Readers will find much information and some thoughtful conclusions on recent Chilean events once they have dispensed with the early pages of this work. There are too many shortcomings in part one (pp. 3-52) to list in a review. However, the guidebook approach to history, romantic views of Chilean democracy, and apparent disregard for much recent scholarship do merit mention. These will disappoint specialists. Nonspecialists will be no closer to understanding Chile’s political disintegration.
Alexander is at his best dissecting the political system in recent times. His narrative of political fission and fusion (pp. 20-38, 43-50, 58-77) is informative. Yet here, too, the myth of a “Chile that never was” dominates. The same author who praises the content as well as the form of Chilean democracy and the social and economic policies it generated shows conclusively just how dogmatic, fractious, and self-destructive were the component parts of the political system.
The assessment of Frei and the Christian Democrats (part two, pp. 53-128) as primary precipitators of Chile’s recent troubles may be a bit harsh. Errors of judgment made it impossible for them to continue in office, and their programs exacerbated ideological polarization. Well and good. But the reader is left to infer that Christian Democrats somehow might have provided effective solutions for Chile’s problems in the 1970s. This is at best conjectural.
Most of the book deals with the Salvador Allende administration (part three, pp. 31-328), the golpe of 1973 and its aftermath (part four, pp. 331-448). Treatment of the former is superior to that of the latter. A mass of data (and prose) is employed to chronicle the Allende years and describe early policies of the Augusto Pinochet regime. While Alexander notes the involvement of all participants, both domestic and foreign, in the undoing of Allende, he clearly stands with those who consider endemic factors more significant in the golpe. For the most part, however, he repeats and summarizes arguments found elsewhere.
Some will say that this book whitewashes U.S. policy in Chile. Others will view it as a cool, level-headed appraisal of recent events. These will be closer to the truth, but they can take little comfort in these pages, for they provide little new evidence to support the hypothesis stated at the outset: that Chile had “a kind of society and quality of life that are rare in the world,” and that their disappearance—the Tragedy of the book’s title—and the destruction of Chilean democracy means “the whole world was the loser” (p. ix).
