Remembering and Forgetting in Guatemala

In Guatemala, as in other countries of Latin America, the political transition from authoritarian to democratic rule, and from war to peace, has involved a balancing act between truth and justice. Throughout the region during the last two decades, the balance has generally tipped in favour of the former, at the expense of the latter. Official attempts to deal with past violations of human rights that took place during the civil war of the 1980s and 1990s typically meant commissions of inquiry and the passing of amnesty laws, to provide immunity from prosecution for those responsible for such violations.

The prevailing orthodoxy maintains that truth-telling constitutes a valuable contribution to national reconciliation. In a more pragmatic light, truth commissions  – like the one held in South Africa under the leadership of Bishop Desmond Tutu – also serve to legitimize transitional governments. They symbolically distance them from a repressive past; in general, such transitional governments tend to shy away from legal sanctions against perpetrators on practical and political grounds, arguing that this risks an authoritarian backlash.