In 1973 the democratically elected government of Chile was overthrown by a military coup organized by the CIA and fully supported by the Nixon White House. Similar regimes were installed in Uruguay the same year and in Argentina in 1976. The three dictatorships instituted a reign of terror where torture became commonplace, human rights were trampled upon and extrajudicial executions were common. The backbone of the three regimes were military officers, many of which had studied under US instructors at the School of the Americas. Without a doubt, the period was the darkest in the entire history of the three nations.
In the mid/late eighties the three dictatorships collapsed under the weight of their own incompetence/corruption but this did not mean that criminals were prosecuted or even exposed. They were provided by the new democratic governments with Due Obedience and Expiry laws which precluded (or gave a short time span for) prosecutions. Eventually, some of the top criminals such as General Videla, head of the Argentine junta were convicted and some died in jail, but most of the medium level criminals slid unpunished. Some continued their military careers with honors and promotions.
The film proceeds in two time frames. In the first Liliana Pereira, married and mother of a son is a militant in Montevideo in the seventies. Her family and that of her husband belong to the entitled classes, and take a dim view of her activities. She is apprehended by the military and spends years in jail subject to brutal interrogations and torture. She sees her son more and more sporadically until her husband wins sole custody, severing all contact.
In the second time frame. Liliana, after years of exile, returns to Uruguay to try and reconnect with her son, who is getting married, She also joins her comrades of the seventies in a class action suit against the torturers.
I liked this film, It earns additional credit for dealing with a subject that is fading from collective memory and is still controversial. In fact, many in the privileged classes still consider that the criminals and torturers were defending "Western values", or "Christian civilization" or something of the sort. The script is at times too schematic and there are points to clarify, but the final balance is positive.
