Since the demise of the Pinochet dictatorship in 1990, collaboration and complicity - both in the torture chamber and civil society - have been taboo topics not only for the Chilean left but also for society at large. By revisiting the experience of Luz Arce Sandoval - a leftist militant turned collaborator with Pinochet's secret police - Luz Arce and Pinochet's Chile raises urgent political and ethical questions about how nations carry out unspeakable violence in the name of "progress" and "democracy." Juxtaposing interviews, legal documents, and academic analysis, this book probes the personal and collective dimensions of torture, collaborationism, truth, justice, reconciliation, and memory, issues that resonate in Latin America and beyond.

Since the demise of the Pinochet dictatorship in 1990, collaboration and complicity - both in the torture chamber and civil society - have been taboo topics not only for the Chilean left but also for society at large. By revisiting the experience of Luz Arce Sandoval - a leftist militant turned collaborator with Pinochet's secret police - Luz Arce and Pinochet's Chile raises urgent political and ethical questions about how nations carry out unspeakable violence in the name of "progress" and "democracy." Juxtaposing interviews, legal documents, and academic analysis, this book probes the personal and collective dimensions of torture, collaborationism, truth, justice, reconciliation, and memory, issues that resonate in Latin America and beyond.

Luz Arce's testimonial offers the harrowing story of the abuse she suffered and witnessed as a survivor of detention camps, such as the infamous Villa Grimaldi.

Boldly breaks new ground in studies of Latin American postdictatorial memories by tackling a taboo topic--civilian complicity with the Pinochet regime--that Chilean society has strategically avoided.

A gripping account of daily life as a political prisoner by a former Chilean cabinet minister, offering personal insight into the political climate and historical events of 1970s Chile under military dictator Augusto Pinochet.

A “compelling and shocking account” of a brutal campaign of repression in Latin America, based on interviews and previously secret documents (The Miami Herald). Throughout the 1970s, six Latin American governments, led by Chile, formed a military alliance called Operation Condor to carry out kidnappings, torture, and political assassinations across three continents. It was an early “war on terror” initially encouraged by the CIA—which later backfired on the United States. Hailed by Foreign Affairs as “remarkable” and “a major contribution to the historical record,” The Condor Years uncovers the unsettling facts about the secret US relationship with the dictators who created this terrorist organization. Written by award-winning journalist John Dinges and updated to include later developments in the prosecution of Pinochet, the book is a chilling yet dispassionately told history of one of Latin America’s darkest eras. Dinges, himself interrogated in a Chilean torture camp, interviewed participants on both sides and examined thousands of previously secret documents to take the reader inside this underground world of military operatives and diplomats, right-wing spies and left-wing revolutionaries. “Scrupulous, well-documented.” —The Washington Post “Nobody knows what went wrong inside Chile like John Dinges.” —Seymour Hersh

When she is captured and tortured by agents of the Chilean repression during the darkest years of the Pinochet dictatorship, Lorena, a leftist militant, must either forsake the allegiances of motherhood or betray the political ideals to which she is deeply committed. 5,000 first printing.