Are amnesties in Latin America always a bad idea?
Countries must balance the demands of justice with the need for peace and reconciliation
SOME ARE elderly and frail. Others are merely greying. Some thought they were untraceable, having invented new identities in other countries. Some were generals, others subalterns. Over the past few years executioners and torturers from Latin America’s dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s have at last been brought to account, despite amnesty laws that were the price of democracy. And that is producing a backlash.
This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline “Peace or justice?”
From the June 29th 2019 edition
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