8 Bulacio was heading toward his death? Who could have foreseen that, when he left his house and as he walked unaware down the street, youth Ernesto Rafael Castillo Páez34 was also heading toward his death? For the parents of Walter David Bulacio, of Ernesto Rafael Castillo Páez, and of so many other youths who have been the fatal victims of violence and about whom we have no information, what meaning can life have in face of this irreparable damage? I simply cannot find an answer to this question within the restricted sphere of the Law, unless we link it to the teachings of the humanities. Regarding the designs of destiny, we have already been warned that: "in general we are only able to comprehend the deepest and most hidden truths by means of images and metaphors. (...) This hidden power (...) can only lie (...) in the mysterious enigma of our own interior being, since ultimately, the alpha and omega of all existence has its abode within ourselves."35 28. In face of the agony of those who have been devoured by the force of cruel destiny, the chorus in Greek tragedies laments its fate, but also stating warns and lectures the survivors. However, we do not stop then: there is a point at which the Law does intervene. If, on the one hand, misfortune can be attributed to determinism or fatalism (e.g., leaving home to attend a music concert, without knowing that one is walking toward one’s death), on the other hand there is an element of human intervention that cannot be diminished (e.g.,violence that causes the death of defenseless, innocent persons). 29. Not everything is, therefore, the result of acts of the gods or of chance, nor is everything the blind force of destiny; there is also human intervention in the consummation of the tragedy. The fact that Walter David Bulacio (in the cas d'espèce) and Ernesto Rafael Castillo Páez (in the other case heard by the Inter-American Court), in their youthful years of dreams and life projects, suffered shortly before their sacrifice the extreme violence with which human beings are capable of treating each other, is certainly unacceptable. 30. It is here that the Law intervenes, to halt the cruelty with which human beings treat their fellow men or women. In light of this, it is here that the Law intervenes, to affirm its own prevalence over brute force, to attempt to organize human relations on the basis of recta ratio (natural law), to mitigate human suffering, and thus make life less unbearable, or perhaps bearable –understanding that life with suffering, and solidarity, is preferable to non-existence. 31. It is here that the Law intervenes, to reconcile the surviving victims with their fate, to free human beings from brute force and revenge. In classical Greek tragedy, the Law still flourished, in statu nascendi, at the polis, as an emanation of human awareness. The boundaries between destiny and free will were not yet clearly defined, and the legal system of responsibility would only take shape and gradually become institutionalized in a subsequent historical period. In the history of the Law, reparations arise and take on a definite form precisely to leave revenge, private justice, behind. The corrosive power of the latter, destructive of the social fabric itself, is fully expressed in Greek tragedy and, before that, in Homer’s impressive Iliad. 34 . Cf. Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Castillo Páez versus Perú case, Judgment on the merits, 03.11.1997, paras. 1-92; and Judgment on reparations, 27.11.1998, paras. 1-118. 35 . A. Schopenhauer, Los Designios del Destino, Madrid, Tecnos, 1994 [reed.], p. 28.