Chile Under Pinochet

An account of the polarization of Chilean society under Augusto Pinochet and of Chile's return to democratic government.

"When the army comes out, it is to kill."—Augusto Pinochet Following his bloody September 1973 coup d'état that overthrew President Salvador Allende, Augusto Pinochet, commander-in-chief of the Chilean Armed Forces and National Police, became head of a military junta that would rule Chile for the next seventeen years. The violent repression used by the Pinochet regime to maintain power and transform the country's political profile and economic system has received less attention than the Argentine military dictatorship, even though the Pinochet regime endured twice as long. In this primary study of Chile Under Pinochet, Mark Ensalaco maintains that Pinochet was complicit in the "enforced disappearance" of thousands of Chileans and an unknown number of foreign nationals. Ensalaco spent five years in Chile investigating the impact of Pinochet's rule and interviewing members of the truth commission created to investigate the human rights violations under Pinochet. The political objective of human rights organizations, Ensalaco contends, is to bring sufficient pressure to bear on violent regimes to induce them to end policies of repression. However, these efforts are severely limited by the disparities of power between human rights organizations and regimes intent on ruthlessly eliminating dissent.

A former Chilean columnist offers a dramatic first-person chronicle of life under dictatorship as she records her own personal experiences and those of others whose lives were dramatically affected by Chile's Pinochet government. Reprint.

Here is an extraordinary first person chronicle of life under dictatorship. Journalist Patricia Politzer has interviewed men and women from every strata of Chilean life for a broad, vivid, yet non-ideologial view of modern life under military rule.

A new perspective on Pinochet's repressive regime and its aftermath in Chile, looking at the ambiguous experiences and memories of army draftees who became both criminals and victims in an era of brutality.

Revised and updated: the definitive primary-source history of US involvement in General Pinochet’s Chilean coup—“the evidence is overwhelming” (The New Yorker). Published to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of General Augusto Pinochet’s infamous September 11, 1973, military coup in Chile, this updated edition of The Pinochet File reveals the shocking, formerly secret record of the US government’s complicity with atrocity in a foreign country. The book now completes the file on Pinochet’s story, detailing his multiple indictments between 2004 and his death on December 10, 2006, including the Riggs Bank scandal that revealed how the dictator had illegally squirreled away over $26 million in ill-begotten wealth in secret American bank accounts. When it was first released in hardcover, The Pinochet File contributed to the international campaign to hold Pinochet accountable for murder, torture, and terrorism. A new afterword tells the extraordinary story of Henry Kissinger’s attempt to undercut the book’s reception—efforts that generated a major scandal that led to a high-level resignation at the Council on Foreign Relations, illustrating the continued ability of the book to speak truth to power. “The Pinochet File should be considered the long awaited book of record on U.S. intervention in Chile . . . A crisp compelling narrative, almost a political thriller.” —Los Angeles Times

Boldly breaks new ground in studies of Latin American postdictatorial memories by tackling a taboo topic--civilian complicity with the Pinochet regime--that Chilean society has strategically avoided.

"An accurate and objective account of the political events in Chile. . . . An important document for those who want to know what happened, and for those who should not forget."—Isabel Allende