| Summary: | Latin American dictatorships all practiced some form of "dirty war", that entailed the disappearance of persons, murder and torture, to fight people engaged in armed propaganda or open insurrections taking place in the seventies. Two decades after the beginning of the democratic transition process in the region, closing the past remains a pending issue. This article presents the problem of the closure of the past in its integrality, then describes the different strategies used by various countries to address the topic. Some countries tried Truth Commissions, while others chose the prosecution of crimes via the judiciary. All practiced some form of amnesty or pardon. However, the closure of the past – a wound in the fabric of society – is far from solved.
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