Pursuing the Truth, Acknowledgement, and Justice of Reconciliation through Truth Commissions in El Salvador and Guatemala
A truth commission’s success is hard to measure because “success” is so subjective and
relative when the objectives — harmony, peace, trust, reconciliation, etc — are also ambiguous.
The five prominent truth commissions mentioned above won their status as relatively successful
when measured against other commissions’ attempts to satisfy the priorities, purposes, and goals
articulated in their mandates. The Argentine, Chilean, Salvadoran, South African, and
Guatemalan commissions have also received considerable international attention, often due to
the direct involvement of prominent international figures or substantial economic and/or
administrative support from the United Nations or foreign countries.
Rather than evaluate the success of the Salvadoran and Guatemalan truth commissions — a
seemingly impossible task - this paper seeks to analyze the two truth commissions’ realized and
potential connections to reconciliation as a process and as a goal. In what ways have the
Salvadoran and Guatemalan truth commissions contributed to national reconciliation and why
have they not been able to achieve more? To what extent have the TC and CEH been catalysts
for reconciliation?
35National reconciliation requires that the truth of the past be known and recognized; that the
responsible parties publicly acknowledge their guilt, their role, the wrongness of committing
such atrocities against their victims, and regret for their actions; and that justice, according to the
needs of the victims, be served with restorative, reparative measures and with punitive, deterrent
juridical action. As explained in the theoretical section, truth commissions have the potential to
contribute to reconciliation in any and each of these directions. The remainder of the paper will
be dedicated to analyzing the consequences of the TC’s and CEH’s specific compositions,
mandates, conclusions, recommendations, and report dissemination visa vis the ideals of truth,
acknowledgment, and justice for reconciliation
Tags: foreign countries, harmony, peace, reconciliation, trust, United Nations