Overcoming the Legacies of Dictatorship

NEW DEMOCRACIES, OLD WOUNDS

"No one touches anyone," warned General Augusto Pinochet in October 1989, two months before Chile's first free elections since his 1973 coup. "The day they touch one of my men, the rule of law ends. This I say once and will not say again." The old junta leader's comment, made almost casually to reporters, cast a pall over the fiesta?like campaign atmosphere. As expected, the anti?Pinochet forces won. But the general's warning still hangs in the air. Pinochet's democratic successors have chosen not to call his bluff.

Pinochet's language was unusually blunt, but the dilemma that the old tyrant's warning created for the new Chilean republic was nothing new. One of the first questions a newly democratic nation must face is that of what to do with its old dictators. Since the French Revolution, it has been clear that the choices new democracies make -- whether and how to investigate tyranny's legacy, try its leaders, purge its bureaucrats, or touch one of its gunmen -- can set the course for a nascent democratic system. But only in the past 15 years or so have nations become fully aware of what is at stake when dealing with a repressive past.

After World War II, the notion of human rights and civil liberties -- previously believed to be out of reach for the citizens of most countries -- was increasingly accepted by a growing number of nations. In addition, since the mid?1970s, a staggering number of countries have turned from dictatorship to elected civilian government. First came southern Europe -- Portugal, Greece, and Spain. In the 1980s, the wave hit Latin America -- Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay. In 1992, El Salvador ended a war that took the lives of 75,000 civilians. In the 1980s and early 1990s, at least 15 African nations moved away from repressive one?party rule and held multiparty elections. After 1989, the Soviet bloc completed the avalanche. All are now wrestling with their repressive pasts.