The plebiscite of 5 October 1988, in which 55.99 per cent of Chileans said ‘no’ to Pinochet, marked the end of military dictatorship, but did not restore a proper democracy. It opened a new period that political analysts named the ‘transition’, to designate an alliance between politics (re-democratisation) and economics (neoliberalism). During those years, the post-dictatorship presidents – until 2010, all from the Concertacion de Partidos por la Democracia1 – were determined to reconcile Chileans, whom the dictatorship seemed to have irreparably divided. As Peter Winn writes: ‘in the face of the left's demand for “truth and justice” and the right's reluctant willingness to accept reconciliation on the condition that neither would happen … the Concertacion … took a middle way: “truth and reconciliation” ‘ (2007: 9 [emphasis in original]).

Facing these strong antagonisms, the government of the transition opted for a strategy of ‘discourse of national reconciliation’ and, on a more general note, for a consensual model (Richard 2010: 31). According to Nelly Richard, the ‘consensus’ marked a politics conceived of as a ‘transaction’ based on ‘agreements, with its formula of pacts and technicized negotiation’ (2004: 65). Instead of embracing the conflicting perspectives on the repression, the Concertacion strove to avoid disagreement. It tried to put in place a framework – a consensus – that would symbolically neutralise the forces in dispute and compel voices and conduct to unanimity through moderation and resignation. The promotion of reconciliation justified excluding from the official memory anything that could purportedly introduce dissention and stir up old antagonisms: on this basis, ‘authoritarianism’ replaced ‘military dictatorship’ in official speeches; the political project of Allende's government was not mentioned; and subjective testimonies were scrupulously kept out of institutional discourse. The transition shaped a smooth image of the past, which could save it from its contradictions, but ‘deactivated the critical work of memory’ (Richard 2000: 176). For the sociologist Tomas Moulian, who affirms the necessity of reflecting on the past, ‘consensus is the highest stage of oblivion’ (1998: 37).

In this context in which the efforts of the new regime to contain memories were salient, Augusto Pinochet's arrest in London in 1998 came as a catalyst: it brought into the open the unspoken testimonies that masked the deep division between Pinochet's supporters and opponents.