Reckoning with Pinochet: The Memory Question in Democratic Chile, 1989–2006 (Latin America Otherwise) - Hardcover

Stern, Steve J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0822347121 ISBN 13: 9780822347125

Publisher: Duke University Press Books, 2010

Synopsis

Reckoning with Pinochet is the first comprehensive account of how Chile came to terms with General Augusto Pinochet’s legacy of human rights atrocities. An icon among Latin America’s “dirty war” dictators, Pinochet had ruled with extreme violence while building a loyal social base. Hero to some and criminal to others, the general cast a long shadow over Chile’s future. Steve J. Stern recounts the full history of Chile’s democratic reckoning, from the negotiations in 1989 to chart a post-dictatorship transition; through Pinochet’s arrest in London in 1998; the thirtieth anniversary, in 2003, of the coup that overthrew President Salvador Allende; and Pinochet’s death in 2006. He shows how transnational events and networks shaped Chile’s battles over memory, and how the Chilean case contributed to shifts in the world culture of human rights.

Stern’s analysis integrates policymaking by elites, grassroots efforts by human rights victims and activists, and inside accounts of the truth commissions and courts where top-down and bottom-up initiatives met. Interpreting solemn presidential speeches, raucous street protests, interviews, journalism, humor, cinema, and other sources, he describes the slow, imperfect, but surprisingly forceful advance of efforts to revive democratic values through public memory struggles, despite the power still wielded by the military and a conservative social base including the investor class. Over time, resourceful civil-society activists and select state actors won hard-fought, if limited, gains. As a result, Chileans were able to face the unwelcome past more honestly, launch the world’s first truth commission to examine torture, ensnare high-level perpetrators in the web of criminal justice, and build a public culture of human rights. Stern provides an important conceptualization of collective memory in the wake of national trauma in this magisterial work of history.

About this title

From the Back Cover

""Reckoning with Pinochet" is the best account of the trajectory of historical memory under Chile's restored democracy from 1989 until 2006, and a revealing window on that era and its democratic transition. It reflects Steve J. Stern's comprehensive knowledge of this period in Chile's history and his empathetic sensibility, which enables him to see the issues he discusses through the eyes even of people with whom he profoundly disagrees."--Peter Winn, editor of "Victims of the Chilean Miracle: Workers and Neoliberalism in the Pinochet Era, 1973-2002"

About the Author

Steve J. Stern is the Alberto Flores Galindo Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is the author of books including Battling for Hearts and Minds: Memory Struggles in Pinochet’s Chile, 1973–1988, winner of the Bolton-Johnson Prize (the Conference on Latin American History), and Remembering Pinochet’s Chile: On the Eve of London 1998. Both books received Honorable Mention, Bryce Wood Book Award (Latin American Studies Association). Both are also published by Duke University Press.

Edition details

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0822347121
• ISBN 13: 9780822347125
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 584