This is an interesting book that describes and analyzes the foreign policy of the Popular Unity government in Chile from 1970 to 1973, and its interaction with the international system. Fermandois reviews the general principles and goals that guided Popular Unity’s diplomacy, and he examines the implementation of its foreign policy. He provides a detailed account of diplomatic activities between Chile and four countries or groups of countries: Cuba and the Soviet bloc, the United States, Latin America, and Western Europe. In Fermandois’s view, the Marxist ideology of Popular Unity, and its paradigms—the Soviet Union and especially Cuba—provide a vital clue for understanding not only its domestic policies but its foreign policy as well. The pragmatic dimension of its foreign policy is mentioned and taken into consideration but considered less important than the former. The author’s concern for ideology explains why he chose a methodological approach that emphasizes the relevance of analyzing Popular Unity’s rhetoric. This emphasis causes Fermandois to rely heavily on a variety of public sources, particularly the press, to compose his account and to support his interpretation of the period. According to him, Cuba and the Soviet Union were at least as involved as the United States in the Chilean situation; thus both “interventions” would balance and cancel each other, although he does not provide solid evidence to support this claim. The author further suggests the U.S. role during those years has been blown out of proportion and that even the material presented during the Senate hearings might have exaggerated the degree of U.S. involvement in Chilean politics.
In general Fermandois is sympathetic to the United States, and he argues at length to dismiss most of the allegations about its involvement in the failure and overthrow of the Popular Unity government. In historiographical terms, the book attempts to deal with the thorny problem of the Allende years from a clearly conservative perspective expressed in Fermandois’s world view and his value judgments of this period. The book is easy to read and understand, but it sorely lacks a general conclusion. The footnotes provide abundant references to primary sources and an extensive and useful bibliography.
