Focusing on the cultural debate within the left during the Popular Unity government in Chile (1970-73), Chilean New Song and the Question of Culture in the Allende Government situates the discourses and artistic production linked to the Chilean New Song movement, in order to demonstrate that the musicians were part of the committed intelligentsia. Thus, they actively participated in the discussion and proposal of ways to integrate culture in the revolutionary process, playing an important political and cultural role. The analysis is mainly based on the government-friendly press and on records released between 1970 and 1973, verifying how the main trends observed in the cultural debate were expressed in the movement; the extent to which the positions defended by the musicians have been in tune with governmental purposes; and if they have in fact influenced the cultural policies debated and pursued by Popular Unity.

Rock Aesthetics in Colombian Literature and Culture: Writing the Noise explores the presence of a rock aesthetic in the Colombian literary field and how its pivotal role in creating alternative creative expressions that challenge the dominance of tropicality as the prevailing artistic reference. More than a musical genre or a cultural industry, rock is also an aesthetic: a significant social practice that allows one to understand what people consider beautiful or authentic. Since its birth in the mid-1950s, rock as an aesthetic has expanded worldwide, transforming and establishing dialogues with artistic practices such as literature. Through an analysis of a series of novels, poems, and manifestos written from the 1950s to the early years of the twenty-first century, David Martínez Houghton embarks on a literary, musical, and historical journey. On the way, he explores complex phenomena such as urban violence, the formation of youth identities, the penetration of pop culture, national identity discourses, and even the social and physical transformation of Colombian cities.

Memory and History in Argentine Popular Music examines Argentine popular music of the 1990s and early 2000s that denounced, immortalized, and reflected on the processes that led to the socioeconomic crisis that shook Argentine society at the end of 2001. It draws upon the three most popular genres of the time—tango, rock chabón, and cumbia villera, a form of cumbia from the shantytowns. The book analyzes lyrics from these three genres detailing how they capture the feel of daily life and the changes that occurred under the neoliberal economic model that ravaged the country throughout the ‘90s. The contention is that these are canciones con historia, songs that depict historical events and tell personal stories. Therefore, the lyrics from all three genres serve as accounts of historical events and social and economic changes, denouncing the social inequalities caused by neoliberal economic policies. Furthermore, the book explores how the process of remembering and forgetting takes place on the Internet. It examines how users navigate video-sharing portals and use music to create “virtual sites of memory,” a term that extends Winter’s conception of physical sites of memory to digital environments as virtual sites of commemoration.

This book is a historical and discursive study of rock poetry produced in Argentina, during the “transition to democracy,” in the 1980s. Lucas R. Berone analyzes the lyrics and albums of a heterogeneous group of Argentine rock artists and bands, who began their careers at that time, to demonstrate the emergence and functioning of a new grammar of discursive production, he terms the “grammar of the incognitus (or hidden) subject.” This grammar is a very specific and distinct way of elaborating the enunciative relationship between the artist and his audience when compared to the traditional countercultural rock discourse. The author asserts that the new discursive grammar, focused on the singularity of the present and the “self,” will produce the last important revolution in the tradition of the so-called “rock nacional,” motivating critical responses in the leaders of the movement.

Chilean New Song (la Nueva Canción chilena) entranced and uplifted a country that struggled for social change during the turbulent 1960s and early 1970s, until the 1973 coup that overthrew democratic socialist president Salvador Allende. This powerful musical style—with its poetic lyrics and haunting blend of traditional indigenous wind and stringed instruments—was born of and expressed the aspirations of rising classes. It promised a socially just future as it forged social bonding. In Chilean New Song, J. Patrice McSherry deftly combines a political-historical view of Chile with a narrative of its cultural development. She examines the democratizing power of this music and, through interviews with key protagonists, the social roles of politically committed artists who participated in a movement for change. McSherry explores the impact of Chilean New Song and the way this artistic/cultural phenomenon related to contemporary politics to capture the passion, pain, and hope of millions of Chileans.

A historical study of Chile's twin experiments with cybernetics and socialism, and what they tell us about the relationship of technology and politics. In Cybernetic Revolutionaries, Eden Medina tells the history of two intersecting utopian visions, one political and one technological. The first was Chile's experiment with peaceful socialist change under Salvador Allende; the second was the simultaneous attempt to build a computer system that would manage Chile's economy. Neither vision was fully realized—Allende's government ended with a violent military coup; the system, known as Project Cybersyn, was never completely implemented—but they hold lessons for today about the relationship between technology and politics. Drawing on extensive archival material and interviews, Medina examines the cybernetic system envisioned by the Chilean government—which was to feature holistic system design, decentralized management, human-computer interaction, a national telex network, near real-time control of the growing industrial sector, and modeling the behavior of dynamic systems. She also describes, and documents with photographs, the network's Star Trek-like operations room, which featured swivel chairs with armrest control panels, a wall of screens displaying data, and flashing red lights to indicate economic emergencies. Studying project Cybersyn today helps us understand not only the technological ambitions of a government in the midst of political change but also the limitations of the Chilean revolution. This history further shows how human attempts to combine the political and the technological with the goal of creating a more just society can open new technological, intellectual, and political possibilities. Technologies, Medina writes, are historical texts; when we read them we are reading history.

The Chile Reader makes available a rich variety of documents spanning more than five hundred years of Chilean history. Most of the selections are by Chileans; many have never before appeared in English. The history of Chile is rendered from diverse perspectives, including those of Mapuche Indians and Spanish colonists, peasants and aristocrats, feminists and military strongmen, entrepreneurs and workers, and priests and poets. Among the many selections are interviews, travel diaries, letters, diplomatic cables, cartoons, photographs, and song lyrics. Texts and images, each introduced by the editors, provide insights into the ways that Chile's unique geography has shaped its national identity, the country's unusually violent colonial history, and the stable but autocratic republic that emerged after independence from Spain. They shed light on Chile's role in the world economy, the social impact of economic modernization, and the enduring problems of deep inequality. The Reader also covers Chile's bold experiments with reform and revolution, its subsequent descent into one of Latin America's most ruthless Cold War dictatorships, and its much-admired transition to democracy and a market economy in the years since dictatorship.