Soldiers in a Narrow Land: The Pinochet Regime in Chile
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On September 11,1973, a military coup in Chile overthrew the socialist government of Salvador Allende, beginning an era of political repression that lasted over sixteen years. Mary Helen Spooner takes us behind the Pinochet regime's wall of censorship, silence, and propaganda and provides an inside look at a brutal dictatorship. Spooner spent nine years in Chile as a foreign correspondent. She saw firsthand the antigovernment protests and the subsequent regime crackdown, and she voted in the one-man presidential plebiscite in 1988 that Pinochet and his backers had assumed he could not lose. Spooner traces the personal histories of key political figures, explains why many Chileans supported the regime, and reveals the fate of many of its victims. Her investigations shatter two myths about Pinochet - that he planned and led the 1973 coup; and that his regime was friendly to the United States. She shows him to be neither a free-market visionary nor an anticommunist hero - he was a ruthless, opportunistic military officer who disposed of potential military rivals and dissidents alike, including Orlando Letelier, who was assassinated in a car bombing in Washington, D.C. in 1976.
Some of the book's most devastating accounts come from Spooner's interviews with former regime officials. These interviews, along with those of military officers and ordinary Chileans, and Spooner's use of recently declassified State Department documents, bring a powerful new perspective to a harrowing period in recent Chilean history.
Author: Mary Helen Spooner
Format: Hardback, 410 pages, 152mm x 229mm, 485 g
Published: 1994, University of California Press, United States
Genre: Military History
Description
On September 11,1973, a military coup in Chile overthrew the socialist government of Salvador Allende, beginning an era of political repression that lasted over sixteen years. Mary Helen Spooner takes us behind the Pinochet regime's wall of censorship, silence, and propaganda and provides an inside look at a brutal dictatorship. Spooner spent nine years in Chile as a foreign correspondent. She saw firsthand the antigovernment protests and the subsequent regime crackdown, and she voted in the one-man presidential plebiscite in 1988 that Pinochet and his backers had assumed he could not lose. Spooner traces the personal histories of key political figures, explains why many Chileans supported the regime, and reveals the fate of many of its victims. Her investigations shatter two myths about Pinochet - that he planned and led the 1973 coup; and that his regime was friendly to the United States. She shows him to be neither a free-market visionary nor an anticommunist hero - he was a ruthless, opportunistic military officer who disposed of potential military rivals and dissidents alike, including Orlando Letelier, who was assassinated in a car bombing in Washington, D.C. in 1976.
Some of the book's most devastating accounts come from Spooner's interviews with former regime officials. These interviews, along with those of military officers and ordinary Chileans, and Spooner's use of recently declassified State Department documents, bring a powerful new perspective to a harrowing period in recent Chilean history.
Soldiers in a Narrow Land: The Pinochet Regime in Chile