Soldiers in a Narrow Land: The Pinochet Regime in Chile [Hardcover]

Mary Helen Spooner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 14, 1994

On September 11, 1973, a military coup in Chile overthrew the socialist government of Salvador Allende, beginning an era of political repression that lasted over sixteen years. Mary Helen Spooner takes us behind the Pinochet regime's wall of censorship, silence, and propaganda and provides an inside look at a brutal dictatorship. She traces the personal histories of key political figures, explains why many Chileans supported the regime, and reveals the fate of many of its victims. The 1998 arrest of Augusto Pinochet and resulting events serve as a reminder of his harrowing legacy. In a new preface (Paper edition) Spooner looks at how Chile has changed in the 1990s and places recent events in a larger historical context.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Freelance journalist Spooner spent most of the 1980s in Chile, where she was able to interview a wide cross section of Chileans under the military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Her account stands as quality journalism, depicting the country's political life from the September 1973 coup to the restoration of civilian government under President Patricio Aylwin in March 1990. One of the first acts of that regime was the public reburial of martyred President Salvador Allende. Spooner gives more credence to the suicide version of his death in the coup than do most sources. In addition, she holds that Pinochet was initially a reluctant participant in the coup. While her account is less analytical than Pamela Constable and Arturo Valenzuela's A Nation of Enemies (LJ 8/91), it is factually sound and balanced and is rich in human details of those involved in these public events. For large public and academic libraries with significant Latin American holdings.
James Rhodes, Luther Coll., Decorah, Ia.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Journalist Spooner presents a narrative of the Pinochet regime through profiles of the major government and opposition figures, many of whom she interviewed. Spooner, who lived in Chile during the Pinochet period (1973- 88), is at her best when discussing Chile prior to the 1973 military coup that toppled Socialist President Salvador Allende's government. General Augusto Pinochet comes across as a very limited provincial man entirely unsuited for any political role. The junta, and Pinochet in particular, were perennially suspicious of the United States and naturally quite resentful of the US arms embargo. Spooner notes the ironic fact that, under the junta, Chile was actually less militarily secure because of the embargo and Pinochet's purging of the foreign service. The junta was hurt even more by several public relations campaigns in the US that only further alienated Congress. Spooner is particularly adept at writing about the so-called ``Chicago Boys,'' those young Chilean economists who were trained at the University of Chicago, known for its conservative free-market approach. In one amusing anecdote, Spooner tells how David Rockefeller, visiting Santiago, praised the Chicago Boys. When asked what advice he would offer workers whose earnings were devoured by inflation, the millionaire suggested they elect officials to improve the economy, ``as the Americans had done in voting for Ronald Reagan.'' Rockefeller had put his foot in his mouth--there were no free elections in Chile. Although the Reagan administration lifted some sanctions (but not the arms embargo), relations were still more sour than sweet between Santiago and Washington during the 1980s, long before Pinochet lost a plebiscite in 1988. Spooner writes about an important subject, but her style is often repetitive. Yet the book has merit largely because it graphically details the dismemberment of the democratic process in Chile. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 410 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press (April 14, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520080831
• ISBN-13: 978-0520080836
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,140,362 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Soldiers in a Narrow Land, June 15, 2005

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-_Tim_- (The Western Hemisphere) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Soldiers in a Narrow Land: The Pinochet Regime in Chile, Updated Edition, With a new preface (Paperback)

This book by journalist Mary Helen Spooner offers competent reporting on the crimes of the Pinochet regime in Chile from a leftist point of view. Spooner has done a good job of assembling testimony from many, many sources to document a long list of murders, kidnappings, and torture committed by the regime. Unfortunately, she does not complement this reporting with any significant analysis that would allow the reader to understand how the military regime was able to take power in a 1973 coup, why so many Chileans initially supported the coup, how Pinochet was able to dominate the rest of the military government and become a dictator, or why Pinochet was eventually forced to relinquish power. In place of analysis, we get a number of rather sweeping and unsupported generalizations ("military dictators are unaccustomed to making concessions and are unskilled in the art of diplomacy"). Spooner also occasionally stoops to innuendo, as when she writes that a conspiracy theory that the U.S. Government injected Chilean fruit with cyanide to weaken the Pinochet regime has "a certain logic." Still, Spooner has done us a service by pulling together a large number of first hand accounts of the abuses committed by the Pinochet regime.

11 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A clear and factual account of the Pinochet Regime, September 27, 1999

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[e-mail] (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Soldiers in a Narrow Land: The Pinochet Regime in Chile, Updated Edition, With a new preface (Paperback)

It is difficult, if not impossible, to write an account of a political upheaval without taking sides to some extent. Despite Ms. Spooner's obvious sympathies with those associated with the Allende regime, she presents a reasonably factual and non-polemical chronology and analysis of events. True, as the above reviewer points out, Ms. Spooner gives a very light treatment of the events that precipitated the coup: the severe economic hardship endured by the population, the financial bankruptcy of the government, militant left-wing and trade union activities that frightened the middle class, and Allende's politically naive decision to ally himself with Fidel Castro. Given this background, the coup and its violence are more explicable as the result of a total breakdown in civil society and the "contract" between the government and the governed. In this light, the Armed Forces could indeed be seen as the guarantors of the Constitution and the restorers of law and order. However, they lost all claim to this noble role by virtue of the bloodbath they perpetrated on the civilian population in the wake of the coup. With a total disregard for the law and order they claimed to restore via the coup, the Chilean military embarked on a crusade of kidnapping, torture and summary execution. Due process was completely ignored, and thousands died arbitrarily at the hands of the military and the secret police, the DINA. Such repression could not be justified: there was no evidence that the "left" had the means to pose a significant threat to the new military regime. Leftists and left-leaning individuals, or those just suspected of holding such views, were hunted down, imprisoned, tortured and frequently murdered. If the Chilean military embarked on the coup with some sort of noble motive in mind to rescue the Constitution, civil government, and the rule of law, they completely lost any credibility as a result of the bloody rampage that followed. I don't see how the above reviewers can justify this behavior. In addtion, as an American, I was outraged by the brutal assassination ordered by the DINA of Orlando Letelier and his American aide, Roni Moffitt in the city and country of my birth. Totally outraged.

9 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Was the Chilean dictator a bumpkin?, August 9, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Soldiers in a Narrow Land: The Pinochet Regime in Chile (Hardcover)

Unlike the reader above who clearly thinks that there is a case of bad P.R against Pinochet on the part of Spooner, I can only argue in favour of the idea that the general was a difficult little despot who resented the US and was little more than a terrorist and a murderer who sanctioned the disappearance of thousands of Chilean nationals and foreigners who dared to protest against him. Allende was democratically elected while Pinochet thrust himself and the army into power. His junta were a pack of miserable cowards who used brutal torture tactics to dismantle democracy. If Pinochet is only remembered as having instituted a free-market economy in Chile and been an 'anti-communist hero', then the words 'the disappeared" would have no resonance anywhere. As this is not the case, he has reason to sweat on a decision by the English courts as to whether he can be tried by Spanish law for conspiracy to murder and murder. He might be a frail old man with friends like the loopy 'Baroness' Thatcher but his alliances will not serve him in the end. May he swing on the long end of the rope for all he has done.