are condemned to repeat it...

...that is, the recognition of wrong committed, and of "atonement through acts," which is to say, reparation...

...On the contrary, they are promoting the personal and social viability of a new society, truly democratic...

...There is no doubt that the evolution of human society requires the capacity to overcome differences, to pardon offenses, and even renounce certain well-founded claims in the interest of peace and the common good...

...To this end, an assessment must be made of the magnitude-both quantitative and qualitative-of the damage produced by counterinsurgency campaigns or state repression, for only then can we appreciate the deception involved in wanting to wipe out history and start over...

...Suffice it to say that the Nuremberg judgments lose all validity, turning into a simple vengeance on the part of the victors, should their ethical, legal, and social logic be "inapplicable" under present circumstances...

...This is a palpably real problem in countries like Argentina and Uruguay, a problem shaping up as critical in the immediate future of Chile, a problem that someday will have to be dealt with in Guatemala and El Salvador, and just beginning in Peru and Colombia...

...The second argument is without doubt the strongest, and must be granted a measure of validity...

...All this damage is of such magnitude that it becomes almost ingenuous or cynical to act as if it can be forgotten overnight, because fundamentally the problem is not one of isolated individuals, whether few or many...

...in other words, it writes off the possibility that the armed forces would be capable of facing up to and accepting the same principle of justice that would apply to any other person, group, or social institution...

...What it comes down to is, how can justice be exercised in our societies if the people who are the principal violators of human rights can freely flaunt before their own victims the idea that what they did was "the right thing," something they might even have to do again...

...This is not the place to belabor the historical backwardness of the "owed obedience" argument...

...Only by taking a full inventory do we see that the past that would be closed up with such haste is not only alive in persons and groups-victims and victimiz-ers-but operating still, within the same social structures that existed before...

...Harm has been done to the social structures themselves-to the norms that order the common life, to the institutions that govern the life of citizens, to the values and principles by which people are educated and through which the repression has tried to justify itself...

...Because, at bottom, what it is recognizing is the falsely democratic character of a social order mortgaged to the power of the military and subject to its will...

...In this sense, the famous case of Lt...

...Would it not be selling as an historical possibility for democracy something that constitutes precisely a condition of its impossibility...

...Such a democracy will always be constrained, censored, castrated-contradicting from its very roots its own nature and vocation...

...REPARATIONS: ATTENTION MUST BE PAID HEALING THE BODY POLITIC IN LATIN AMERICA IGNACIO MARTIN-BARO One of the thorniest problems that has to be con-fronted by Latin American states hoping to establish democratic governments is the neces-sity of dealing with the sequelae of the political repression carried out earlier by governments of "national security...