Duke University Press 2006. Soft cover, 277 pp.
Battling for Hearts and Minds is the story of the dramatic struggle to
define collective memory in Chile during the violent, repressive
dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, from the 1973 military coup in
which he seized power through his defeat in a 1988 plebiscite. Steve J.
Stern provides a riveting narration of Chile's political history during
this period. At the same time, he analyzes Chileans' conflicting
interpretations of events as they unfolded. Drawing on testimonios,
archives, Truth Commission documents, radio addresses, memoirs, and
written and oral histories, Stern identifies four distinct perspectives
on life and events under the dictatorship. He describes how some
Chileans viewed the regime as salvation from ruin by Leftists (the
narrative favored by Pinochet's junta), some as a wound repeatedly
reopened by the state, others as an experience of persecution and
awakening, and still others as a closed book, a past to be buried and
forgotten.In the 1970s, Chilean dissidents were lonely "voices in the
wilderness" insisting that state terror and its victims be recognized
and remembered. By the 1980s, the dissent had spread, catalyzing a mass
movement of individuals who revived public dialogue by taking to the
streets, creating alternative media, and demanding democracy and human
rights. Despite long odds and discouraging defeats, people of
conscience-victims of the dictatorship, priests, youth, women, workers,
and others-overcame fear and succeeded in creating truthful public
memories of state atrocities. Recounting both their efforts and those of
the regime's supporters to win the battle for Chileans' hearts and
minds, Stern shows how profoundly the struggle to create memories, to
tell history, matters.
Book Two of the Trilogy: The Memory Box of Pinochet's Chile