The Dictator’s Shadow: Life Under Augusto Pinochet

Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s reign (1973–1990) still resonates for its brutality and its role in pioneering controversial free-market development policies. This thoughtful retrospective explores that history from a unique perspective. Muñoz, an official in the Allende government overthrown by Pinochet in 1973, found himself vainly confronting the coup with a revolver and a fistful of dynamite, dodging arrest while friends disappeared into the junta’s dungeons. In the 1980s he became a leader of the moderate left opposition. His first-hand account of the political movement that, with crucial help from abroad, forced Pinochet from power in 1990, is both shrewd and inspiring. Muñoz, who is now Chile’s ambassador to the U.N., is measured in his condemnation of the dictatorship and cognizant of the unstable political environment that formed it. He gives the regime’s economic program mixed reviews, on the one hand crediting it with reinvigorating Chile’s economy while admitting that it has left most Chileans worse off. He paints Pinochet as a complex character—a canny operator, a “man of limited intellect” and an ideological lightning rod. Combining sharp historical analysis with telling personal recollections, this is an excellent assessment of a tyrant and his legacy. Photos. (Sept.)