Fear in Chile : Lives under Pinochet

By Patricia Politzer

Book Overview

"Like a Garc a M rquez novel that has suddenly, horrifyingly, come to real life" (New York Newsday), Fear in Chile is an extraordinary collection of firstperson accounts of life under dictatorship. In the 1980s, shortly after Chile emerged from one of the century's most notorious reigns of terror, Chilean journalist Patricia Politzer interviewed figures including a revolutionary activist, a military leader loyal to General Augusto Pinochet, a bank clerk concerned with the status quo, the mother of one of the "disappeared," as well as a dozen other men and women from every political position and social stratum of Chilean life. The result is a broad, vivid, yet nonideological view of modern life under military rule, about which Ariel Dorfman writes, "I can think of no better introduction to my country."

With the October 1998 arrest of General Pinochet in Great Britain and renewed world awareness of the horrendous crimes committed during his regime, Fear in Chile, updated with a new afterword by the author that considers the recent attempts to prosecute Pinochet for human-rights violations, offers a vivid portrait of Chile's Pinochet era.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1565846613
• ISBN13: 9781565846616
• Release Date: June 2001
• Publisher: New Press, The
• Length: 1111 Pages
• Weight: 0.09 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

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The journalist Patricia Politzer does a good job at showing that this is not a black and white piece of history, but many colors in between. People interviewed tell their story and explain why they have taken a given stand. Maybe because its isolated geography, Chile has a history that is not as polarized as other neighbouring countries. For example, a regular family would have relatives in the right, the center and the left at the same time, so most chileans knew for a fact that abuses were being made when they were being made for whatever reason. This book shows that sensibility, and has a place in history as well, having helped us chileans to exorcise our fears and get back into democracy.