The Pinochet Affair: State Terrorism and Global Justice [Paperback]

Roger Burbach (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 12, 2004

This is the timely story of the rise and fall General Augusto Pinochet of Chile. Using interviews and intimate sketches, Roger Burbach unravels Pinochet's historty--from the violent military coup that brought him to power to his ouster in 1990 and eventual arrest in 1998. Burbach reveals the sociopathic, paranoid and authoritarian tendencies that led the dictator to murder thousands of people in the country while authorizing acts of international terrorism.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

The case of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was among the most sensational of recent international attempts to prosecute human rights violators. Few contemporary figures have galvanized progressive and socialist opinion like Pinochet, and indeed his sins, the overthrow of a legally installed president and the subsequent murder of 3,000 people by most estimates, are unpardonably atrocious. Burbach's excoriation of his subject, which unfolds in biographical material about Pinochet and in a summary of the drawn-out legal process--ultimately a failure--to put him on trial, is more than justified by the historical facts. Burbach, associated with the University of California at Berkeley, performs the organization and citation of these facts in a scholastically capable manner, which increases his work's general-interest value. It is also sympathetic to Pinochet's initial political victim, Salvador Allende, which affects the author's objectivity about Allende's policy of collectivizing the Chilean economy; however, Burbach proves a reliable guide to the activities of the opposition Pinochet provoked. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

“This riveting book recounts the first historic September 11 in 1973 when Augusto Pinochet seized power in Chile and launched a seventeen-year reign of state and international terrorism with US backing. The dramatic consequences of this coup are still shaking our world today and enable us to understand why Washington is so fanatically opposed to the International Criminal Court.”--Mike Davis

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Zed Books (August 12, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1842774352
• ISBN-13: 978-1842774359
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,154,216 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gripping Tale of Tyrant's Downfall and Human Rights Triumph, December 23, 2004

By 

Paul Cantor - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Pinochet Affair: State Terrorism and Global Justice (Paperback)

On a scale from 1 to 5 Roger Burbach's, The Pinochet Affair rates a six. It is the dramatic story of the downfall of the detested former dictator of Chile, of the many unsung heroes who brought it about, and of the significance of the entire affair to the global human rights movement. Augusto Pinochet, who seized power in a bloody 1973 coup d'état, dissolved Congress, outlawed political parties and the largest labor union in the country, censored the press, banned the movie "Fiddler on the Roof" as Marxist propaganda, publicly burned books ("on a scale seldom seen since the heyday of Hitler," according to the New York Times), expelled students and professors from universities, designated military officers as university rectors and arrested, tortured and killed thousands who opposed his regime. Then in a remarkable series of twists and turns the ex tyrant went from feared strongman to decrepit prisoner. Nowhere has this tale been told so well as in Burbach's book with its rich anecdotal material, compelling characterizations, and meaningful historical insights. Indeed, his book should be put on the must read list of everyone interested in the human rights movement, globalization, Latin America, Chile, or the Pinochet Affair itself.