ABSTRACT
The group, headed by Antonio Gonzalez Quintana, delivered its report in 1995. This underlined the fundamental role of these archives in guaranteeing citizens their collective and individual rights, because police files used to keep people under duress were, ironically, the best weapons for ensuring individual rehabilitation and collective reconciliation. The Joinet and Gonzalez Quintana reports were authored by experts with two completely different profiles: one coming from a legal, the other from an archival perspective. The extraordinary convergence between the magistrate’s findings and those of the archivist went more or less undetected, the two professions tending to work in silos. Most archivists ignored the existence of Louis Joinet’s report, even those in France who had heard of Joinet but only in a strictly national context. The foundation also provides a platform for exchanges of good practices for archival and transitional justice practitioners.
