Tortured for a meager pension. Can there be reconciliation only with economic reparation and no justice?

The use of violence, not only as a way of obtaining power, but also as a method of consolidation and perpetuation of the latter, proved to be the rule during the Chilean dictatorship after the 1973 coup. The systematic use of torture, not only as a means of gathering information, but also as a form of social control and terror reproduction, also became the norm between 1973 and 1990. In spite of the widespread utilization of torture, the victims of such a practice were largely ignored and forgotten by the democratic governments that succeeded the dictatorship. Human Rights organizations were the only ones that brought up the victims’ plight and tried to help them. It wasn’t until 2004 that the Chilean government – due to pressure from Human Rights organizations and torture victims themselves – set up the Torture and Political Imprisonment Commission that, for the first time in three decades, investigated cases of torture. The ensuing report recorded at least 30 thousand cases of people that had been subject to torture. It is important to state that the Valech Report, as it is known, did not disclose the names of any of the torturers involved in human rights violations. It also provided some economic reparation for the victims. Having said this, it’s also important to point out that there is not one single military officer or civilian prosecuted, tried, let alone, sentenced, on torture charges. This is the starting point of this paper, which intends to analyze how public policies regarding torture are perceived by some of the actors involved, namely, torture victims. The paper also attempts to determine to what extent these policies have contributed towards memory recuperation and societal reconciliation, in the knowledge that no one has, or will ever be, tried on torture charges. Or put somewhat differently: is reconciliation possible without justice? It is a complex question with a difficult answer, although it seems that for those who suffered torture, the answer is more human than political: No one has the right to torture a fellow human being and no one has the right to scape justice. In any case, this paper will intend to approach the topic using secondary sources, but also interviewing a sample of the estimated 30 thousand people that were tortured in our country. It won’t be a statistically representative sample, however, it will give us an insight into their horrifying experience as well as helping us understand their views on historical memory, reconciliation and justice