Best chilean history books according to redditors

A must read would be the pinochet file, about operation condor.

I recommend to have a look at the wikipedia's page on anti american sentiment in latin america as a starting point for specific actions and check out the "further reading sections" for each event.

The banana wars that are more about central america and the caribean are also worth looking into.

Around the World in Wanderer III by Eric Hiscock is fantastic. If you're looking for a more instructional book I'd also advise Cruising Under Sail by the same author.

Hard to have any list about cruising without starting off without mentioning Slocum's Sailing Alone Around the World as he was the inspiration for many of the following authors. He fixed a wrecked hulk of a sloop in a field in CT that he was given for free (as a joke) then proceeded to sail alone around the world (as the title would lead you to believe). At the time everyone thought that it would be impossible and likely suicidal to try and sail a boat so small around the globe and he apparently caused quite a stir when he did.

Of course The Long Way by Bernard Moitessier is an absolute classic for sailing literature. His was an account of the Golden Globe non-stop solo circumnavigational race, so there's not really any island hopping or drinks in paradise, but his writing is amazing and really gets to the zen of being at sea. He also named his boat JOSHUA after Cpt. Slocum mentioned above.

Jack London loved to sail and had a ketch (I thought it was a schooner, and Amazon page says schooner, but looking on GIS looks more like a ketch) built and sailed around the South Pacific and wrote about it in The Cruise of the Snark. London has some really funny commentary in there and it's a hell of a good read.

Last, and most expensive, is South Sea Vagabonds by John Wray. This book has been out of print for a little while and apparently is in high demand by looking at the price now. The cheapest I've ever seen it is between $40 and $50. I got my copy from a seller on eBay that lived in New Zealand for about $25 USD but after shipping ended up being about $40 total. That said, it was worth every penny. John Wray got fired from his job for daydreaming about sailing all day and since he had nothing but time on his hands decided to make a boat. Found all his wood on beaches and used his friends sailboat to haul it back to a mill, used a motorcycle and trailer to haul it from the mill to his house, then built a sloop with no prior ship-building experience. He sailed it all around the South Seas on various adventures and, like London, is a great and humorous author. Keep an eye out on ebay and used book sites for this one at a decent price (or find a library to borrow it from) because I guarantee that it's worth the effort and cash.

If you're into tall ships I just finished The Peking Battles Cape Horn by Irving Johnson which was a quick but thoroughly entertaining read. I'm now working my way through Two Years Before the Mast which is an amazing insight into the life of the merchant marine in the early 19th century aboard a square rigger.

Piñera won a free and fair election 55%-45%.

if you study the political history of Chile prior to Pinochet, there were several attempted coups against Allende, and a dozens against his predecessors. Chile didn’t have strong or even almost strong democratic institutions until the 1990s.

I’d recommend this book for more info: The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Chile. Best book I’ve read on Chile, by far.

A book on the coup in Chile that I read recently, Nixon, Kissinger, and Allende, did not mention that it was a gun given to him by Castro, but the author does firmly state that it is likely Allende did kill himself because of his love for his country and because he did not want to be killed by his own military. Those who were close to Allende believed he killed himself for the same reasons. There was a gun next to Allende's dead body (a machine gun I want to say, but I can look for the exact description later today when I get to the book at home). Because Allende was so firm in his beliefs and had such a strong personality, many believe that he killed himself and I agree with that. Unfortunately, right now it seems there is no definite evidence either way.

Except the deforestation of easter island didn't happen because people were cutting logs to transport the Moaï statues.

It is more plausible that it was the first humans coming to the island with rats onboard. This happened in a lots of pacific islands as well. They are just eating seeds, same happened to Hawaii.

And I think you are wrong about when those events took place. Actually the deforestation happened at the beginning of the island colonisation while the statues apparition was later on.

Still this is speculation based on reading. Haven't found a recent book on the subject in a while!

Edit: Found a book on the subject: http://www.amazon.com/The-Statues-that-Walked-ebook/dp/B003V1WXEG

Hunt and Lipo's The Statues that Walked.

They have some more recent articles, one on whether the mata'a were actually used for warfare. Lipo et al 2016

Also Hunt and Lipo rebutting Jared Diamond:
http://www.marklynas.org/2011/10/the-easter-island-ecocide-never-happened-response-to-jared-diamond/

	

	

	

> # Did the “Invisible Blockade” against Allende’s Chile work?
>
>
>
> Did an “invisible blockade” by the United States fatally undermine the Chilean economy under the presidency of Salvador Allende (1970-73)? Did it actually work? Short answer: No.
>
> Note: this post is not about the wider US involvement in the September 1973 coup or about the regime of General Pinochet. It’s about the economic and financial dimensions of US-Chilean relations during the Allende years. (Edit: For a short post on post-Allende Chile, see my “There was no Chilean miracle“.)
>
> - - - - - -
>
> [allende_at_un_1972](https://pseudoerasmus.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/allende_at_un_1972.jpg?w=300&h=222)On the eve of the violent military coup against Salvador Allende on 11 September 1973, Chile found itself in unprecedented economic chaos. Shaken by hyperinflation, widespread shortages, and labour unrest, the “Chilean road to socialism” might have been doomed by simple economic collapse, even if the coup had never taken place. But for many people it’s an article of faith that the United States was deeply responsible for the destabilisation of the Chilean economy. In that narrative, the Nixon administration had imposed an “invisible blockade” against Chile, a multi-front economic war conducted by an alarmed imperial hegemon bent on aborting the first democratic socialist experiment in Latin America.
>
> But was the “invisible blockade” actually successful? Did it cause, or contribute substantially to, Chile’s shambles in 1972-73? This narrower question of the actual economic impact of the ‘blockade’ has gotten lost in the shuffle of the larger question of US culpability in Pinochet’s coup.
>
> In this post, I argue, regardless of whether the “blockade” was as extensive or as maliciously intended as its maximalist critics allege, it did not make any difference.
>
> (1)
>
> The controversy about the US involvement in Chile peaked in the1970s immediately following the coup and in the wake of the Church committee hearings in the US Senate. But it has periodically flared up in tandem with coup anniversaries, the arrest of Pinochet in London, his prosecution in Chile, his death in 2006, etc. At the same time, there’s been a steady stream of books and articles dealing with US interference in Chile which mention the ‘blockade’ mostly in passing. Yet these usually assume as a matter of course that it must have ‘worked’.
>
> For example, Peter Kornbluh’s The Pinochet File, now in its second printing (2013), combines a narrative of Yankee shenanigans with fascimiles of declassified US government documents relating to Chile. Amongst those are Richard Nixon’s hand-written instruction to the CIA to “make the [Chilean] economy scream“; or Henry Kissinger’s infamous National Security Memorandum 93, calling for economic and financial measures against Chile. The steps outlined in that memo bear close resemblance to what the United States actually did.
>
> And such documents are essentially regarded as prima facie evidence for the efficacy of the “invisible blockade”. Or most people just don’t really give it much thought and default to the conventional view you can find by googling the “invisible blockade” (e.g., 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.)
>
> The literature on Chile in 1970-73 is incredibly large. Yet the part that’s specifically on the ‘blockade’ that I’m aware of is quite modest in comparison:
>
> - Farnsworth et al., Facing the Blockade (1973) (Spanish translation in PDF).
> - Paul Sigmund, “The Invisible Blockade and the Overthrow of Allende” (1974) (Spanish translation in PDF).
> - Exchange between Farnsworth and Sigmund in Foreign Policy (1974).
> - pp 79-118 of Petras & Morley, The United States and Chile: Imperialism and the Overthrow of the Allende Government (1975)
> - Farnsworth et al. “The invisible blockade: the United States reacts” in Chile: Politics and Society (1976), pp 338-373.
> - Petras & Morley, “On the U.S. and the Overthrow of Allende: Reply to Professor Sigmund’s Criticism” (1978)
> - Sandro Sideri, ed., Chile 1970-73: Economic Development and its Interational Setting (1979).
> - chapter 4 of Gonzalo Martner, El gobierno del presidente Salvador Allende 1970-1973 (1988);
> - pp 200-241, Mark Falcoff, Modern Chile, 1970-1989: A Critical History (1989).
>
> Except for the Sideri volume, this ‘blockade’ literature is about financial politics and diplomacy, not economics. They dwell on (a) the motivations of the US government, various private banks and corporations, the multilateral financial institutions, etc.; and (b) the minutiae of Chile’s external financial relations in the years 1970-73, such as the Paris Club negotiations over the country’s external debt, World Bank deliberations, legal proceedings related to copper, etc.
>
> The ‘blockade’ literature seems to agree on the following :
>
> - US foreign aid to Chile fell dramatically in the Allende years. This included long-term development loans (USAID), trade finance (Eximbank), etc.
> - During Allende’s tenure, no new loans were originated by the World Bank, and the amount of loans from the Inter-American Development Bank fell dramatically. Chile had been a major beneficiary of both institutions before 1971.
> - At the end of 1971, the Allende government announced a moratorium on the servicing of foreign debt (mostly owed to US banks).
> - There was a gradual reduction, not a total elimination, of lines of credit from US private banks which normally financed Chile’s imports on a short-term basis.
> - There was no embargo on trade, but Chile had to pay for imports in cash upfront, in proportion to the loss of trade finance.
> - The Allende government completed the nationalisation of the copper mining companies initiated by the previous administration (Frei), but decided not to compensate the mostly U.S. owners.
> - US copper companies attempted in various jurisdictions, including France, to attach Chilean copper shipments, but this met with only partial success.
> - Chile was able to obtain aid and credit from alternative sources in Western Europe and Latin America, as well as the socialist bloc.
>
> Sigmund and Falcoff, who might be called ‘anti-blockadists’, argue there was no blockade because there wasn’t a total cut-off in aid and credit. And the “credit squeeze” by private banks was not politically motivated, but largely a legitimate financial response to Chile’s deteriorating credit-worthiness. They also argue alternative sources of aid and credit went a long way in compensating for the loss of traditional sources.
>

> (continues in next comment)

For Dad, the book about those Chilean miners might combine his interest in books and caves, although it's obviously not caving per se.

I just ordered this book to learn more

It's non-fiction, but Deep Down Dark is riveting; better than most adventure novels.

I'm a historian of Latin America, so I really only know about the US-Latin American cases or the US/Canadian/European - Caribbean cases. Peter Kornbluh has published a lot of declassified US primary source documents that relate to US interventionism abroad.

The Pinochet File, about Chile
Bay of Pigs Declassified, about Cuba

A really good secondary source is Greg Grandin's book Empire's Workshop.

A great secondary source on this sort of stuff occurring during the 1970s in Southeast Asia, by Alfred McCoy, is The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade. Meticulously researched (the book is over 1000 pages, the footnotes are endless). McCoy is a pretty tremendous historian, out of U of Wisconsin. His area of expertise is Southeast Asia, not the US, and like me, he stumbled into a much darker story than he ever expected to find.

It's a tricky subject and a lot of Very Serious People have written studies about what a boon it has been to the economy and populace of Chile, but most of those people are advocates of the neoliberal socio-economic model so they tend to see and say things that support that narrative.

I'd say if you really want to dive into this subject, you should start with the book The Pinochet File by Peter Kornbluh/the National Security Archive. It uses a wealth of declassified US intelligence and state department documents to examine the history of Pinochet's rise to power and his government around that time. While it doesn't directly address privatization of the country's social security system, it gives a great look at the political environment and conditions in which it happened and, in my opinion at least, is essential reading to parsing any sort of later analysis of the policy shift.

I'm trying to find an online source for copper price manipulation. I originally read about it in Allende's Chile: The Political Economy of the Rise and Fall of the Unidad Popular but it's not excerpted much online. I loaned it to my sister so I don't have the book on hand >_<. We'll call that one a maybe, but you can see a dip coinciding pretty neatly with Allende's tenure. Obviously that's not proof but it's the best I have right now. Essentially the accusation was that the US released parts of it's copper reserves in 1970 as retaliation for the undervaluing of Anaconda and Kennecott in the nationalization scheme. Despite my best efforts I'm having a really hard time finding resources online that show the American Copper reserve levels over the last century. What the fuck am I doing with my life.

The economic mistakes made by Chavez pretty closely map to Allende's, although it's pretty difficult to know if he would have attempted to diversify the economy had he served his full term without having to deal with foreign interference at every turn. They were both shit with monetary policy, that much is obvious. They continued working in the framework of an extraction economy which is obviously a huge mistake. Countries are vulnerable when their sole source of income is natural resources, even if natural resources are probably the most just industry for nationalization.

What's interesting is the increase in wages did lead to an increase in consumer purchasing at first. The Chilean economy wasn't producing consumer goods, so they had a huge spike in their dependency on imports within the first six months of Allende's tenure. Those imports were targeted in a really surprisingly granular fashion. There was certainly a conspiracy of business interests to make borrowing and purchasing from American firms difficult. Without being able to meet consumer needs, the cost of goods skyrocketed. The same thing would happen here if one of our major trading partners decided to evaluate the purchases of American firms on a case by case basis.

My problem with that blogpost was that the author kind of dismissed out of hand the problems Chile was having with importing goods. Obviously you're going to have a hard time fostering growth if the most powerful country in the world, and one of your largest trading partners starts antagonizing your ability to buy goods. Ironically, ff the Chileans had managed to establish stronger economic ties with the Soviet Union from the start they probably would've fared a whole lot better. Small countries exist at the leisure of the superpowers. I read a quote from Nixon claiming that if Chile succeeded they'd put the US in the same position that the British Empire was in prior to WWI. It's interesting that Kissinger and Nixon really did take the view that these countries existed to service the requirements of the American Markets. It was a combination of bad monetary policy along with an overemphasis on self reliance that worked in concert with American meddling to cause the economic downturn.

Agreed that this is fun. Arguing with people in forums I disagree with is a great hobby until I start researching Nixon's copper reserve levels.

It's only partially related to this, but if you haven't read Naomi Klein's the Shock Doctrine I highly recommend it. I haven't seen and meaningful critiques with regards to the factual accuracy of the book, and it does a great job outlining the ways that Neoliberal institutions are designed from the bottom up to disintegrate states that don't conform to the American conception of governance. She's an ideologue so you have to deal with some incendiary language but I think everyone with an interest in geopolitics should read it.

An Inside View: Allende's Chile is a great read.