Customer Reviews

A Nation of Enemies: Chile Under Pinochet

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I keep buying copies of this book for my friends, both gringos and chileans. I've been in Chile almost 3 years and this book has done more for my understanding of the dynamics of left and right in this contry than I thought a book could do. It is well balanced and very detailed. You will read here many things that people just won't talk about but are critical to understanding contemporary Chile. If you have any interest in this country, you need to read this book.

"A Nation of Enemies" is a fascinating and well-balanced account of the Pinochet years in Chile. The book chronicles the abuses and the successes (yes, there were a few, particularly where the economy was concerned) of one of Latin America's more notorious dictators. Pinochet's reign could be described as the banality of evil. There was considerable political repression, and hundreds of Chileans lost their lives, but his was a rule more by ham-handed thuggery than systematic destruction like the Nazis. In the end, Pinochet was brought down not by revolution, but by his own ineptness.

The authors do a good job in providing the historical context for their story. They show both how Chile had a strong tradition of democracy before Pinochet, and how the excesses of his Socialist predecessor Allende helped lead to the coup that brought him to power. The authors also debunk the notion that the U.S. was behind the coup, though they acknowledge that the Nixon administration and the CIA did everything they could to politically undermine Allende before the coup.

The book is broken down into sections covering various aspects of Chilean society, rather than chronologically. The last chapter deals with the events that led to Pinochet's electoral downfall, and the relatively peaceful return to democracy in Chile. If the book has a drawback, it is that it was published in 1991, and therefore lacks a chapter on post-Pinochet Chile.

Overall, this is an excellent book for anyone interested in world history or politics.

I have lived in Chile for close on 4 years now. I am not sure it will ever be possible to fully understand the Chilean psych. However - this book does bring you an inch or two closer to doing so. It certainly helps you understand why Chilean think and react the way they do to the subject of the dictatorship. However I believe that before being published in paperback -this book should have an additional chapter on the last decade and the dramatic changes that have taken place since 1991.

There has been a lot of trash written about Pinochet, but this book along with Soldiers in a Narrow Land have a very balanced perspective. As the title states, there were both supporters of Pinochet and the Armed Forces, and there were opponents. Allende was not skillful in leading his country through the changes of the seventies, so a ruluctant Pinochet and the Armed Forces removed him. The excesses of the reign of terror following the coup de etat are unforgiveable, but one should remember that in Argentina the dirty war killed close to twenty thousand, where Chile's coup and terror killed 3,000.
The authors do a great job describing the successes and failures of the Pinochet regime. Also a good description of the power struggles within the Armed Forces themselves (Air Force versus Army). The one thing needing improvement in this book is an update on what has since happened in Chile.
Since I am marrying a Chilean, I found this book a great way to know more about this country. It describes the still powerful emotion in Chile over Pinochet (positive and negative).

Pinochet is one of the most controversial dictators in Latin America. Sponsored by the United States he would sprout a reign of torture and death throughout Chile. This book covers what occurred under Pinochet in excellent detail. It shows how modern Chile was shaped out of the horrors that were seen by this regime. It is very well written and stays on thesis throughout the whole book. If you are just getting started on studying Chile this is an excellent book to start with. It really gives you a sense of this time period without being overbearing.

A Nation of Enemies: Chile Under Pinochet is a fairly balanced look at Chilean society under General Augusto Pinochet with interviews with both civilians of Chille and the military officials that were shrouded in power through 1989. The United States did not want Salvador Allende in power because they feared a Communist force uprising, so they sought to destabilize his regime virtually any way they could. Eventually Augusto Pinochet seized power and proved to be even worse for the people of Chille and a thorny issue for American policy makers who often sent mixed signals to the Pinochet regime often condeming actions, while still providing Chille with aid.

For the Chilean people, Pinochet was a blessing to some and a curse for others, the economy went into the toilet twice because Pinochet became two enamored with his men in the Chicago Boys in the second case and even when the economy was thriving, the money never really touched the poorest of the poor and when the economy faltered the newly secure suddenly became poor again through mismanagement and disillusionment began to spread among those who weren't prospering. Pinochet was a deathnail for leftists who were either forced into excile or excrusiatingly mualed and tortured by the Contreas led DINA and other military forces.

There was no middle road for Chille, America feared a Communist Allende so he couldn't be allowed to retain power and under Pinochet many people were murdered for Political Beliefs or even potential sympathies for the Communists. Schools were taken over by the military personal and free thought was stiffled, professors were fired, and the curriculim was changed to embrace the new culture, many mothers and fathers lost their children to prisons never to be found again facing false hope and conflicting information...but at least Pinochet wasn't a Communist.

My one complaint is that many of the personal intimate stories felt chopped up to fit everything else in.

This sophisticated, devastatingly clear and well-written book, explains why Chile specifically is important to the intellectual history of world political movements, and thus, to international political relationships more generally. Told through the eyes of survivors on all sides of a very rigidly divided society, the authors brings alive the inner thoughts, behind-the-scenes machinations and inner workings of those who participated in this immensely tragic saga that has now become Chilean history. Taken altogether, the Pinochet reign is a chilling cautionary tale about the fragility of the narrowly conceived framework and paradigms of world political movements, including especially democratic and communistic ones. Chile, as it turns out, has been the "poster child of South American democracy. Yet it became the perfect "experimental testing ground" for how communism can fail and how democracies can spin out of control and can be put to an unexpectedly premature ending.

Here we see one of the few South American societies steeped historically in a stable fully functioning democracy spin out of control. Chile, with a long history of fair elections, an active and stable middle class, respect for the rule of law, a robust civil society, a nation that respected the values of tolerance and decision-making through democratic debate and consensus, a rich heritage of respect for dissent, and one that valued knowledge and intellectual growth over the accumulation of wealth, hardly seemed a candidate for the election of a Communist or a take over by a rigid rightwing militaristic ruler. Chile was a nation that valued and took pride in the fact that it was a stable vibrantly functioning democracy. And the very fact that Salvador Allende, a Castro style Communist, was democratically elected during the time that Castro was at the height of his Cuban revolution, is itself the strongest testament that as democracies go, there were few with a more exemplary record of democratic rule than Chile. For instance, not only could a Communist never be elected in the USA, one could never even ever get on the ballot.

On the other side of this coin however, it is a fact that Chile was a narrow and ingrown society built up on a foundation of almost 200 years of agrarian feudalism, which was itself tied to the sustained and often brutal exploitation of Indian peasants. Although it had a vibrant middle class, Chile was and remains a nation with intense competition, it is also hierarchal with only limited space at the top. Everyone knew and respected the fact that the landowning elite, in the final analysis, usually called the shots. Couple these two things with the fact that the Chilean military had been trained in the ways of the Prussian military, and you have the underlying ingredients for political volatility even in a solidly run democratic country.

The left-leaning Chilean revolutionaries, who won the September 11, 1973 (in hindsight, Chile's own Nine Eleven) election fair and square, had no idea about how to go about the business of governing and ruling an ordinary society -- let alone a tense, divided "foaming-at-the-mouth" incendiary democracy. Allende and his supporters thought that the ruling elite, backed up by the U.S. and the CIA, would just roll over and allow them to dismantle their hard won gains and advantages without a fight. And in this regard, it must be said that Allende and his disciples proved to be naïve and inept dreamers. They were blinded by the prospects of their own victorious rise to power.

When they took power they acted as if their election victory was a holiday from school and proceeded to rule in just such a capricious and relaxed way. They immediately began making all of the wrong moves, instituting by steamrolling fiat all of their pet leftwing ideological programs, the most incendiary of which was large-scale "land reform." To its credit, Chilean society (including the frightened land-owning elite) gave them time and ample space to get their act together. But the Allende administration just couldn't seem to get the job done. They proved to be not just misguided idealists, but also, and more importantly, incompetent ones, and they had no fallback strategy. In less than a year of Allende rule, the once robust and vibrant Chilean economy and democracy was in shambles. Communists sloganeering and placard waving had proven to be a very weak substitute for effective communist rule in democratic Chile. As a result, the military, seeing it as a patriotic duty to put a stop to the incompetent and weak Communistic rule before the country was completely destroyed, not unexpectedly plotted a coup and sought the then General of the military staff, Pinochet's participation. Waiting until he could see the handwriting clearly on the wall, Pinochet reluctantly joined in at the very last minute.

Allende was killed and Pinochet, sure not to make the same mistake that Allende had made, quickly sought to consolidate his power. He did this in three ways. First he and his supporters engaged in a reign of terror that involved the wholesale murder of as many of Allende's supporters as world opinion would tolerate. The worse atrocities occurred in the rural areas where peasants had no protection whatsoever against their hate-filled landowners. Many Chileans were arrested and were never heard from again. Second, Pinochet cleared the deck of any potential competitors, and one-by-one neutralized those most likely to pose a threat to his rule. Finally he connived to have laws and edicts enacted that gave him sole dictatorial powers over the nation. He ruled until he finally lost the confidence of the Chilean people at all levels.

Many Chileans believe that on balance, his rule was a plus, especially economically. However, many more believe that he was a murderous monster, and like Francisco Franco of Spain, one of Pinochet's heroes, he sullied the democratic history of Chile forever. This book is carefully written and just a great read. Five stars.

"A Nation of Enemies" has been a personal favorite of mine for years. At first I used it & "Bitter Fruit" as a short hand guide to America's often bloody involvement in Latin America, then as the war in Iraq picked up it was my go to when describing The School of the Americas. Now, however, I use it when referencing America's current economic problems. Having read the book years ago, I should have seen all of this coming, though short, "A Nation of Enemies," while describing the horrific process of economic decline the Chicago Boys let lose on Pinochet's economy mirror such things as the privatization and failure of American Schools, the bank bail outs, too big to fail, the decline of the standard of living, and the massive unemployment that America is facing today, but they also mention the steps that Pinochet took to address the problem, steps that neither party has even addressed today. This is a must read for anyone looking for the bigger picture.

This is a sad and stunning tale of a country overtaken by a military which was bent on remaking Chile in its own image: to be rigid; to be unbending; to enslave itself; to torture the soul and people of Chile. Pinochet ushered in an ugly period which the idle observer may discern as bringing order to disorder; however walk a step into the National Stadium and the other torture centers and you would have seen that only disorder and calamity could come of such extreme conditions. As a person who has studied and written about this time in Chile, I would recommend this book as a primer in understanding the basics of the Pinochet era. It may not delve in other aspects, such as what role the U.S. had (which was considerable) in bringing about and sustaining the Pinochet regime; it may not touch upon every aspect of Chile during this time; but it is a solid basis in understanding the nature of the Pinochet regime and their repressive aims.

Constable and Valenzuela have produced what will be considered a standard text in Chilean studies, sharing that position with works like Brian Loveman's CHILE. However, it is unfortunate that one can read A NATION OF ENEMIES from cover-to-cover and never learn that Chile has a sizeable indigenous population which was affected by the dictatorship as well. Under Pinochet, the Aymara and the Mapuche were oppressed and by rendering them invisible in their publication, Constable and Valenzuela further that oppression.