CINTRAS, the Center for Mental Health and Human Rights, was established in 1985 to tend to the mental health needs of the military dictatorship's victims. Working under Pinochet's nose required considerable caution. Even the name they chose afforded a measure of clandestineness; literally, CINTRAS stands for Center for the Study of the Treatment of Stress. We had the opportunity to speak with Marcela Sandoval and Simona Ruy-Perez, both members of the Center's Board of Directors.

CINTRAS today no longer needs to operate in secrecy but, despite the increasing distance from the Pinochet years, it is still badly needed. Over the course of its history, CINTRAS has treated over 4000 patients and today sees somewhere between 250 and 270 per year. Treatment is an extensive process. CINTRAS doesn't just offer an hour or two of counseling per week. Instead, it takes a holistic approach; Marcela explained that you can't just treat the depression, but instead need to understand and address the contributing factors, looking for the connections between those symptoms and trauma.

Following up on our conversation with Susan, we were curious if CINTRAS has noticed any trends in how Chile's different generations manage their trauma. Simona described how the First Generation, which was directly affected by Pinochet, still struggled to put into words what happened. The Second Generation, which had a direct connection to Pinochet's victims (these are often sons and daughters), feel a sense of absence or incompletion, and long for a connection to that older generation. Matters are complicated by the fact that many are not the age their fathers (or, in some cases, mothers) were when they were killed. It is too early to identify trends with the Third Generation.

A sub-group of the First Generation merits its own discussion. These are people, primarily women, who had their loved ones disappeared and still believe those loved ones are alive and will someday return. So, those wives and mothers wait and wait, never having moved on, frozen perpetually in the 1970s or '80s.

When we asked what the Chilean government needs to do for the military dictatorship's victims, they laughed and Marcela asked "How much time do you have?" Most of their vitriol was reserved for the Valech Commission, the creation of which had been mandated two years after the dictatorship fell but took 14 years to get off the ground - and ultimately disappointed many Chileans. It only lasted six months, failed to receive testimony from a significant number of victims, and did little to promote justice. Most galling to Marcela and Simona, President Lagos determined that all testimony documented by the commission would be kept secret for 50 years, to protect those named.

The question for many Chileans was: why do the perpetrators named before the commission deserve more protection than their victims ever received?