Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of Victim Engagement in Transitional Justice
- The Cambridge Handbook of Victim Engagement in Transitional Justice
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part IGenerations of Victim Engagement
- Part IIIntersecting Justice Struggles and How to Understand Them
- Concluding Thoughts
- Index
- References
1 - Seeking the Missing
Relatives’ and Activists’ Protagonism in the Search for Chile’s Disappeared
from First Generation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2026
Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of Victim Engagement in Transitional Justice
- The Cambridge Handbook of Victim Engagement in Transitional Justice
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part IGenerations of Victim Engagement
- Part IIIntersecting Justice Struggles and How to Understand Them
- Concluding Thoughts
- Index
- References
Summary
Chile is a paradigmatic transitional justice case illustrating the sequencing, coexistence, and intermingling of the types of victim engagement that this book examines. This chapter traces active (co)-creation by relatives in the search for the Disappeared in dictatorial and post-dictatorship Chile. It outlines the gradual accretion of different forms of engagement: denunciation and resistance, legal activism and political lobbying, and protagonism in calling for, and calling forth, a new state policy response in the form of a National Search Plan, launched in 2023. Analysing relatives’ participation in design of the Search Plan meanwhile reveals divergent and changing views about the relative importance of trials, truth, recovery, and identification of those still disappeared. Overall, Chile’s trajectory shows how many now-familiar categories of transitional justice demands were originally hard won from below. It also suggests the state may at times be needed to mediate between contrasting or contradictory victims’ voices.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2026
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