Chile and Its Eternal Moral Debt: When Powers Remain Silent, Injustice Screams

 

By Rodolfo Varela
Santiago, July 18, 2025

On this Social Reintegration Day, as various institutions gather to discuss inclusion and justice, Chile faces an uncomfortable truth: while we talk about reintegrating those who have served their sentences, we continue to abandon those who were victims of State terrorism.

Authorities participated in the "Day of Social Reintegration"

More than five decades after the 1973 military coup, the country advances slowly—and often with institutional resistance—when it comes to human rights. The National Search Plan, while a meaningful gesture, cannot hide the obstacles and omissions that persist in the political, judicial, and religious powers—the very same powers that remained silent while homes were burned, stadiums were filled with prisoners, and our brothers and sisters disappeared.

Complicit Silences That Still Hurt

During the darkest years of the dictatorship, Congress was dissolved, the judiciary was complicit or indifferent, and the Catholic Church—with a few honorable exceptions—remained deafeningly silent. Today, many of those who stayed quiet continue to do so. Some even remain in positions of power, preaching democracy without ever having been held morally or legally accountable.

Presidente Salvador Allende y el Ministro José Tohá

The case of Minister José Tohá, murdered by the dictatorship, whose case has recently been requested for reopening, is just one symbol among hundreds of open, stalled, or simply ignored cases. Every forced disappearance is a wound that bleeds memory, dignity, and a call for justice.

Reparation That Humiliates

One of the greatest national shames is how the Chilean State treats its victims. Thousands of individuals recognized as victims of political imprisonment and torture receive pensions amounting to less than 50% of the minimum wage. Yes, less than half of what is legally considered necessary to survive. Meanwhile, former regime collaborators or military personnel responsible for crimes receive millionaire pensions, protected by dictatorship-era laws still in force under democracy.

And no one—neither Congress, nor the courts, nor the Church hierarchy—takes any serious action to reverse this affront to justice. It is an insult. A wound that bleeds monthly through the empty pockets of those who survived the horrors of a repressive state.

Are We Really Moving Forward?

Chile has signed international treaties, created institutions like the National Institute for Human Rights (INDH), and implemented policies like the pension reform that includes reparation law beneficiaries. But these gestures are insufficient and too late if they do not translate into real, material, and symbolic justice.

The recently approved National Policy on Safety and Health in Mining, or the various social reintegration programs, deserve recognition, but they must not be used as a facade to cover up inaction regarding the debts of the past.

Where Are the Perpetrators?

Many state agents—military officers, civilian officials, judges, bishops, and politicians—remain unpunished, shielded by a system that still prefers to look ahead without looking inward. Justice cannot remain a privilege of the powerful while the families of the disappeared age without answers, and survivors live in poverty.

Reintegration Also Means Reparation

To speak of reintegration in Chile today also means speaking of comprehensive reparation, dignified pensions, truth without censorship, and justice without pacts of silence. A truly reconciled society is not possible while the country’s leading institutions continue to evade their historical responsibility.

Now more than ever, we need a citizenry that demands with courage and clarity. Because when those in power remain silent, memory must scream.