Irruptions of Memory: Expressive Politics in Chile's Transition to Democracy

Even before Augusto Pinochet was arrested in London in October 1998, the past hung heavily over Chile's distinctive transition to democracy. This was apparent during the previous year in the attention given to its conflictive recent history in television and radio talk shows and in newspaper and magazine articles. Since the return to elected rule in 1990, volumes on the dictatorship and the Popular Unity government were staples in Santiago bookstores. With the approach of the 25th anniversary of the 1973 military coup, what had been a steady stream of publication turned into a torrent of personal and political memoirs, extended essays, political journalism, and scholarly studies evoking the country's divided historical memory.