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Volume XVI (2005)
Review Essay: Unresolved Memories of Chile
Richard R. Super
Department of History, Creighton University, Omaha, NE 68178
Steve J. Stern. Remembering Pinochet’s Chile: On
the Eve of London, 1998. urham, N.C.: Duke University
Press, 2004. 247pp. $29.95 (cloth).
Peter Winn, ed. Victims of the Chilean Miracle:
Workers and Neoliberalism in the Pinochet Era,
1973-2002. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press,
2004. 423pp. $24.29(paper).
The 1973 military overthrow of Chilean president Salvador
Allende Gossens, on that “other” September 11, is
one of those events with scholarly staying power. Maybe
because it occurred in Chile where conspiring men in uniform
were antithetical to the nation’s civilian, constitutionalist
tradition, or maybe because of the sheer pathos aroused
by the scene of air force planes bombing the presidential
palace to roust an armed Allende vowing defend his government
to the end, or maybe because of the ensuing military
repression, the mass arrests, the imprisonments in remote
locations, the torture as policy, the thousands of “disappeared,”
the forced exiles—whatever the reason, shelvesfull
of histories, memoirs, novels, and documentaries have
appeared to describe and analyze, defend and condemn the
unimaginable occurrences of 1973 and their intense aftermath.
From the start, most of those works immediately accepted
the episode as a watershed in Chilean history. More
than thirty years later, despite that the sixteen-year regime
of Army General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte had been long
replaced by renewed constitutionally-elected civilian government,
most studies with modern Chile as subject still
find the historical roots of their myriad topics in the golpe
against Allende and the resulting military rule of Pinochet.
Two recent examples of the continuing scholarly interest
are Steve J. Stern’s Remembering Pinochet’s Chile and Victims
of the Chilean Miracle, edited by Peter Winn. Both
published in 2004, the two adopt 1973 as the starting point
and trace their topics forward, well past the return to civilian
government in 1988–89. Neither, however, ascribes to
that historic transition a significance equal to the earlier
events. For both, the legacy of Allende’s demise and
Pinochet’s dictatorship continues in almost seamless fashion
to the present.
For Stern, the topic is the post-Pinochet struggle within
Chile over the creation of an “emblematic memory,” that is,
how will the origins, violence and legacy of the military
government be remembered in the collective mind of the
nation? Contending for broad acceptance are four heretofore“loose” memories, each of which Stern introduced
through a representational story of an individual Chilean
interviewee. A matron of the elite remembered the overthrow
as “the happiest day of my life,” thus Pinochet as a
hero who saved the nation from the upheaval and impending
civil war of the Allende years. A 66-year old mother
experienced lasting remembrance of the same events as“rupture…an open wound, an awful hurt that fails to heal”
(p. 42) after two of her sons were arrested, tortured and disappeared
in 1974. In the memory of one dissident, these
were years of quietly persevering under similar persecution
until awakening to, and participating in, new movements
for the revival of civic culture. Finally, there was the Army
colonel, who passionately declared himself indifferent to
the entire issue of human rights and violence, as were, he
was convinced, most Chileans, soldiers and civilians alike.
By 1998, Stern concludes, as Pinochet was about to be arrested
in London and held pending a ruling by British courts
on an extradition order from Spain, the Chilean struggle
had reached a “memory impasse,” the struggle unresolved
amid a swirl of contending emotions in the present and agendas
for the future.
Remembering Pinochet, the introductory volume to
Stern’s trilogy on the topic, is meticulously researched, creatively
organized, and engagingly written. Although the
subject, public memory, is a highly abstract one, the human
is never far removed from his discussion, not only in the
case studies that he employs, but also in the Afterwords that
follow each chapter, in which another human story—like
the conscripted soldier whose nightmarish experience remained
shrouded in official silence—lends nuance to a central
point. Then there is the author’s appreciated determination
to put a Chilean face on this adventure into the burgeoning
historiographical field of the history of memory
through invented terms, like “policide” (the murder of a way
of doing politics and government) and “memory knots” (individuals
and groups who relentlessly work against society’s
fears and inertia to form collective memory out of loose,
individual ones). Most refreshing of all is Stern’s candid
admission of his own anti-Pinochet bias, an attitude proceeding
from his personal leftward leanings, the familial
influence of his chilena spouse, Florencia E. Mallon, a Latin
Americanist scholar in her own right, and his heritage as a
second generation Holocaust survivor.
Peter Winn’s collection of essays, Victims of the Chilean
Miracle, likewise views the same historical period,
1973–98 (with 1999–2002 seen as “epilogue”) as an integral
era, also despite the celebrated change of political direction
with the election of Patricio Aylwin, candidate of
the Center-Left coalition Concertacíon in 1989. Here the
subject is organized labor in Chile as it flourished under
Allende, suffered under Pinochet and was relatively neglected
under the new democrats. After an introductory essay
on “The Pinochet Era” by the editor, various contributors
describe organized labor in general during the period
(Volker Frank), followed by the status of workers in specific
industries: textiles (Winn), copper manufacturing (Joel
Stillerman), copper mining (Thomas Miller Klubock), agriculture
(Heidi Tinsman), fisheries (Rachel Schurman), and
the forestry sector (Klubock). In each enterprise, the fate of
the worker is the same. Under military rule, there was outright
repression of leading militants, massive cuts in wages
and benefits, and the wholesale loss of the right to organize,
collectively bargain and strike, losses codified and nstitutionalized
in the Plan Laboral of 1979. Just as damaging to
workers’ interests, the authors collectively argue, has been
the failure of reinstalled civilian administrations to champion
a living wage and restored rights for Chile’s working
class. Neither Aylwin (1990–94), nor Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle (1994–2000), not even the Socialist Ricardo Lagos,
elected in 2000, have sought to alter much the neoliberal
economic policies adopted under Pinochet, policies and programs
for which Chilean workers have paid—and continue
to pay—an enormous financial and social cost. Whatever
the real truth of the “Chilean Miracle,” the book concludes,
the nation’s working men and women have only been victims
of it.
As with any published collection of essays, some contributions
stand out more than others. In this case,
Stillerman’s clearly written discussion of copper miners fascinates
for its depiction of the decline of Chile’s historically
most privileged and politically powerful labor group. Heidi
Tinsman’s contribution is noteworthy for her contention that
women workers in the new for-export agricultural industries
made significant social gains, despite exploitation by
employers. And Thomas Klubock impressively details the
ecological damage to national forests that accompanied the “boom” in Chilean lumber and wood products. In the end,
however, the collection suffers from its repetitiveness and
its predictability. Although more cohesive than normally are
others of this format, Victims of the Chilean Miracle contains
little that is new, other than detail, beyond its introductory
chapters. It is the same story told six times. Nor is
the message in any way subtle or nuanced. If the tome intended
to explore the question: “Are they [Chilean workers]
victims of Chile’s neoliberal ‘miracle’?” (p. 2), the answer
was provided in the affirmative by the title. Indeed,
the volume seems so intent on promoting its message that
its credibility begins to suffer from lack of context. As with
so many earlier works on this controversial episode, the more
determined the desire to condemn Pinochet, the more favorable
becomes the judgment of Allende, whose administration
is here hailed as the “apex of democracy in Chile”
(p. 19), the deteriorating economy, social fabric, and political
traditions virtually dismissed.
Two new additions to the already voluminous library
of works on the fall of Allende and the rule of Pinochet,
both recognize the watershed that was 1973 and its aftermath
for Chilean history. One, however, contributes but yet
another voice to an aging debate about the merits of the
Socialist and the sins of the General. The other breaks new
ground in its insights about a Chilean present that is looking
back in order to map its future. Both books come from
recognized authorities in the field, are clear in their exposition
and comprehensive in their documentation. But if there
is time and energy to read only one, choose Stern. Volume XVI |
