Chilean New Song And The Question Of Culture In The Allende Government

Chilean New Song and the Question of Culture in the Allende Government focuses on the Chilean cultural scene during the Popular Unity government (1970-73), situating the discourses and artistic productions linked to the Chilean New Song movement.

Memory and History in Argentine Popular Music examines the intersection between popular music from the 1990s—tango, rock chabón, and cumbia villera—historical events, and individual experiences, arguing that these songs depict history, provide a framework to evoke memories, and create “virtual sites of memory” online.

Chilean New Song (la Nueva Canción chilena) entranced and uplifted a country that struggled for social change during the turbulent 1960s and early 1970s, until the 1973 coup that overthrew democratic socialist president Salvador Allende. This powerful musical style—with its poetic lyrics and haunting blend of traditional indigenous wind and stringed instruments—was born of and expressed the aspirations of rising classes. It promised a socially just future as it forged social bonding. In Chilean New Song, J. Patrice McSherry deftly combines a political-historical view of Chile with a narrative of its cultural development. She examines the democratizing power of this music and, through interviews with key protagonists, the social roles of politically committed artists who participated in a movement for change. McSherry explores the impact of Chilean New Song and the way this artistic/cultural phenomenon related to contemporary politics to capture the passion, pain, and hope of millions of Chileans.

When socialist Salvador Allende won Chile's presidential election in 1970, a powerful cultural movement accompanied him to power. As the CIA actively funded opposition against Allende, the New Chilean Song Movement rose to prominence, persuading voters with its music. Victor Jara became an icon in Chile and beyond for his revolutionary lyrics and life. A short cultural history, Venceremos' charts the movement from Allende's victorious campaign to the brutal U.S.-backed military coup in 1973, which overthrew Allende and imposed Dictator Augusto Pinochet.'

The Chile Reader makes available a rich variety of documents spanning more than five hundred years of Chilean history. Most of the selections are by Chileans; many have never before appeared in English. The history of Chile is rendered from diverse perspectives, including those of Mapuche Indians and Spanish colonists, peasants and aristocrats, feminists and military strongmen, entrepreneurs and workers, and priests and poets. Among the many selections are interviews, travel diaries, letters, diplomatic cables, cartoons, photographs, and song lyrics. Texts and images, each introduced by the editors, provide insights into the ways that Chile's unique geography has shaped its national identity, the country's unusually violent colonial history, and the stable but autocratic republic that emerged after independence from Spain. They shed light on Chile's role in the world economy, the social impact of economic modernization, and the enduring problems of deep inequality. The Reader also covers Chile's bold experiments with reform and revolution, its subsequent descent into one of Latin America's most ruthless Cold War dictatorships, and its much-admired transition to democracy and a market economy in the years since dictatorship.

Patrick Barr-Melej here illuminates modern Chilean history with an unprecedented chronicle and reassessment of the sixties and seventies. During a period of tremendous political and social strife that saw the election of a Marxist president followed by the terror of a military coup in 1973, a youth-driven, transnationally connected counterculture smashed onto the scene. Contributing to a surging historiography of the era's Latin American counterculture, Barr-Melej draws on media and firsthand interviews in documenting the intertwining of youth and counterculture with discourses rooted in class and party politics. Focusing on "hippismo" and an esoteric movement called Poder Joven, Barr-Melej challenges a number of prevailing assumptions about culture, politics, and the Left under Salvador Allende's "Chilean Road to Socialism." While countercultural attitudes toward recreational drug use, gender roles and sexuality, rock music, and consumerism influenced many youths on the Left, the preponderance of leftist leaders shared a more conservative cultural sensibility. This exposed, Barr-Melej argues, a degree of intergenerational dissonance within leftist ranks. And while the allure of new and heterodox cultural values and practices among young people grew, an array of constituencies from the Left to the Right berated counterculture in national media, speeches, schools, and other settings. This public discourse of contempt ultimately contributed to the fierce repression of nonconformist youth culture following the coup.

The 10 volumes in this set, originally published between 1959 and 1986, analyze the process of radical foreign policy change, explore Marxist-Leninist models of international relations, describe the significance of cultural relations in international affairs, highlight the changing nature of political communities and changing patterns of government and examine the interaction between the realms of ethics and international relations.

They Used to Call Us Witches is an informative, highly readable account of the role played by Chilean women exiles during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet from 1973-1990. Sociologist Julie Shayne looks at the movement organized by exiled Chileans in Vancouver, British Columbia, to denounce Pinochet's dictatorship and support those who remained in Chile. Through the use of extensive interviews, the history is told from the perspective of Chilean women in the exile community established in Vancouver.