Entre la culpa y la responsabilidad: La respuesta del Chile postdictatorial a las violaciones a los derechos humanos desde una lectura de Hannah Arendt

Abstract

This paper seeks to understand how the concepts of guilt and responsibility are addressed in three reports that were produced in response to outstanding issues of human rights in Chile (the Rettig Report, Valech Report and the Declaration of the Mesa de Diálogo sobre Derechos Humanos). This research project draws on Hannah Arendt’s conceptualization and problematization of collective responsibility, collective guilt and individual guilt in post-conflict societies. It seeks to answer the following question: Is the institutional treatment of responsibilities in post-dictatorial Chile achieved by mere trial or does it correspond to a political-moral self-understanding? In other words, does the institutionalized truth imposed by the Chilean State convey that the country assumed a process of individual guilt or collective responsibility?