Haiti’s current issue with mass graves sheds a crucial light into what happens when the deaths and murders of those around you are not dealt with, but rather ignored and systematically silenced. The pain that individiuals have felt do not subside once the event ‘comes to a close’ but rather lingers for decades after the murder has been committed. Even though it has been 24 years since the Rwandan Genocide, those who have survived the massacre as still making their way to these mass graves in hopes of somehow identifying their loved ones in the pile of dead bodies. In Argentina, the mothers of ‘los desaparecidos’ have been searching for the answer of their children and relatives’ whereabout for forty years now. In these cases, the priority is come to terms with the unknown, the mystery surrounding what happened. Although the main focus for the survivors has been to locate the missing, this does not detract from the necessity for punitive action against those who are in power. Without this punitive action or at least some attempt to convict former torturers, there is a greater possibility for a recurrence of mass slaughter. This is currently happening in Argentina with the centre-right President, Mauricio Macri questioned the legitimacy of statistics around the dictatorship, stating that he had no idea about the true count of fatalities, “whether they were 9,000 or 30,000.” The ability for current politicians to justify and question the authenticity of clear atrocities demonstrates how necessary it is for punitive action. Instead of possibly causing democratic instability, this punitive action would ensure that democratic backsliding would be impossible because the terrorism that Argentinians felt during the dictatorship wouldn’t just be overlooked and forgotten.