Latin American Legal Studies

Abstract

In the last four decades, theories and mechanisms of transitional justice have been formulated and implemented in numerous countries, forming an interdisciplinary theoretical and practical corpus. This paper proposes to expand the scope of transitional justice so that it can be applied in stable democracies. The proposed reformulation could be useful to address structural injustices affecting indigenous peoples, that are a legacy of colonialism and assimilationist policies, and to address acts of state repression that constitute serious human rights violations. These reflections are formulated on the basis of three recent case studies: 1) from the Canadian experience, the Royal Commission on Indigenous Peoples, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls are analyzed; 2) from South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the Constituent Process and the Land Reform are discussed; and 3) from the Chilean case, the link between social unrest and transitional justice, as well as the Constituent Process, are explained.