After several years of uncomfortable silence, the question of how to redress the human rights abuses of this country's violent past is once again on the public agenda.
President Ricardo Lagos, the courts, opposition parties and even the military are searching for ways to achieve the reconciliation they all say they want.
The Socialist-led government has announced a plan that would force wrongdoers in the armed forces to account for their actions in the courts. But in an acknowledgment of political realities, it has shied away from demands by some rights groups, hunger strikers and other protesters that it is seeking to overturn an amnesty law imposed by General Augusto Pinochet 25 years ago.
"Since the return of democracy in 1990, there have been three big pushes" to resolve the human rights issue, one by each of the governments that has taken power, said Jose Zalaquett, co-director of the Center for Human Rights at the University of Chile.
The Lagos administration has taken the most extensive action, he said, but the government remains haunted by the fear that "you can still lose the vote in Congress, and then you're done."
Some of the impetus to bring the issue forward has to do with Chilean history. Sept. 11 will be the 30th anniversary of the military coup that overthrew the leftist government of Salvador Allende. Relatives of the estimated 4,000 people who were killed or who disappeared then or afterward have seized the occasion to press the government and stir public opinion.
But events in Argentina have also had an effect here. Since taking office in May, President Nestor Kirchner has removed generals associated with rights abuses, successfully pushed Congress to revoke a pair of unpopular amnesty laws and lifted a prohibition on the extradition of human rights abusers for trial abroad, which led to the detention of 40 of the worst offenders.
"Kirchner shows that when the political will to act exists, many things can be done," said Lorena Pizarro, president of the Group of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared. That is exactly what we need here and do not have."
But other analysts say that Lagos' government is working quietly to bring rights abusers to justice and has made considerable progress.
"Lagos' approach is softly, softly, the very soul of discretion, but it seems to be working," said Sebastian Brett, the local representative of Human Rights Watch.
For example, judges appointed exclusively to investigate human rights cases have opened proceedings against more than 300 military officers, including 22 generals, who are accused of abuses during the Pinochet years.
"To a large extent, judges are ignoring the amnesty law for the purposes of investigation," Zalaquett said, and no court has applied the amnesty law since Lagos took office three years ago.
The amnesty law was meant to be all-inclusive. But in recent years, especially since Pinochet was detained in Britain in 1998, judges have ruled that it does not apply to "continuing crimes" like unsolved cases of forced disappearance.
Last month, Nelson Mery, the director of the national investigative police, was forced to step down after a former prisoner accused him of having sexually abused her while she was detained during the Pinochet era. The woman also said that he had been present while other prisoners were tortured. An investigation seeking to indict him is under way.
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