Beatriz Allende: A Revolutionary Life in Cold War Latin America.

• Author: McSherry, J. Patrice

Harmer, Tanya. Beatriz Allende: A Revolutionary Life in Cold War Latin America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020.

Tanya Harmer's illuminating book explores the life of Beatriz Allende, the oldest daughter of Salvador Allende, within the tumultuous setting of Cold War politics, widespread revolutionary ideals, and dramatic changes in Chile and Latin America in the late 1950s and 1960s. Her richly detailed narrative makes the era come alive through the person of Beatriz, a complex woman who was ahead of her times in some ways and a product of those times in other ways. Harmer aims to show that women were key actors in Chile, although many were "offstage" (1). She analyzes the era's prevalent gendered notions of a woman's role as primarily motherhood, while also showing how Beatriz and many other women resisted restricting themselves to that role and pushed to be included in all aspects of the political struggle, including taking up arms.

Like others of her generation, Beatriz was raised in an environment of middle-class privilege, but she dedicated her life to combating poverty, inequality, and injustice, first through her medical practice and then through her political work. Beatriz, like her father, was a staunch defender of the Cuban Revolution. Harmer explains that there was worldwide sympathy for the Cuban Revolution after 1959, extending to the centrist Christian Democrats in Chile (36). Beatriz was part of an anti-imperialist cohort of Latin American youth that admired the Cuban model and believed that armed struggle was inevitable and necessary. But Beatriz was limited by--as she also challenged--gender roles and expectations, as well as her complicated status as the daughter of a celebrated political leader who believed in a democratic, constitutional road to socialism. Beatriz straddled two worlds in the 1960s, between her participation in the institutional politics of the Socialist Party and her clandestine involvement with a guerrilla movement in Bolivia (chapter 5). She gravitated toward the radical wing of the Socialist Party and the newly formed Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (Revolutionary Left Movement). Events in Chile and worldwide convinced her and others that powerful elites would never accept a peaceful transition to socialism. At the same time, Beatriz respected her father and worked on his campaigns, remaining loyal and refraining from publicly challenging him (e.g., 152-54).

Harmer...