The condition of the “truth” of the indigenous subject after the final report of the National Truth Commission

Abstract

This study presents the results of research into the meanings of “truth” produced during the work of the National Truth Commission (CNV) and its Final Report, with a special focus on the effects on indigenous peoples. I try to describe the resistance actions of collegiate bodies, researchers and indigenous peoples in response to the recommendations of the CNV, after it completes ten years, in November 2024. I focus on the problems that the CNV's actions have raised for the recognition and guarantees of peoples victimized by authoritarian state abuses, thus advocating the promotion of transitional rights. I analyze, in the light of concepts of biopolitics and an ethnography of documents, the CNV's production of a state discourse for the pretension of reparation through the revelation of a national “truth” used for a supposed national reconciliation. This reflection on a precluded “truth” is dialogued and interpreted with the theoretical understandings of Michel Foucault, with resonances in the critique produced on the Final Report, on memory and testimony as a focus on the production of subjected subjects.