The legacy of human rights violations has been a subject that erupted in the public spheres of Chile and the other Southern Cone countries in various occasions, generating problems for the democratization and democratic consolidation processes in the area. The impact of the legacy turned even more complex due to the difficulties in implementing transitional justice and to the regional nature of repression known under the generic name of Plan condor and in relation to the concept of doctrines of national security. The case of Chile is especially interesting due to the relative measure of power retained by the ex-military ruler and his supporters, who actively participated in the politics of democratization and democratic consolidation. A divided civil society played an important role in the processes of justice demand and prevention and in articulating different memories about military rule. This paper will try to demonstrate that it is the interaction between transitional justice (or lack of it) and generation of memory (or lack of it) that allows democracy to overcome the problem of eruptions of memory as a destabilizing factor, comparing the case of Chile with the other southern Cone cases, and reflecting on the social and political role of sites of memory
