Forgotten Justice: Memory and the Access to Justice Program in Allende’s Chile (original) (raw)

Spanish version “La Justicia Olvidada: Memoria e Historia del Programa de Acceso a la Justicia durante la Unidad Popular, Chile 1970-1973”, in Juan Francisco Lobo Ed. En conquista de los derechos humanos: Homenaje a José Zalaquett Daher. (Santiago: Thompson Reuters, 2017)

This paper explores some forgotten aspects of Salvador Allende's program related to the questions of law and justice. There are indeed some “emblematic memories” linked to the legality or illegality of the major UP economic policies, and there is another set of memories related to the role played by the justice system in the opposition to Allende. However, there is a third aspect in the relationship of Allende’s government to law and justice that is less known: the policies of the UP to expand the access of the popular classes to the justice system, what I will call the UP’s Access to Justice Program. The UP developed indeed several policies aimed at dealing with a long-lasting issue in the Chilean legal system: the barriers that the popular classes encountered to solve their problems through legal means. Among these, I will consider especially two: the project to create Neighborhood Courts (“Tribunales Vecinales”) and, the reform to the public legal aid system (“Servicio Nacional Jurídico”). I argue that the history of the UP’s Access to Justice Program, and especially the one of the Servicio Nacional Jurídico, goes against the grain of the traditional narratives of the Allende period as one of political violence and illegalities, for the right, and of revolutionary change and class struggle, for the left. Several aspects made the Servicio Nacional Jurídico “unmemorable.” For instance, it reflected some contradictions within the UP government: it was a reformist and even to some extent conservative project whose ultimate goal was to keep the popular classes “within the law,” and in this respect it presented strong continuities with the decades prior to the UP. But it also had aspects of a radical or even revolutionary project that contested the technocratic, professional power of lawyers. The debates around this project also reflected the inconsistencies of one specific group among Allende’s opponents: the Chilean Bar Association or Colegio de Abogados. I show that besides or beyond the lawyers’ social class and political affiliation, what the Colegio was defending against the UP was also the status of the legal profession, its professional power.