When it comes to post-armed conflict interventions aimed at restructuring a shattered society, policy makers have largely treated countries as an undifferentiated whole, ignoring local dynamics that reinforce or transform the power relations that are often most relevant to peoples' lives. Using the example of Guatemala, the authors argue that locallevel, bottom-up mechanisms can reflect a country's diverse makeup and experience of conflict, and provide crucial precursors or extensions for wider-scale national and international projects. Local-level initiatives also can involve more community members, promote agency and perhaps be less prone to large-scale patronage and corruption. In promoting truth-telling initiatives and confronting the past, memorializing the departed and burying the dead, and resolving ongoing or recent community conflicts, the authors have found that local-level programs have distinct advantages. The article considers local 'houses of memory,' community-sponsored psycho-social interventions and exhumations; and conflict resolution based on Mayan methods. It concludes that such efforts should be more systematically identified and supported in post-armed conflict settings. In transitional justice, as elsewhere, the authors find, all politics is local.
In recent years, Latin American countries have sought to come to terms with pnor periods of widespread human rights wiolations, relying increasingly on investigatory commissions. Investigatory efforts have been undertaken by democratically elected governments that replaced military dictatorships, by UN-sponsored commissions as part of a UN-mediated peace process, and by national human rights commissioners. This article examines truth commissions in Chile and El Salvador, an investigatory effort in Honduras, and a proposed commission m Guatemala. It compares the achievements and limitations of these commissions within the political constraints and institutional reality of each country, focusing on four major goals: the effort to create an authoritative account of the past; vindication of victims; recommendations for legislative, structural, or other changes to avoid repetition of past abuses; and establishing accountability or the identity of perpeaators.In the past 15 years a growing number of countries have tried to come to terms with periods of widespread human rights violations, during which national institutions failed to address rights abuses. Increasingly, coming to terms has involved the constitution of investigatory commissions, often known as "truth commissions." These may be ad hoc commissions appointed by the executive or by parliament, international commissions under United Nations (UN) or regional auspices, or those operating under a more permanent national structure like an ombudsman's office. Such commis-Margaret Popkin is a fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America. Naomi Roht-Arriaza is an assistant professor of law at Hastings College of Law, University of California. The authors thank Professor Patty Blum for her insightful comments on an earlier draft. Some material for this article is taken from N. Roht-Arriaza, ed., Impunity and Human Rights in Zntowtiod Luw and Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). 0 1995 American Bar Foundation. 0897-6546/95/2001-0079$01.CO 79 3. Argentina, not discussed here, also fits into this type of situation. The Argentine truth commission (the Sabato Commission) is discussed in, e.g., Hayner, 16 Hum. Rts. Q., and in International Commission of Jurists, "Human Rights in the World: Argentina, the Truth about the Disappeared," 33 Rev. Inr'l Commission of jurists 1-8 (Dec. 1984).
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