Contents: (1) February 27, 2010, Earthquake: Current Conditions; Chilean Government Response; (2) Political and Economic Background: Independence through Allende; Pinochet Era; Return to Democracy; (3) Recent Political and Economic Developments: Bachelet Administration: Education Demonstrations; Mapuche Activism; Loss of Legislative Control; Global Financial Crisis; 2009 Presidential and Legislative Elections: Results; Prospects for the Piñera Administration; Human Rights; Energy Challenges; (4) Chile-U.S. Relations: U.S. Assistance: Free Trade Agreement; Regional Leadership; Narcotics and Human Trafficking. Charts and tables.

Fidel Castro described Salvador Allende's democratic election as president of Chile in 1970 as the most important revolutionary triumph in Latin America after the Cuban revolution. Yet celebrations were short lived. In Washington, the Nixon administration vowed to destroy Allende's left-wing government while Chilean opposition forces mobilized against him. The result was a battle for Chile that ended in 1973 with a right-wing military coup and a brutal dictatorship lasting nearly twenty years. Tanya Harmer argues that this battle was part of a dynamic inter-American Cold War struggle to determine Latin America's future, shaped more by the contest between Cuba, Chile, the United States, and Brazil than by a conflict between Moscow and Washington. Drawing on firsthand interviews and recently declassified documents from archives in North America, Europe, and South America--including Chile's Foreign Ministry Archive--Harmer provides the most comprehensive account to date of Cuban involvement in Latin America in the early 1970s, Chilean foreign relations during Allende's presidency, Brazil's support for counterrevolution in the Southern Cone, and the Nixon administration's Latin American policies. The Cold War in the Americas, Harmer reveals, is best understood as a multidimensional struggle, involving peoples and ideas from across the hemisphere.

The United States and Chile is the ideal introduction to U.S.- Chilean relations. From our strained Cold War relations and the Allende assassination to current democratic and economic development, senior scholars Mares and Aravena deftly trace the path of the relationship from early partners, through tense Cold War stand-offs, to the slowly warming relations of the present. The authors include information on General Augusto Pinochet's human rights violations, his current prosecution for them, and the United State's complicity in bringing him to power. Chile is only just now recovering from decades of political instability and government abuses, and this volume provides a thorough look back, and an informed vision of the future.