Sigmund also documents the Reagan-era policy change from support for Pinochet to pressure for the return of democracy. He concludes that U.S.-Chilean relations have contributed significantly to an overall shift in U.S. foreign policy toward supporting democracy as an end in itself, rather than as a means to an end. Although U.S. policy will continue to be characterized by the interplay between self-interest and idealism, Sigmund contends, future administrations will find it impossible to ignore humanitarian concerns.

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.

"In the thirty-five years since the violent overthrow of Chilean President Salvador Allende, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has vehemently denied U.S. involvement. Almost with the same breath, Kissinger suggests that the democratically elected Allende represented Soviet aggression in Latin America, therefore posing a threat to the United States' physical security." "Newly released documents reveal the Nixon administration's efforts to undermine Allende, while indicating that Nixon and Kissinger did not believe the socialist regime in Santiago endangered the United States or even had close ties to Moscow. The White House feared that the Chilean experiment would encourage other Latin American countries to challenge U.S. hegemony. Nixon, Kissinger, and Allende explores the president's cultural and intellectual prejudices against Latin America and the economic pressures that induced action against Allende."--BOOK JACKET.

Since the end of the Pinochet regime, Chilean public policy has sought to rebuild democratic governance in the country. This book examines the links between the state and civil society in Chile and the ways social policies have sought to ensure the inclusion of the poor in society and democracy. Although Chile has gained political stability and grown economically, the ability of social policies to expand democratic governance and participation has proved limited, and in fact such policies have become subordinate to an elitist model of democracy and resulted in a restrictive form of citizen participation.