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Now We Know About Pinochet, But Where Do We Go From Here?, Gerald Robert Pace

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of Chile Under Pinochet: Recovering the Truth. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights), 1999. 296pp.

General Augusto Pinochet, who served as military and civil leader of Chile from 1973 until 1990, forged perhaps one of the most authoritarian regimes ever to govern in the Western Hemisphere. Spearheading the violent coup d’état that ousted socialist President Salvador Allende, Pinochet not only achieved power, but also created a personalistic dictatorship bolstered by a military run governmental bureaucracy to secure his rule. And indeed, this combination perpetuated Pinochet’s seventeen-year tenure.