Pinochet and Me.

• Author: Bybee, Roger
• Position: Book - Brief Article

Pinochet and Me by Marc Cooper Verso. 143 pages. $22.00.

For Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, the democratic socialist government of Chilean president Salvador Allende was the ultimate threat of a good example. Allende's 1970 election meant a transfer of resources to poor and working people within an unimpeachably democratic framework. A horrified U.S. government helped to ignite the military coup of September 11, 1973, producing mass slaughters, torture, book burnings, and the imposition of policies nakedly serving Chilean and U.S. elites.

Marc Cooper, who was then Allende's twenty-one-year-old translator, takes the reader from...