The politics of left-wing militants' confessions to past violence in Latin America

What happens when state perpetrators publicly confess to human rights violations in past dictatorships? The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission considered them crucial to delivering on the promise of truth and reconciliation. But Payne’s study of perpetrators’ confessions within and outside such commissions challenges that assumption. She finds that perpetrators’ versions of the past, not always the truth, emerge.