Review by Choice Review
In the last offering of Stern's trilogy, he examines the ramifications of Pinochet's despotic rule on the growth of democracy and the politics of memory in Chile. In this well-researched book, Stern (history, Univ. of Wisconsin) covers the broad swath of history from the end of the Pinochet regime to Pinochet's condemnation by the international community to Chile's leadership under Bachelet. Highlights of the work include an analysis of the Rettig Commission through personalized stories, a look at the Aylwin administration's movement toward truth, and an analysis of how economic development was interwoven into Chilean politics of memory in the 1990s. Stern conveys these highlights through his knack for visual imagery. In this vein, the book's greatest strength is its elucidation of symbolic acknowledgment as a form of memory politics by both the state and local community. That is, Stern offers numerous examples of the use of statues, plazas, and visual media to explain how memory becomes a visual entity, reinforced through the generations. This helps to illustrate the fairly fundamental yet important concept that memory is created through a combination of civil society and government/political reinforcement. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. R. L. Bowman Luther College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
