The Chile Reader: History, Culture, Politics(The Latin America Readers)

The Chile Reader makes available a rich variety of documents spanning more than five hundred years of Chilean history. Most of the selections are by Chileans; many have never before appeared in English. The history of Chile is rendered from diverse perspectives, including those of Mapuche Indians and Spanish colonists, peasants and aristocrats, feminists and military strongmen, entrepreneurs and workers, and priests and poets. Among the many selections are interviews, travel diaries, letters, diplomatic cables, cartoons, photographs, and song lyrics.Texts and images, each introduced by the editors, provide insights into the ways that Chile's unique geography has shaped its national identity, the country's unusually violent colonial history, and the stable but autocratic republic that emerged after independence from Spain. They shed light on Chile's role in the world economy, the social impact of economic modernization, and the enduring problems of deep inequality. The Reader also covers Chile's bold experiments with reform and revolution, its subsequent descent into one of Latin America's most ruthless Cold War dictatorships, and its much-admired transition to democracy and a market economy in the years since dictatorship.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments xiii Introduction 1 I. Environment and History 9 II. Chile before Chile: Indigenous Peoples, Conquest, and Colonial Society 59 III. The Honorable Exception: The New Chilean Nation in the Nineteenth Century 121 IV. Building a Modern Nation: Politics and the Social Question in the Nitrate Era 193 V. Depression, Development, and the Politics of Compromise 273 VI. The Chilean Road to Socialism: Reform and Revolution 343 VII. The Pinochet Dictatorship: Military Rule and Neoliberal Economics 433 VIII. Returning to Democracy: Transition and Continuity 521 Selected Readings 605 Acknowledgment of Copyrights and Sources 613 Index 623

About the Author :
Elizabeth Quay Hutchison is Associate Professor of History at the University of New Mexico. She is the author of Labors Appropriate to Their Sex: Gender, Labor, and Politics in Urban Chile, 1900–1930. Thomas Miller Klubock is Associate Professor of History at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Contested Communities: Class, Gender, and Politics in Chile's El Teniente Copper Mine, 1904–1951. Nara B. Milanich is Associate Professor of History at Barnard College. She is the author of Children of Fate: Childhood, Class, and the State in Chile, 1850–1930. Peter Winn is Professor of History at Tufts University. He is the editor of Victims of the Chilean Miracle: Workers and Neoliberalism in the Pinochet Era, 1973–2002. All books mentioned are published by Duke University Press.

Review :
"The Chile Reader is terrific. It is organized into tightly conceived thematic sections and includes a superb range of documents. The editors' introductions to each of the volume's sections prepare the reader for the documents to come and provide overarching arguments about their collective meaning. Similarly, the brief notes that preface each selection explain why the particular document matters and suggest how it might be read. This book is perfect for students and anyone interested in learning about Chile's complex history. I give The Chile Reader my highest praise." - Heidi Tinsman, author of Buying into the Regime: Grapes and Consumption in Cold War Chile and the United States