6 21. In effect, how can we consider reparation of damage in face of the tragedy of a whole family destroyed by the violent death of one of its members, the young son (and brother)? What is the true scope and effect of reparations in a situation such as that of the instant case? Contrary to the assumptions of the followers of juridical positivism, it is not irrelevant to invoke, in this context, the teachings of universal literature; this is an area (reparations due to victims) where the Law still seems to be in its early childhood, and it still has much to learn form other branches of human knowledge (psychology, philosophy, humanities in general). 22. Rationalism and so-called “realism” attempted, in vain, to end tragedy; there were unable to, because since times long past human existence has been accompanied by irrationality and brutality. In tragedy there is no visible space for reparations, or “compensations” of various types, that seek to end human suffering. From this angle, the loss is truly irreparable, and one must live with it, with the emptiness. The desperation of Euripides’ Hecuba (423 B.C.)can be expressed in the same manner by mothers who have lost their children to human violence over the centuries: O my son, child of a luckless mother, what was the manner of thy death? what lays thee dead at my feet? Who did the deed?25 Hecuba’s desolation, in the 5th century B.C., can be expressed, precisely in those same terms, at the end of the 20th century and the dawn of the 21st, by the mothers of children victimized by longstanding human brutality in the cases heard by this Court (such as, for example, the instant Bulacio case, or the Castillo Páez case, or the Villagrán Morales et al. case). 23. As I reflected in my Separate Opinion in the Villagrán Morales et al. versus Guatemala case (“Street Children” case, Reparations, 2001), “Human suffering has a dimension which is both personal and social. Thus, the damage caused to each human being, however humble he might be, affects the community itself as a whole. As the present case discloses, the victims are multiplied in the persons of the surviving close relatives, who, furthermore, are forced to live with the great pain inflicted by the silence, the indifference and the oblivion of the others.” (para. 22) 24. To seek to make the consequences of violations cease may seem, in certain cases, wishful thinking. As an expert witness stated at the memorable March 6, 2003 public hearing in the instant Bulacio versus Argentina case,26 while the person who 25 26 . Verses 909-912. . Said public hearing in the Bulacio versus Argentina case is memorable for more than one reason. It will remain in the memory of all those who participated in it, especially, due to the spirit of respect and dignity brought to it by all intervening parties: the representatives of the next of kin of the victim, those of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, as well as the agents of the respondent State, all of whose pleadings before the Court showed genuine and equal interest in attaining a satisfactory solution to the case. Said hearing is also, already, part of the history of the Court, as it was the last to be held in the first courtroom (which, with additions to the building of the Court, no longer exists), where the public hearings