Amy Hodgson

Amy Hodgson (PhD in History, 2024) The Cost of Truth-Telling: An Oral History of Staff and Testifiers’ Experiences of Chile’s Truth Commissions

The Chilean government created two truth commissions to investigate human rights abuses committed during the 1973–90 Pinochet dictatorship. Using primarily oral history, this thesis examines how victim communities and commission staff experienced the truth commissions’ operations. It argues that in their efforts to uncover abuses, at times, the 1990–91 Rettig Commission and the 2003–04 Valech Commission effectively perpetuated, reinforced, or repeated dictatorial legacies. Other times, participating in and/or cooperating with the commissions proved redemptive or reparative for both staff and testifiers.

Supervisors: Associate Professor Julie Fedor, Dr Roland Burke (La Trobe); formerly Professor Ara Keys (now Durham).

^{Feature image: “Even if footsteps touch this place for 1000 years, they will not erase the blood of those who fell here” from Pablo Neruda’s poem, Siempre (‘Always’). Painted on the wall of a former detention camp in Santiago, Chile. Photographer: Any Hodgson}