ABSTRACT
Any new democratic regime that comes after an authoritarian experience is confronted with a problem of memory. All authoritarian regimes leave confl icting memories given that the dictatorships enjoy the support of part of the national community and their more or less active participation in the repression of the other part. Facing the authoritarian past, therefore, remains a very delicate task because it necessarily includes a consideration of the complicities of part of the national community with the dictatorship. In this sense, the problem of memory is a problem of national constituency as the people that are to constitute the democratic nation remains the same as the formerly divided population. Those who want to build a new democracy cannot risk alienating a large share of the population. It is therefore necessary to construct a project that integrates the former opposition with those who favored the dictatorship or were indifferent to it. However, the problem of memory is also related to whether past experiences of democracy exist or not. The role of the past in the building of newborn democratic regimes can either facilitate or hinder its success. To these problems comes the diffi culty of integrating the authoritarian episode into the national history in order to construct a cohesive and coherent national discourse or master narrative.1
