Re-pensar la temporalidad de la transición chilena a través de la justicia restaurativa

Marit de Haan was invited to present the paper written alongside Prof. Tine Destrooper titled “Using Restorative Justice to Rethink the Temporality of Transition” at la Primera Jornada de Desarrollo de la Justicia Restaurativa en América Latina.

Some of the most paradigmatic cases of ‘finished’ transitional justice processes today seem to raise questions on whether transitions can be understood as delimited in time. Chile is one such case. Considering the expressed needs of victims of human rights violations committed during the military dictatorship (1973-1990) and the demands of protesters since 2019 suggests that, indeed, the past continues to bear upon the present and the transition is far from ‘over’. In this presentation, examples from the case of Chile are used to illustrate some of the complex temporal dynamics of transition and demonstrate what a different temporal lens could mean for such cases of un/finished transition. A new conceptual framework to better reflect and understand ‘temporalities’,  conceptualized as the lived experience of time and duration, is proposed. The paper argues that restorative justice is a useful starting point to develop a different temporal framework because of its actor-oriented, flexible and interactive nature and proximity to the field of transitional justice. Our proposed framework foregrounds longer timelines (ongoingness), different timelines for different individuals (multilayeredness), and cyclical, non-linear dynamics (multi directionality) to better reflect victims’ lived experiences and reality on the ground.