The Pinochet Effect


Book Description

What Pinochet's arrest has taught us about transnational justice and international jurisdiction.




The Pinochet File


Book Description

Revised and updated: the definitive primary-source history of US involvement in General Pinochet’s Chilean coup—“the evidence is overwhelming” (The New Yorker). Published to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of General Augusto Pinochet’s infamous September 11, 1973, military coup in Chile, this updated edition of The Pinochet File reveals the shocking, formerly secret record of the US government’s complicity with atrocity in a foreign country. The book now completes the file on Pinochet’s story, detailing his multiple indictments between 2004 and his death on December 10, 2006, including the Riggs Bank scandal that revealed how the dictator had illegally squirreled away over $26 million in ill-begotten wealth in secret American bank accounts. When it was first released in hardcover, The Pinochet File contributed to the international campaign to hold Pinochet accountable for murder, torture, and terrorism. A new afterword tells the extraordinary story of Henry Kissinger’s attempt to undercut the book’s reception—efforts that generated a major scandal that led to a high-level resignation at the Council on Foreign Relations, illustrating the continued ability of the book to speak truth to power. “The Pinochet File should be considered the long awaited book of record on U.S. intervention in Chile . . . A crisp compelling narrative, almost a political thriller.” —Los Angeles Times




Exorcising Terror


Book Description

'This is an excellent, quick and powerful read, accessible to everyone' Publishers WeeklyOn October 16th, 1998, the world awoke to amazing news: General Augusto Pinochet, Chile's former dictator, had been arrested by Scotland Yard in England & was awaiting extradition to Spain on charges of torture & genocide. What ensued became one of the most important human rights trials of the last fifty years: for the first time in the twentieth century, a former Head of State was being judged by a foreign court.Renowned author Ariel Dorfman, obsessed for twenty-five years with the malignant shadow General Pinochet cast upon Chile & the world, followed every twist & turn of the four year trial in Great Britain, Spain & Chile as well as in the U.S., the country that had created Pinochet. Told as a suspense thriller, filled with court-room drama & sudden reversals of fortune, the book at the same time addresses some of today's most burning issues, made all the more urgent after the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001. What are the limits of national sovereignty in a globalizing world? How does an ever more interconnected world judge crimes committed against humanity? What role do memory & pain & the rights of the survivors play in this struggle for a new system of justice? But above all, the author, by listening carefully to the voices of Pinochet's many victims, explores how can we purge ourselves of terror & fear once we have been traumatized, and asks if we can build peace & reconciliation without facing a turbulent & perverse past.From Dorfman's emotional reconstitution of the many phases of Pinochet's trial, both in London & in Santiago, there slowly emerges a picture of a victory, both for the people of Chile & for people the world over, serving as a prelude to the prosecution of other Heads of State - such as Milosevic in The Hague - but as a warning to many powerful men around the world - like Henry Kissinger - who felt they would never be held accountable for sufferings inflicted on faraway civilians.




Civil Obedience


Book Description

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.




The Pinochet Effect


Book Description

The 1998 arrest of General Augusto Pinochet in London and subsequent extradition proceedings sent an electrifying wave through the international community. This legal precedent for bringing a former head of state to trial outside his home country signaled that neither the immunity of a former head of state nor legal amnesties at home could shield participants in the crimes of military governments. It also allowed victims of torture and crimes against humanity to hope that their tormentors might be brought to justice. In this meticulously researched volume, Naomi Roht-Arriaza examines the implications of the litigation against members of the Chilean and Argentine military governments and traces their effects through similar cases in Latin American and Europe. Roht-Arriaza discusses the difficulties in bringing violators of human rights to justice at home, and considers the role of transitional justice in transnational prosecutions and investigations in the national courts of countries other than those where the crimes took place. She traces the roots of the landmark Pinochet case and follows its development and those of related cases, through Spain, the United Kingdom, elsewhere in Europe, and then through Chile, Argentina, Mexico, and the United States. She situates these transnational cases within the context of an emergent International Criminal Court, as well as the effectiveness of international law and of the lawyers, judges, and activists working together across continents to make a new legal paradigm a reality. Interviews and observations help to contextualize and dramatize these compelling cases. These cases have tremendous ramifications for the prospect of universal jurisdiction and will continue to resonate for years to come. Roht-Arriaza's deft navigation of these complicated legal proceedings elucidates the paradigm shift underlying this prosecution as well as the traction gained by advocacy networks promoting universal jurisdiction in recent decades.




Pinochet


Book Description

Near midnight on October 16, 1998, officers of Scotland Yard entered the London hospital room of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and arrested him on charges of torturing and murdering Spanish citizens. The arrest sent shockwaves around the world, delighting his detractors and the families of his regime's victims, and dismaying his supporters, including Margaret Thatcher. It marked the first time a former head of state had been detained outside his own country on charges of crimes against humanity, and thus signaled a clear warning to former dictators and heads of abusive regimes. Through interviews, eyewitness accounts, and new sources, veteran journalist Hugh O'Shaughnessy here sifts through the General's personal life, rise to power, and arrest and internment. In clear, unforgiving prose, Pinochet: The Politics of Torture tells the riveting story of legal intrigue behind the search for justice.




The Pinochet Case


Book Description

The 1998 arrest of Senator Augusto Pinochet in London, on the orders of a Spanish judge seeking his extradition for human rights crimes, made headlines all over the world. Part of a wider, ongoing attempt by human rights activists and lawyers to prosecute the crimes of Latin American military regimes, the case has important implications for national and international law and for politics, diplomacy and democracy. This book brings together political scientists and lawyers from Latin America, the United States, Spain and the UK to analyse the political and historical context of the case, its progress through the courts in the UK and Chile, its handling by national governments, and its political and legal implications, both national and international.




Pinochet and Me


Book Description

Marc Cooper recalls his escape from the tightening grip of the Pinochet junta and his subsequent return visits to a country that is still groping towards democratic recovery.




Ways of Going Home


Book Description

Alejandro Zambra's Ways of Going Home begins with an earthquake, seen through the eyes of an unnamed nine-year-old boy who lives in an undistinguished middleclass housing development in a suburb of Santiago, Chile. When the neighbors camp out overnight, the protagonist gets his first glimpse of Claudia, an older girl who asks him to spy on her uncle Raúl. In the second section, the protagonist is the writer of the story begun in the first section. His father is a man of few words who claims to be apolitical but who quietly sympathized—to what degree, the author isn't sure—with the Pinochet regime. His reflections on the progress of the novel and on his own life—which is strikingly similar to the life of his novel's protagonist—expose the raw suture of fiction and reality. Ways of Going Home switches between author and character, past and present, reflecting with melancholy and rage on the history of a nation and on a generation born too late—the generation which, as the author-narrator puts it, learned to read and write while their parents became accomplices or victims. It is the most personal novel to date from Zambra, the most important Chilean author since Roberto Bolaño.




Authoritarianism and the Elite Origins of Democracy


Book Description

This book argues that - in terms of institutional design, the allocation of power and privilege, and the lived experiences of citizens - democracy often does not restart the political game after displacing authoritarianism. Democratic institutions are frequently designed by the outgoing authoritarian regime to shield incumbent elites from the rule of law and give them an unfair advantage over politics and the economy after democratization. Authoritarianism and the Elite Origins of Democracy systematically documents and analyzes the constitutional tools that outgoing authoritarian elites use to accomplish these ends, such as electoral system design, legislative appointments, federalism, legal immunities, constitutional tribunal design, and supermajority thresholds for change. The study provides wide-ranging evidence for these claims using data that spans the globe and dates from 1800 to the present. Albertus and Menaldo also conduct detailed case studies of Chile and Sweden. In doing so, they explain why some democracies successfully overhaul their elite-biased constitutions for more egalitarian social contracts.