How to sustain a human rights organisation under state violence

Abstract

This chapter describes the political struggle to resist the Chilean dictatorship’s attempts to put down a collective civilian response to state terrorism, a response that was based on assistance, documentation, and denunciation of the repressive state. Drawing on secondary data and interviews with former Comité and Vicaría staff, the chapter describes the most dramatic episodes of dispute the organisations faced, and shows how they remained unavoidable interlocutors throughout the entire period. It argues that documentation, that is, the archiving of evidence of military abuses, was key to maintaining this strategic position. Documentation enabled horror to be made known as it occurred, and made it possible for relatives and civil society organisations to hold the government accountable by bringing legal actions in defence of the persecuted, leaving clear evidence of mass killings that the regime could not pretend to ignore or distort. These tenacious actions that emerged during military rule, proved vital for later human rights activism in Chile.