| Abstract | The article focuses on the Chilean Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Salvadoran Commission on the Truth. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Commission on the Truth were established in markedly different political environments, and it is important to recognize how those environments influenced their mandates and activities. It is equally important to appreciate that both were commissions for truth and reconciliation, but that neither was a commission for truth, reconciliation, and justice. Chilean President Patricio Aylwin created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission by executive decree only a month after assuming power in 1990, in response to Chilean society's clamor to expose the truth about the brutality of the Pinochet regime which had seized power in a coup d'etat in 1973. The Rettig and Truth Commissions made substantial contributions to the cause of justice, and the protection and promotion human rights, by performing indispensable investigatory and advisory functions at a conjuncture in the democratic transitions of Chile and El Salvador when comparable entities were unable to perform them. That they were not endowed with prosecutorial or judicial powers does not diminish their accomplishments.
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