Residents of La Hacienda, in the central department of La Paz in El Salvador, are holding pictures of the four American nuns murdered in 1980 by members of the National Guard, as they attend the commemorations held to mark 35 years of the crime, in December 2015, at the site where it was perpetrated. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Jul 23 2016 (IPS)

The ruling of the highest court to repeal the amnesty law places El Salvador in the dilemma of deciding whether the country should prosecute those who committed serious violations to human rights during the civil war.

It also evidences that, more than two decades after the end of the conflict in 1992, reconciliation is proving elusive in this Central American country with 6.3 million inhabitants.

At the heart of the matter is the pressing need to bring justice to the victims of war crimes while, on the other hand, it implies a huge as well as difficult task, since it will entail opening cases that are more than two decades old, involving evidence that has been tampered or lost, if at all available, and witnesses who have already died.“We do not want them to be jailed for a long period of time, we want perpetrators to tell us why they killed them, given that they knew they were civilians...And we want them to apologize, we want someone to be held accountable for these deaths”-- Engracia Echeverría.

Those who oppose opening such cases highlight the precarious condition of the judiciary, which has important inadequacies and is cluttered with a plethora of unsentenced cases.

“I believe Salvadorans as a whole, the population and the political forces are not in favour of this (initiating prosecution), they have turned the page”, pointed out left-wing analyst Salvador Samayoa, one of the signatory parties of the Peace Agreements that put an end to 12 years of civil war.

The 12 years of conflict left a toll of 70,000 casualties and more than 8,000 people missing.

Samayoa added that right now El Salvador has too many problems and should not waste its energy on problems pertaining to the past.

For human rights organizations, finding the truth, serving justice and providing redress prevail over the present circumstances and needs.

“Human rights violators can no longer hide behind the amnesty law, so they should be investigated once and for all”, said Miguel Montenegro, director of the El Salvador Commission of Human Rights, a non-governmental organization, told IPS.

The Supreme Court of Justice, in what is deemed to be a historical ruling, on 13 July ruled that the General Amnesty Act for the Consolidation of, passed in 1993, is unconstitutional, thus opening the door to prosecuting those accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity during the conflict.

In its ruling, the Court considered that Articles 2 and 144 of said amnesty law are unconstitutional on the grounds that they violate the rights of the victims of war crimes and crimes against humanity to resort to justice and seek redress.

It further ruled that said crimes are not subject to the statute of limitations and can be tried regardless of the date on which they were perpetrated.

“We have been waiting for this for many years; without this ruling no justice could have been done”, told IPS activist Engracia Echeverría, from the Madeleine Lagadec Center for the Promotion of Defence of Human Rights.

This organization is named after the French nun who was raped and murdered by government troops in April 1989, when they attacked a hospital belonging to the guerrilla group Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN).

The activist stressed that, even though it is true that a lot of information relevant to the cases has been lost, some data can still be obtained by the investigators in the District Attorney’s General Office in charge of criminal prosecution, in case some people wish to instigate an investigation.

The law has been strongly criticized by human rights organizations within and outside the country, since its enactment in March 1993.

Its critics have claimed that it promoted impunity by protecting Army and guerrilla members who committed human rights crimes during the conflict.

However, its advocates have been both retired and active Army members, as well as right-wing politicians and businessmen in the country, since it precisely prevented justice being served to these officers –who are seen as responsible for frustrating the victory of the FMLN.

“All the crimes committed were motivated by an attack by the guerrilla”, claimed retired general Humberto Corado, former Defence Minister between 1993 and 1995.

The now repealed act was passed only five days after the Truth Commission, mandated by the United Nations to investigate human rights abuses during the civil war, had published its report with 32 specific cases, 20 of which were perpetrated by the Army and 12 by insurgents.

Among those cases were the murders of archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero in March 1980; four American nuns in December of the same year, and hundreds of peasants who were shot in several massacres, like those which took place in El Mozote in December 1981 and in Sumpul in May 1980.

Also, six Jesuit priests and a woman and her daughter were murdered in November 1989, a case already being investigated by a Spanish court.

The Truth Commission has also pointed to some FMLN commanders, holding them accountable for the death of several mayors who were targeted for being considered part of the government’s counter-insurgent strategy.

Some of those insurgents are now government officials, as is the case with director of Civil Protection Jorge Meléndez.

Before taking office in 2009, the FMLN, now turned into a political party, strongly criticized the amnesty law and advocated in favour of its repeal, on the grounds that it promoted impunity.

But, after winning the presidential elections that year with Mauricio Funes, it changed its stance and no longer favoured the repeal of the law. Since 2014, the country has been governed by former FMLN commander Salvador Sánchez Cerén.

In fact, the governing party has deemed the repeal as “reckless”, with the President stating on July 15 that Court magistrates “were not considering the effects it could have on the already fragile coexistence” and urging to take the ruling “with responsibility and maturity while taking into account the best interests of the country”.

After the law was ruled unconstitutional, the media were saturated with opinions and analyses on the subject, most of them pointing out the risk of the country being destabilized and on the verge of chaos due to the countless number of lawsuits that could pile up in the courts dealing with war cases.

“To those people who fiercely claim that magistrates have turned the country into a hell we must respond that hell is what the victims and their families have gone –and continue to go- through”, reads the release written on July 15 by the officials of the José Simeón Cañas Central American University, where the murdered Jesuits lived and worked in 1989.

Furthermore, the release states that most of the victims demand to be listened to, in order to find out the truth and be able to put a face on those they need to forgive.

In fact, at the heart of the debate lies the idea of restorative justice as a mechanism to find out the truth and heal the victims’ wounds, without necessarily implying taking perpetrators to jail.

“We do not want them to be jailed for a long period of time, we want perpetrators to tell us why they killed them, given that they knew they were civilians”, stressed Echeverría.

“And we want them to apologize, we want someone to be held accountable for these deaths”, she added.

In the case of Montenegro, himself a victim of illegal arrest and tortures in 1986, he said that it is necessary to investigate those who committed war crimes in order to find out the truth but, even more importantly, as a way for the country to find the most suitable mechanisms to forgive and provide redress”.

However, general Corado said that restorative justice was “hypocritical, its only aim being to seek revenge”.

Following an Israeli airstrike, Palestinian youth inspect the building their families lived in. Credit: Khaled Alashqar/IPS

By Khaled Alashqar
GAZA CITY, Jul 22 2014 (IPS)

As a result of over two weeks of Israeli bombardment, thousands of Palestinian civilians have fled their homes in the north of Gaza and sought refuge in schools run by the UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees.

Among the worst affected are Gazan children who have been forced to live in constant fear and danger, according to Dr. Sami Awaida, a specialised child psychiatrist for the Gaza Mental Health Programme – a local civil society and humanitarian organization that focuses on war trauma and mental health issues concerning children and adults in Gaza.“Children in Gaza have already suffered from two recent violent and shocking experiences in 2009 and 2012 … This trauma now re-generates previous pain and shock and also leads to a mental state of permanent fear and insecurity among children here” – Dr. Sami Awaida, a specialised child psychiatrist for the Gaza Mental Health Programme

Describing the impact of the current trauma, Awaida told IPS:  “Children in Gaza are suffering from anxiety, fear and insecurity because of this war situation.  The challenge we now face as mental health practitioners is ‘post-traumatic disorder’.”

“This means that children in Gaza have already suffered from two recent violent and shocking experiences in 2009 and 2012,” he continued. “This trauma now re-generates previous pain and shock and also leads to a mental state of permanent fear and insecurity among children here.”

Since Monday July 7, Israel has subjected the Gaza Strip to a severe military assault and engaged with the Palestinian factions in a new round of violence.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health has so far reported 230 Palestinians killed; most of them are entire families who were killed in direct shelling of Palestinian houses. Meanwhile, the number of injured has risen to 2,500. Many of the injured and the dead are children.

Hospitals in Gaza are currently suffering from a severe shortage of medical supplies and medicines. Ashraf Al-Qedra, spokesperson for the Gaza Ministry of Health, has called on the international community “to support hospitals in Gaza with urgent medical supplies, as Israel continues its military attacks, leaving more than 800 houses completely destroyed and 800 families without shelter.”

Since Israel began its current offensive against Gaza, its military forces have been accused of pursuing a policy of destroying Palestinian houses and killing civilians. Adnan Abu Hasna, media advisor and spokesperson for UNRWA in Gaza, told IPS that “UNRWA has officially demanded from Israel to respect international humanitarian law and the neutrality of civilians in the military operation.”

He added: “UNRWA stresses the need to fulfill the obligations of the U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to immediately stop violence, due to the increasing number of children and women killed in the Israeli striking and bombardment of Gaza.”

Assam Yunis, director of the Al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights in Gaza, spoke to IPS about the stark violations of human rights and the urgent need for justice and accountability. “The current situation is catastrophic in every aspect,” he said.

“Human rights abuses are unbelievable and these include targeting medical teams and journalists, in addition to targeting children and women by Israel.  This points to clear violations of international law as well as war crimes.  Israel must be held legally accountable at the international level.”

Analysing the situation, Gaza-based political analyst and intellectual Ibrahim Ibrash says he believes that “Israel will never manage to end and uproot both Hamas movement and the Palestinian resistance from Gaza. On the other hand, the Palestinian militant groups will never manage to destroy and defeat Israel.”

He told IPS that the consequences for the Palestinians at the internal level after this military aggression ends will be critical, including “a split between the Palestinian people and the Palestinian Authority; many people will be outraged with the Palestinian leadership, and this of course will leave Gaza in a deplorable state.”

This critical crisis in Gaza comes against a backdrop of a continued blockade imposed on the territory by Israel, widespread unemployment, severe poverty, electricity cuts, closure of borders and crossings since 2006, destroyed infrastructure and a stagnant Gazan economy, combined with a lack of political progress at the Israeli-Palestinian political level.

The real truth that no one can deny is that the civilian population, including women and children, in Gaza are the real victims of this dangerous conflict.

Mexican soldiers at the scene of a crime near the U.S. border. Credit: Courtesy of El Diario de Ciudad Juárez

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Apr 5 2013 (IPS)

The Mexican government is considering using the armed forces, which face serious human rights accusations from their involvement in the war on drugs, to collect socioeconomic data from the low-income households that will benefit from the National Crusade Against Hunger.

Government sources told IPS that the advantage is that the army has the logistical capacity to collect the information, since it has bases and detachments in the regions where the 400 municipalities selected for the anti-hunger programme, announced by President Enrique Peña Nieto a few weeks before he took office on Dec. 1, are located.

There are also enough soldiers, as the armed forces have 210,000 troops, of whom about 70,000 are taking part in the war on drug trafficking, according to the defence ministry.

The government’s aim is to verify that people are effectively eligible to apply for the social programmes, in order to keep the rolls from being inflated, as it presumes happened during the government of former president Felipe Calderón (2006-2012).

The National Crusade Against Hunger is to meet the needs of 7.4 million people living in extreme poverty and with severe nutritional deficits. Some 3.7 million of these people live in urban areas, and the rest live in the countryside.

In Mexico at least 52 million people out of the total population of nearly 117 million live below the poverty line, 11.7 million of them in extreme poverty, and 28 million do not have enough food.

The government plan seeks to eliminate hunger by ensuring adequate nutrition and eradicating acute child malnutrition, while improving indicators of growth in children under five. It also aims to increase small farmers’ production and income, minimise post-harvest losses and waste of food, and promote community participation.

Peña Nieto also plans to modify the anti-drugs strategy implemented by Calderón, who after taking office in December 2006 ordered the deployment of thousands of soldiers to fight drug cartels that are disputing the distribution routes to the lucrative U.S. market.

Among the strategies under consideration are the creation of a national 100,000-strong police force, greater intelligence capacity to prevent serious crime and a strengthened justice system.

Calderón’s military campaign has cost the lives of more than 100,000 people in drug-related deaths, while 25,000 people have been forcibly disappeared and 240,000 people have been forced to flee their homes, according to human rights organisations.

When Calderón sent out the army, its long track record of abuse and impunity came into play. The defence ministry and the state National Commission on Human Rights (CNDH) say 359 military personnel were involved in rights abuses between 2006 and 2012. Of these, 186 have been indicted, 110 prosecuted, 38 sentenced, 8 acquitted and 17 are fugitives at large.

During that period, the CNDH received over 8,000 complaints about soldiers. And 168 have been presented since last December, for abuses such as sexual violence, torture and homicide.

In its World Report 2013, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said “Mexican security forces have committed widespread human rights violations in efforts to combat powerful organised crime groups, including killings, disappearances, and torture.”

It concluded that “almost none of these abuses are adequately investigated, exacerbating a climate of violence and impunity in many parts of the country.”

The government says that when the army returns to the barracks, it may provide personnel for other tasks, like the National Crusade led by the social development ministry.

It is also considering launching an awareness-raising campaign in local communities, to make the possible presence of soldiers a more welcome prospect and thus facilitate their work.

NGOs consulted by IPS did not want to speculate on an announcement that has not yet been made. But they did say it was not suitable to involve the armed forces in further civilian tasks.

The military have taken part in natural disaster relief actions, carrying out rescue operations or delivering humanitarian aid.

The inter-ministerial Crusade Commission, made up of 16 ministries and three other government agencies, is due to decide whether to use troops in its mission over the next few days.

The Crusade will include: the formation of community committees and municipal and state councils; agreements with companies and civil society groups; and the creation of networks. A Citizen’s Council is also planned, headed by the president and comprising representatives of civil society, state governors and members of the inter-ministerial Commission. A committee of experts on food, nutrition and poverty will also be set up.

But “we haven’t had a single meeting, nor has the government called for proposals,” Ximena Maroto, coordinator of the Observatory on Social Policy and Human Rights, which groups six NGOs, told IPS. “It’s important that there should be a transparency mechanism to deal with suggestions. And mechanisms for community participation are lacking – we don’t know how people are going to be mobilised.”

The government is carrying out two pilot projects in the southern state of Guerrero, home to 46 of the 400 municipalities selected for the Crusade. Other municipalities are in Oaxaca (133), Chiapas (55) and Veracruz (33), also in the south.

It has also signed agreements on measures and budgets with 11 of Mexico’s 32 states, but their contents are unknown.

“It’s a gargantuan, slow task which requires inter-ministerial coordination at all levels of government. The structure is highly complex,” said Maroto.

The government intends to measure the decline in the number of people lacking access to food, and in the proportion of children under five who are underweight, stunted (low height for age) or suffering from acute malnutrition, as well as the percentage of the population with good eating habits, and the reduction of illnesses derived from poor diets.

It will also track the increase in spending on income support programmes for people in the selected municipalities, and keep statistics on food production.

Furthermore, it will count the number of Mexicans taking part in the Crusade, the number of volunteer hours donated, the number of participating social organisations, companies and academic institutions, and the percentage of states, municipalities and communities that form councils and committees to fight hunger. It will also assess public approval levels for the Crusade and for the government itself.

Prominent Zimbabwean human rights lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa was arrested for allegedly obstructing the course of justice. She is pictured here exiting a police vehicle as she arrived at the Harare Magistrate’s Court on Mar. 20. Credit: Nyarai Mudimu/IPS

By Nyarai Mudimu
HARARE, Mar 21 2013 (IPS)

Heightened political tension between the major rivals in Zimbabwe’s coalition government and increased clampdowns on civil society have left questions about the country’s readiness for a true democracy just days after people voted to adopt a new constitution.

Just over three million Zimbabweans voted on Sunday Mar. 17 in support of the draft constitution, which paves the way for elections later this year, while 179,489 rejected it. There were 56,627 spoilt ballots.

However, on the day after the referendum, prominent local human rights lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa was arrested for allegedly obstructing the course of justice. She is said to have requested that police show her a search warrant when they raided Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s support staff offices on Sunday Mar. 17. Four staffers were also arrested.

“The government clampdown on individuals and organisations that support democracy… clearly demonstrate that there are forces that are not yet ready to welcome the democratic dispensation that will come with the new constitution,” Nixon Nyikadzino, a human rights activist with the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, a grouping of more than 350 civil organisations in Zimbabwe working together to bring about democratic change, told IPS.

President Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF), and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change led by Tsvangirai (MDC-T), entered a Global Political Agreement (GPA) for a power-sharing government in 2008 after political violence marred the election. Mugabe has been in power for the last 33 years and his time in office have been plagued by allegations of corruption, abuse of power, political intimidation and human rights abuses.

The draft constitution that Zimbabweans just voted for limits the president to only two five-year terms of office, but it also has clear provisions that require security forces to be politically neutral and not to interfere with electoral processes.

Mtetwa and her co-accused are facing charges of impersonating the police, possessing articles for criminal use, breaching the Official Secrets Act and obstructing the course of justice. The act is vague and says that any matter that the state may allege to be “prejudicial to the safety and interests of Zimbabwe” breaches it, but it does not define what “interests” mean.

They are also accused of unlawfully compiling dockets about government officials, including members of Zanu-PF, who are thought to be corrupt.

On Wednesday Mar. 20, Mtetwa and her co-accused were denied bail in the Harare Magistrate’s Court. This is despite a Mar. 18 Zimbabwe High Court ruling that ordered police to release Mtetwa. Police defied the order and she was held in custody and appeared this week in the magistrate’s court.

The move has been condemned by activists here.

“We do not know how a junior court has nullified a senior court’s order. The High Court ordered that she be released but police defied that. Now a junior court has just defied the order again. How the court arrived at that decision is still a surprise to us. We are still studying the decision,” the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights spokesman Kumbirai Mafunda told IPS.

Nyikadzino said he was not surprised by the court’s decision to deny bail to the five.

“That is their style: to keep you under their custody for as long as they can, because they know they don’t have a case. I know of cases where the police have had to resort to evoking section 121 of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act, which allows them to hold suspects for longer periods before they appear in court,” he said. In January  international rights organisation Human Rights Watch said the justice system still remained “extremely partisan” towards Zanu-PF.

Nyikadzino added that the tension between Zanu-PF and MDC-T suggested that the coalition government was not ready to embrace democracy.

However, police have insisted that the arrests are legitimate. National police spokesperson assistant commissioner Charity Charamba told IPS that Mtetwa’s co-accused were not staffers in the prime minister’s office.

“These four people are not civil servants. You have to be a civil servant to be deemed a staffer in the prime minister’s office. The people work for a non-governmental organisation, the Institute of Democratic Alliance in Zimbabwe. They had no right to pretend to work in the PM’s office,” she said.

But HRW criticised the government in a Mar. 19 statement, and listed a number of “politically motivated abuses against civil society activists and organisations.”

Zanu-PF spokesman Rugare Gumbo scoffed at and dismissed the accusations of a clampdown on civil society.

“We know this sensationalism is a ploy by (Prime Minister) Tsvangirai and his handlers to push for a SADC (Southern African Development Community) summit before we hold our general elections. Let the police and the courts do their work. We have become more aware of their (MDC-T) machinations,” Gumbo told IPS.

Tsvangirai warned his supporters to expect more violence from Zanu-PF.

“History has recorded that when change is about to happen, there are certain elements who are bent on diverting it. In 2000 we rejected the draft constitution, and a few weeks later, there were land invasions and widespread violence. In 2008 when we signed the GPA how many people were arrested?” he said at a press conference in Harare on Tuesday Mar. 19.

Meanwhile, Mugabe, who is currently in Rome for Pope Francis’ inauguration, is reported to have said that the draft constitution will now be gazetted for 30 days and then tabled in parliament for debate. It will not be amended.

By Fabíola Ortiz
SANTIAGO, Dec 6 2012 (IPS)

The legacy of Chile’s 1973-1990 dictatorship, which left some 3,000 people dead and “disappeared”, remains alive in the country’s society and political system, says journalist and writer Mauricio Weibel.

In this interview with IPS, Weibel says that elements of the regime of the late dictator General Augusto Pinochet survive in the constitution inherited from the dictatorship, and are the root cause of what he sees as Chile’s present social crisis, and of the failings of its political system.

Weibel and his colleague Carlos Dorat are the authors of a book, “Asociación Ilícita – Los archivos secretos de la dictadura” (Illicit Association: The secret archives of the dictatorship), one of the most widely read books in the country since its publication in October.

Chilean journalist and writer Mauricio Weibel. Credit: Fabíola Ortiz/IPS

Official documents reveal how the dictatorship made its decisions, how it was allied with other military regimes in the Southern Cone of South America (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) by means of Operation Condor, aimed at tracking down, capturing and eliminating left-wing opponents, and how its diplomats kept watch on Chilean exiles around the world.

Q: How did you do the research for “Asociación Ilícita”?

A: We wanted to put on an exhibition in the Museum of Memory for the 40th anniversary of the military coup (Sept. 11, 2013). As I researched, I came across these files in the ministries of the interior and foreign affairs. They were memos and communications exchanged between 1973 and 1990. It took four months to put the files in order, organise and read them, followed by five weeks of writing.

Q: What did the archives reveal about the dictatorship’s secret intelligence network?

A: We decided to describe decision-making and high-level communications during the dictatorship. There is clear evidence of full participation in the repression by civilians and by the foreign ministry. No one was innocent; everyone knew.

In the documents, Chile’s foreign ministers request copies of Operation Condor from the secret police. In a few cases, the secret police suggest to the ministry of the interior that a particular exiled person should be allowed back into the country, but the suggestion is rejected.

Basically, we explain how they operated, what information was communicated, what reports were written, and what kinds of materials were burned, as recorded in the certificates of destruction.

Q: The book cites personalities active in the dictatorship who hold office today, like Alberto Cardemil, now a member of Congress. What was his role?

A: Cardemil was under-secretary of the interior, and is now a member of the lower house for National Renewal, the party of President Enrique Piñera. He used to distribute reports from the Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI) – the secret police – to the ministries, and he was in charge of distributing files with information on opponents of the regime.

It was known that he had been involved in some way, but we had no proof of anything. Now he has a lot of questions to answer: whether he kept copies of these files, of his reports, and whether he has used this information obtained by means of torture, since democracy was restored.

And the same is true of the other civilians, because many ambassadors are shown to have been involved. Cardemil denied the existence of the files, and he denied distributing CNI information.

Q: Have you had any problems with the justice system because of the publication of the book?

A: No, because all the information is based on and backed up by documents. It is all based on signed documents with no opinion, no adjective added. It is raw information.

Q: What impact has the book had?

A: The book is currently among the top ten most widely read in Chile. It is a book for future generations. This month we are also presenting it in Argentina. At the book launch in Santiago, at the Museum of Memory, there were more than 600 people, and at the Santiago book fair there were 200 invited guests.

Q: Why is it important to shed light on the dictatorship’s secret files?

A: Without memory there can be no future; we have to take a look at why we arrived at these horrors so that they can never happen again. We have to carry out profound social and political reflection. And we must also find out why people who now hold high political office were involved.

There is apparently a certain amount of interest in Latin America in revisiting the recent past, to tell the stories that have not been told or were only told in an official version, and to rescue it all from oblivion.

Q: What was the role of the Catholic Church during the dictatorship?

A: The Chilean Church was quite committed to the defence of human rights. Cardinal Raúl Silva Henríquez was one of the most important and most powerful opponents of Pinochet. The Vicaría de la Solidaridad (a human rights agency of the Church) protected persecuted citizens, and provided legal services such as opening legal cases and drawing up writs of habeas corpus. The clergy were involved in dangerous work.

Q: What evidence was found in the archives about Operation Condor?

A: We thought Operation Condor was a strategy of the secret police. But it was a concerted operation by the Southern Cone governments, which cooperated above and beyond conflicts over some issues.

For example, Chile and Bolivia broke off relations in 1978 over La Paz’s maritime claim (to access to the Pacific ocean). But in 1979 they were still cooperating under Operation Condor. The countries had no diplomatic relations, and yet their regimes continued to cooperate at the level of intelligence.

Q: Did diplomats carry out surveillance on exiles?

A: Movements of Chileans abroad were infiltrated. It’s amazing how much information they had. It went far beyond the limits of national borders.

Q: The Chilean dictatorship was the longest lasting in Latin America. Is it still alive in Chilean society?

A: The dictatorship is not only in our memory, but also in the whole constitutional framework Chile has inherited from it, like the 1980 constitution, approved when there were no electoral registers; the political system; the binomial electoral system (in which the top two candidates are elected from each district); and the economic system.

It is omnipresent, and it is a major cause of the political and social crisis Chile is experiencing today. Our 21st century democracy has its origins in the dictatorship.

Q: What was the democratic transition like, under the long shadow of Pinochet up to his death in 2006?

A: It was a democracy under military tutelage. After 1984, the dictatorship suspected that the political and economic system would fall, and that ultimately they would be investigated and tried for crimes against human rights.

At the beginning of the transition, the president could not remove the commanders-in-chief of the armed forces from their posts. Eventually we came to our present position, with a constitution dating back to the dictatorship, where the state has a secondary role regarding the supply and demand of public goods, and an electoral system that prevents proportional representation of voters.

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