La desaparición forzada in El Salvador: il cammino verso il superamento dell'impunità e la costruzione di una memoria comune (1971-2020)

Enforced disappearance of adults during the Salvadorean civil war, however well-known, has not been the object of judicial investigations, especially due to the widespread impunity that followed the approval of the amnesty law for those responsible for the crimes committed between 1980 and 1992. Moreover, the difficulty of accessing the existing documentation has hampered historical research on this topic, which continues to be understudied. Drawing on a broad and diversified corpus of Salvadoran and international documentation from the period between 1971 and 2020, this article aims to fill this historiographical gap. The article has three focuses. First of all, it concentrates on the role played by both the Salvadoran and the international civil society, which denounced the phenomenon, sought truth and justice, fought against impunity, and actively worked for the construction of a shared memory of the conflict. Secondly, it examines the attitude of the Salvadoran executive, legislative and judicial powers in the decades following the conclusion of the conflict. Third and last, it draws attention on the role played in this context by the United Nations.