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Apologists for Terror

The Chilean junta and the U.S. press

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 September 2018

John Pollock  and
Torry Dickinson
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Extract

It is difficult to evaluate a document intended to justify the slaughter and summary imprisonment of tens of thousands of citizens of what was one of the world's most vibrant democracies. It is hard to be impartial toward a regime that commandeered air raids on the presidential palace, oversaw the wholesale burning of books, bookstores and publishing houses, executed citizens whose crime was the possession of leftist literature and dismantled one of the most distinguished university systems in Latin America, replacing rectors with military officers and abolishing sociology and journalism departments. Libro Blanco, the Chilean junta's apologia for last year's coup, is issued by men who have installed a reign of terror with the professed purpose of purging the country of an entire political sector.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Worldview , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , March 1974 , pp. 27 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1974

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References

page 28 Note • Refer to E. Bradford Burns, “Reform Gunned Down: True Verdict on Allende,” The Nation (October 29, 1973); John Barnes, “Slaughterhouse in Santiago,” Newsweek (October 8); Laurence Birns, “The Death of Chile,” The New York Review of Books (November 1); Laurence Birns, “Requiem for Chile: La Moneda Is Burning,” The Village Voice (September 20); Lawrence Stern, “Chile: The Lesson,” The Progressive (November); and Laurence Birns, “Chile: A Bloody Fall,” Worldview (November).

page 28 Note •• See Gary MacEoin's forthcoming No Peaceful Way: Chile's Struggle for Dignity (Sheed & Ward).

page 29 Note • Photocopies of news clippings on Chile and other Latin American countries from these papers are available from the monthly Information Service on Latin America, P.O. Box 4267, Berkeley, Calif. 94704.

page 30 Note • Estimates of the size of the middle classes in Chile are based on interviews on October 4 and October 6, 1973, with, respectively, James Petras, author of Politics and Social Forces in Chilean Development (1969) and Dale Johnson, editor of The Chilean Road to Socialism (1973).

page 32 Note • For discussion of several themes in U.S. press reporting on Chile see John Pollock, “Reporting on Chile: What the Press Leaves Out,” The Nation (January 29, 1973); Pollock with David Eisenhower, “The New Cold War in Latin America: The U.S. Press and Chile,” in The Chilean Road to Socialism; with Torry Dickinson and Joseph Somma, “Did Eichmann Have a Sense of Humor? The New York Times and Militarism in Chile,” LASA Newsletter (December, 1973). See also Jerry W. Knudson, “Allende Falls, the Press Reacts,” Masthead (January, 1974); Pat Chain, “Press Coverage of the Chilean Coup: The Information Cap,” CALA Newsletter (October, 1973); Joseph P. Lyford, “The ‘Times’ and Latin America,” Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, 1962; and Laurence Birns, “Chile in the ‘Wall Street Journal,'” The Nation (December 3, 1973).