The markets were pleased when Vicente Fox won Mexico’s presidential election in July: not because he had done what many still thought impossible—defeat the authoritarian machinery of the longest ruling party in the world—but because there had been no unrest, …
In the debate over the Mexican bailout last January, U.S. stockbrokers, the Mexico lobby, and the mainstream media pressed hard for the rescue package. Their argument rested on the premise that economics had replaced military action as the basis for …
Ten years ago I tried to interpret Mexico for Ilan and Irving Howe in a single day. I took them to Aztec ruins and to markets where indigenous customs live on virtually intact. We strolled through the center of Mexico …
Chile’s plebiscite of October 1988 was a dramatic ending to fifteen painful years. Capitan General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, President of the Republic of Chile, notorious worldwide as a symbol of violence and repression, …
Democracy has returned to Argentina against a backdrop of profound changes in international and national life. To cite but a few: the intensification of power-bloc rivalry; revolutionary changes in the technology of information; the realignment of world views; high-tech militarization; …
One striking image haunts the memory of those who witnessed the military coup that toppled Chilean President Salvador Allende in September 1973: the bombing of the Presidential Palace and its futile defense by a handful of aides and Allende himself. So …
After recently spending a month in Chile—meeting with teachers, human rights workers and lawyers— it is clear to me that the contradictory maze of constitutional laws, penal codes, executive decrees, and ministerial directives provides the Pinochet regime with a constitutional …
Ten years ago, the military ruled Argentina. They had seized power by overthrowing an elected government in 1966—as they had done in 1962, in 1955, in 1943, in 1930; as they would do again in 1976. But, as on all …
Press censorship, the persecution of intellectuals, the search of my home, the assassination of my dearest friends, and the loss of a daughter who died fighting you—these are a few of the facts that oblige me to resort to this …
The death of Salvador Allende, either by suicide or assassination, and the pitiless repression that followed the liquidation of his regime, have complicated the observer’s task. Everyone is outraged, and rightfully so, at the violence done to Chilean constitutionality and …
The worst intoxication is ideology. We must approach reality humbly. —Octavio Paz The brutal destruction of the Allende government by the military junta is a heavy blow to democrats and socialists everywhere who hope for peaceful change in their societies. …
Chile is now the owner of its mines, and the workers must know that copper is the wage of Chile, its principal wealth. Copper earns 83 percent of Chile’s foreign exchange income. Of Chile’s total exports of $1.15 billion, copper …
Santiago, Chile, July 1971 The Chilean Revolution is irreversible and irrepressible. Whatever happens now the “two Chiles” of the past (the Chile of the rich, and that of the poor) are gone forever. Will the experience through which the country is …
In the October 1970 presidential election, there were some 3,540,000 registered voters. About 600,000 abstained. The candidates of the left-wing Popular Union coalition won 1,075,616 votes (36.3 percent); The “national” (rightist) candidate, Jorge Alessandri, 1,036,278 (34.98 percent); and 824,849 voted …
