Democratizing Societies Confront Their Past

Abstract

This chapter examines various processes of democratization and confrontation within the legacies of the last wave of repressive authoritarianism in the Americas. Undergoing periods of civil unrest, repression, and human rights violations, these societies faced a tortuous process of coming to terms with that experience, enforcing policies of transitional justice without an easy way of closing the book on the past. This chapter suggests a comparative look at various policy paths and their consequences, highlighting a transnational spillover effect as countries looked upon one another and drew inferences for calibrating and advancing their own processes of overcoming the scars of authoritarian repression. The analysis identifies the constellation of national and transnational factors that eventually opened institutional ground for belated truth telling and accountability for historical wrongs.