Coming to Terms with the Past: Chile

The history of this country is filled with emotive upheavals, passions which were once felt and then disappeared, were choked back, and became forgotten; or were simply eliminated or silenced.’ So wrote the Chilean historian Alfredo Jocelyn-Holt Letelier in 1998. He continued: ‘If these catastrophes resonate still, it is because they left open wounds which even now cause pain; we have accumulated disturbances and trauma which scourge our deepest emotions and all we hold dear.’