The Archive of the Vicariate of Solidarity: Past-Present-Future by Maria Paz Vergara Low

The International Council on Archives – Section on Archives and Human Rights invites you to its next conference on 6 August 2024 at 16:00 CET (Paris time):

The Archive of the Vicariate of Solidarity: Past-Present-Future 

The talk is free and open for anyone to join, with recordings made available through the SAHR’s playlist of ICA YouTube channel. Registration is required to receive full details on how to connect to this virtual meeting.  

Summary 

Maria Paz Vergara Low will present the Archive of the Vicariate of Solidarity, the role it played during the military dictatorship in Chile and the value it has today and for the future. She will explain how the Archive gives an account of the history of the country, who the victims were, and how repression behaves, thus becoming a documented truth of our recent past. The role that the Archive has played since the return of democracy in 1990 will be explained, being the main source of information for the different Truth Commissions and other instances created by democratic governments to clarify human rights violations during the military dictatorship, and to set up reparatory measures for the victims, as well as for the courts of justice and for the victims themselves, promoting the search for truth, justice and reparation. The Archive’s mission is also to facilitate the recovery and preservation of the historical memory about the human rights violations during the military dictatorship, and to contribute to the education of new generations, so that events as painful as those do not repeat. 

Guest Speaker

Maria Paz Vergara Low is the executive secretary of the Documentation and Archive Foundation of the Vicariate of Solidarity since March 2000. She has worked at this institution since its foundation in 1993. She graduated in Basic General Pedagogy from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, and previously she completed three years of Pedagogy studies in History and Geography at the Faculty of Education of the same University. Likewise, she completed training courses in documentary techniques at the Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, Formation Continue, Paris, III. She has actively collaborated with the work carried out by the different Truth Commissions that have operated in the country since the
recovery of democracy. She has participated in numerous Seminars and Courses on human rights archives, in Chile and abroad. She is also co-author of a Human Rights Thesaurus.