Conclusion

The central aim of this book is to give the families of the Disappeared a voice and to include this voice in the development of a framework that captures their experiences. Ensuring that their voices are acknowledged and respected is vitally important in making them visible. The importance of this visibility is clear when juxtaposed with their experiences at the hands of the paramilitaries whose aim was to make the Disappeared victim and, by association, their loved ones, totally invisible, through an engineered process that evoked silence, powerlessness and marginalisation. Underlying this paramilitary strategy was the need to maintain a climate of fear which, in tandem with a series of mechanisms of control actively manipulated by the paramilitaries, resulted in a family’s loss being orchestrated from the time of their loved one’s abduction until the point at which their body was finally recovered.