September 11, 1973: Chilean military forces under General Augusto Pinochet overthrew the elected government of President Salvador Allende, bombing the presidential palace with the president inside. Minister of Mining Sergio Bitar was forcibly detained along with other members of the Allende cabinet and confined on bleak, frigid Dawson Island in the Magellan Straits. Prisoner of Pinochet is the gripping first-person chronicle of Bitar's year as a political prisoner before being expelled from Chile; a poignant narrative of men held captive together in a labor camp under harsh conditions, only able to guess at their eventual fate; and an insightful memoir of the momentous events of the early 1970s that led to seventeen years of bloody authoritarian rule in Chile. Available in English for the first time, this edition includes maps and photos from the 1970s and contextual notes by historian Peter Winn.

A gripping account of daily life as a political prisoner by a former Chilean cabinet minister, offering personal insight into the political climate and historical events of 1970s Chile under military dictator Augusto Pinochet.

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.

This text studies the applications of psychotherapeutic principles and techniques beyond consulting and into the larger world of political and social reality. The volume focuses on incarcerated political and social reality. The volume focuses on incarcerated political prisoners in Pinochet's Chile- people who have been kidnapped off the streets, stolen from their families and communities, denied due process of law, and tortured and abused. Yet, they exhibit hope and courage to extraordinary degrees. Beyond the ordeals of the prisoners, there is the plight of the families left behind who must deal with poverty, oppression and fear for missing loved ones. They too exhibit hope and courage beyond the ordinary. It is the author's stated purpose to understand and reveal to the reader the psycho- and social dynamics that allow families to be the front line of resistance against state sponsored torture and oppression. The volume is thus an unusual and valuable contribution to the study of family systems under extreme duress. Moreover, the volume demonstrates not only the far-reaching possibilities that exist when psychotherapeutic techniques and knowledge are used to further the goals of a political state.

Verdugo is a journalist whose father was tortured to death by the Pinochet regime. This is her account of the executions without trial of 75 political prisoners in five Chilean cities, carried out by a military team later called the "Caravan of Death" that was sent out following Pinochet's 1973 coup. Originally published in 1989 as Caso Arellano: los zarpazos del puma, the book is considered one of the key documents that led to Pinochet's arrest in London in 1998. This first English-language edition includes an epilogue describing Chile's high-profile judicial hearings on the killings, through Pinochet's January 2001 indictment for planning and covering them up. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

In October 1998, the erstwhile Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet was arrested in London, charged with crimes against humanity by a Spanish magistrate. But over the 16 months that Pinochet was detained, intriguing questions went unanswered about his close ties with Britain. Why was Lady Thatcher so keen to defend the General? And why was Tony Blair's usually cautious government prepared to have him arrested? As Andy Beckett uncovers, the answers reside deep within the long and shadowy history of relations between Britain and Chile. 'An outstanding achievement, and mesmerically readable . . . Beckett has surely written one of the best political travelogues of the year.' Sunday Times 'I am stirred and astonished at [Andy Beckett's] brilliance, and by the imaginative sympathy with which he rekindles the arguments and emotions of a period he never knew.' Christopher Hitchens, London Review of Books

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.

Renowned author Ariel Dorfman, obsessed for twenty-five years with the malignant shadow General Pinochet cast upon Chile and the world, followed every twist and turn of the four year old trial in Great Britain, Spain and Chile as well as in the U.S., the country that had created Pinochet. Told as a suspense thriller, filled with court-room drama and 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 and pain and 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 and fear once we have been traumatized, and asks if we can build peace and reconciliation without facing a turbulent and perverse past.

Augusto Pinochet was the most important Third World dictator of the Cold War, and perhaps the most ruthless. In The Dictator's Shadow, United Nations Ambassador Heraldo Munoz takes advantage of his unmatched set of perspectives -- as a former revolutionary who fought the Pinochet regime, as a respected scholar, and as a diplomat -- to tell what this extraordinary figure meant to Chile, the United States, and the world. Pinochet's American backers saw his regime as a bulwark against Communism; his nation was a testing ground for U.S.-inspired economic theories. Countries desiring World Bank support were told to emulate Pinochet's free-market policies, and Chile's government pension even inspired President George W. Bush's plan to privatize Social Security. The other baggage -- the assassinations, tortures, people thrown out of airplanes, mass murders of political prisoners -- was simply the price to be paid for building a modern state. But the questions raised by Pinochet's rule still remain: Are such dictators somehow necessary? Horrifying but also inspiring, The Dictator's Shadow is a unique tale of how geopolitical rivalries can profoundly affect everyday life.