Dealing with the Past: A Comparison of Argentina and Chile’s Amnesty Laws. Agreements, Disagreements and Protagonists By

Using the Argentine and Chilean cases, this study reflects on the particular way in which Latin American countries dealt with their transitional processes to democracy during the 1980´s after numerous human rights abuses had been committed. The characteristics, peculiarities and outcomes of those processes left unresolved issues that need to be better understood for some Latin American societies to reach a stable democracy. The main purpose of this research is to study the nature of amnesty laws in democratizing Argentina and Chile, their objectives, rationale, framework, consequences and the main actors involved in them. The paper I am presenting is part of a bigger project were I discuss three important facets of the research problem: (1) the objectives of the laws, the legal framework of the countries, and the key actors surrounding the decisions related to these laws; (2) the consequences, conflictive and otherwise, that the passing of amnesty laws caused within the democratic institutions and society as a whole; and, finally, (3) the analysis of the differences and similarities in the Chilean and the Argentinean cases. To understand the interplay between the main actors, the legal framework, the objectives, conflicts and consequences behind the passing of amnest