The truth commissions in El Salvador and Honduras attempted to offer the transitional civilian governments a way to balance their moral and legal obligations with practical political constraints; namely to reconcile calls from different sectors of society to either punish or forgive those responsible for past human rights violations; and to establish new and independent institutions without precipitating a backlash from vested interests which could derail the whole democratic transition. This paper examines the parameters in which these truth commissions operated, and evaluates the role they played in trying to facilitate the democratisation processes in Honduras and El Salvador.