A generation later, in both Argentina and Chile, the courts are dealing with the perpetrators of past atrocities
For the past 31 years, Viviana Díaz, a small, gentle woman now in her 50s, has devoted her life to finding out what happened to her father, Victor Díaz López, a former leader of Chile's Communist Party. Following the bloody coup against Salvador Allende's left-wing government in 1973, he became one of the military regime's most wanted men. After nearly three years in hiding, he was finally picked up by the DINA, the secret police of Chile's dictator, General Augusto Pinochet. His family never saw him again.
He was one of the many thousands who perished under the dictatorships that ruled many parts of Latin America in the final phase of the cold war in the 1970s and 1980s. A quarter of a century after the last successful military coup in Latin America, the region has moved on, with democracy for the most part firmly established. But in many countries, the past still poses some searching questions. Peace or justice? Retribution or reconciliation? Find the truth, however painful, or prefer the ease of forgetting?
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