Association of Families of the Detained-Disappeared

The goals and pressure brought to bear by the Association played an influential role in the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission after the reestablishment of democracy in Chile and the 1989 election of President Patricio Aylwin.

On 11 September 1973 a military junta toppled President Salvador Allende in a coup d'état and installed General Augusto Pinochet as head of the new regime.

[4] At the end of 1974, a group of mostly women applied to the Committee of Cooperation for Peace in Chile to find out the whereabouts of their missing family members, the desaparecidos (Engl: the disappeared), who had been detained or killed by the brutal Pinochet regime.

[5][page needed] After the opening of the notorious detention centers like Tres Álamos failed to produce any leads about their missing kin, they staged several hunger strikes to pressure the government into giving out information.

Both the Association and the new government sought a public airing of the facts of disappearances as state policy during the Pinochet years, establishment of human rights as a basic value and distinguishing factor between dictatorship and democracy.