Deaths and Disappearances in the Pinochet Regime: A New Dataset

Abstract

This article presents a georeferenced dataset on human rights violations in the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. We coded the personal details of 2,398 victims named in the Chilean Truth Commission Report and added geographical coordinates for all identifiable atrocity locations. The dataset comprises 59 variables from 1973 to 1990 and is available as a stand-alone spreadsheet or as the `pinochet` package for `R`. As examples, we describe the major temporal and spatial patterns of the human rights abuses. We also discuss our coding procedures, show descriptive statistics, and conclude with suggestions for potential applications of the dataset.

The Logic of Transitional Justice and State Repression: The Effects of Human Rights Prosecutions in Post-Conflict States

“…Moreover, although some forced disappearances may obtain public visibility through sustained civil society advocacy—the Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina famously helped to bring previously invisible stories of Dirty War-era disappearances into public discourse—they are typically subject to less reporting and verification in real time. For instance, a new dataset of Chile’s Pinochet-era repression tactics, constructed from the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission documentation, reveals that disappearances accounted for the highest proportion of “unresolved cases,” whereby the Commission had insufficient information or evidence (Freire et al 2019). These studies speak to the distinctively opaque nature of forced disappearances.…”

verdata: An R package for analyzing data from the Truth Commission in Colombia

“…Software packages have not historically been created to facilitate the access and use of data published by past truth commissions. To date, the pinochet package (Freire et al, 2019), which facilitates access to data about killings and disappearances published in the Chilean Truth Commission, is the only other example of a software package created for this purpose.…”

Arming a few dictators but not others: The politics of UK arms sales to Chile (1973–1989) and Argentina (1976–1983)

“…As a Labour government in the United Kingdom coincided with Chile's and Argentina's military dictatorships from 1974 to 1979, the variable 'political party in power in the UK' is held constant over this period. This is also largely valid for the scale of repression in the two countries: Chile's military regime was responsible for around 2400 deaths and Argentina's for between 10,000 and 30,000, with violence being especially brutal in the coups' aftermaths (CIA, 2017;Freire et al, 2019). Also, analysing cases before the 1990s is useful to isolate the role of domestic campaigns from broader international norms concerning responsibility in the arms trade, which emerged from the late 1980s onwards (Garcia, 2006).…”