This book purports to give a true view of Chile and the Pinochet regime. The author is a sixties radical who at one time worked as a translator on Allende's presidential staff. Warren Beatty endorsed this book as saying it cleared the distortions about Chile.Where to begin?
I have never given a one star review of any book. Cooper's book deserves no star, because it is a distortion of any truth. I don't think the book is at all balanced with what I know about Chile. I know Chile as well as Cooper. My wife is Chilean and happens to be a socialist. I also have visited Chile many times and love the people and the country.
First, Allende won a very narrow mandate in the election of 1970.
He sought to radically change his country but introduced chaos into his country. He alienated many people including most of the middle and upper classes along with the conservative population of the countryside. My wife is from Curico, in the central agricultural region.
Allende also antongonized some powerful patrons such as the United States and ITT (which owned the copper mines in the north of the country). The United States contributed much of the foreign aid Chile received. What did Allende do? Nationalize the copper mines and invite Castro for a month long visit. Smart move--make enemies of those who contributed most to the Chilean economy. When the economy tanked, chaos was the result.
Workers demands became even more aggressive. Nationalization of smaller companies and agricultural estates were the result. Strikes and work stoppages were common. Economic decline was the result. Copper states that this was the finest hour for Chile. WOW--what a distortion. Economic decline and political chaos and he believes that it was Chile's finest hour. If one wants a modern day example of Chile in the seventies, look at Chavez's Venezuela.
Cooper is right in saying the Nixon administration helped in throwing Allende out of office. However Allende was going down a road which would have resulted in his overthrow.
The military sickened by the economic decline and political chaos overthrew the Allende regime. Pinochet was a reluctant leader of the coup. However, once the die was set, he embraced the coup and brutal crackdown. Over 3100 people died in the coup and the seventeen year dictatorship. Chile was not the worst dictatorship as Cooper would have you believe. In fact, Castro's dictatorship has been far more harsh in this hemisphere. Cooper does not want you to know that. That would distort his story.
Most Chileans believe Allende was an inept leader. Both Allende and Pinochet are divisive issues in Chile today. People don't like to argue the issues involving these two people. That is why Pinochet is not on trial in Chile. Perhaps in the future this may happen, but probably after Pinochet's death. But Cooper wants to rip open the scars of the past to try the crimes of the dictatorship.
One thing the dictatorship did do was set Chile as an economic powerhouse of South America. Where most of the other countries are failing presently, Chile has a thriving economy. Cooper does not want to credit the dictatorship with this. This would destroy his distortion. So he lies and lies and lies.
If I had to summarize the essentials of Cooper's book, it is leftist trash talk about Pinochet and Chile. I wish this book was more objective. It is not. Reader beware.
