Objective/context:

This article analyzes the advances in the massive and symbolic material reparations for past crimes, following the transitions to peace in Guatemala and El Salvador, and it explores how such advances or their lack can be explained.

Methodology:

the study explores changes through time in transitional justice policies by establishing evaluation criteria for the massive and symbolic material reparations program.

Conclusions:

This work allows us to follow the evolution of the initiatives to compensate the victims of the armed conflict in Guatemala and El Salvador, with greater advances for the former. However, some difficulties are to be found such as the fact that the mass reparations program established in 2003 has not enjoyed the support of the Legislative branch, putting its continuity and transparency at risk, and leading to the possibility of it being instrumentalized for electoral ends. In El Salvador, it is only since 2010 that the country has attempted to establish a massive material reparations program, with an integrated design but without any very meaningful results, and these results are no better when we consider symbolic reparations. The explanations to the difficulties to materializing the victims' right to compensation are related to the continued support of the perpetrators of past crimes, the military, and their political allies, the victims' profiles, the budgetary burdens imposed by the massive reparation programs, and the dynamics relating to the transitional process, which, in both cases, initially privileged the uncovering of the truth on the right to obtain justice and reparation.

Originality:

In the same line, studies on transitional justice in Guatemala and El Salvador have focused mainly on the truth commissions and the trials. This article emphasizes reparations through a longitudinal, integral, and systematic analysis that favors comparison, even with other countries.