16
46.
In the recent case-law of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, there are cases
which have a direct bearing on existence and death, such as Aloeboetoe and Others (1991),
Bámaca Vélasquez (2000-2002), Bulacio (2003), Villagrán Morales and Others ("Street
Children", 1999-2001), Brothers Gómez Paquiyauri (2004), Massacre of Plan de Sánchez
(2004). There are some, like Bámaca Velásquez, which encapsulate an extraordinarily rich and
enlightening cultural ingredient, precisely as to the relationship between existence and death,
like the present case of the Moiwana Community. Such cases, in my view, rank among the
most important ones in human rights case-law all over the world, and would be so recognized
if people, including academics, everywhere, were not so provincial, shallow and narrowminded, minding only about what looks more directly familiar to them.
VII.
The Duties of the Living towards Their Dead.
47.
As I have already pointed out, it is not possible to consider the phenomenon of life
without taking into account likewise that of death. Life and death have been considered pari
passu in the history of human thinking. Ancient cultures bear witness of that; in the account of
A. Bentué, for example,
"los primitivos no tienen mayor interés en saber en qué pueda consistir
la ‘vida de ultratumba’. Para ellos, esa otra vida no afecta para nada la vida
presente. Lo que hay que procurar es simplemente que los muertos, después de
haberse cumplido su breve permanencia cerca de la tumba, durante el período
que duran los ritos mortuorios prescritos por el duelo, descansen en ese otro
mundo, sin quedar ‘vagando’, afectando, ahí sí, la vida de quienes siguen
permaneciendo en esta tierra (‘penándoles').
Con todo, esa vida de ultratumba no es concebida como ‘eterna’, sino
que tiene una duración mayor o menor según la ‘memoria’ que los
sobrevivientes puedan mantener del difunto. El país de los muertos coincide con
el ‘recuerdo’ que de ellos puedan tener los vivos, de manera que si éstos
dejaran de recordarlos, las almas de los difuntos quedarían sumidas en la nada
del olvido. Sin embargo, los difuntos siguen vigentes en la continuidad de la
vida de los vivos que los prolongan"57.
48.
Some traditional lines of thinking associate the soul with the proximity, for some time,
of the body of those who died, requiring particular care with the mortal remains. Some
contemporary thinking has warned against denying or pretending to ignore death, and has
stressed the need once again to learn to integrate death to life. And it has further pointed out
the "weight and sorrow" of sudden and violent death58, which does not allow those who depart
to bid farewell to those who survive them.
. A. Bentué, Muerte y Búsquedas de Inmortalidad, Santiago, Edic. Universidad Católica de
Chile, 2002, p. 33.
57
. M. de Hennezel, La mort intime, Paris, R. Laffont, 1995, pp. 105, 16 and 40.
58
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