Hite, K: When the Romance Ended - Leaders of the Chilean Lef: Leaders of the Chilean Left, 1968-1998

Katherine Hite

The unanticipated arrest of General Augusto Pinochet in London on October 16, 1998 served to punctuate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the most cataclysmic event in Chilean history -- a violent coup d'etat that abruptly ended decades of democratic rule. A steadily increasing series of explorations, interviews, and images in the popular press and media has begun to unearth the horrors of the dictatorship and its defenders and to reevaluate the stories of the democratically elected Allendists the coup had brutally purged.

With great talent and passion, Katherine Hite's outstanding book unveils what has and has not changed in the identity of the Chilean left and the self-perception of its leaders. Based on intensive interviews of individuals in leadership positions in government or in exile for the past three decades, this book contributes an innovative approach that greatly enhances our understanding of contemporary Chilean politics--and it does so while shedding light on the trials and tribulations facing the left everywhere. -- Felipe Aguero, author of Soldiers, Civilians, and Democracy: Post-Franco Spain in Comparative Perspective Representative figures of Chile's political class sit for a portrait that illuminates much about their society's conflicted past and its uneasy coexistence with the present. With a sure touch Hite limns leaders from different left traditions against a background of forty years of history. Her well-informed insights about the values that influenced them and the ways they shaped political life make this a significant contribution to scholarship on political leadership, democratic transitions, and historical memory. A generous sampling of her in-depth interviews allows the reader to enter the ambiguities of Chile's dense lived experience. -- Alexander Wilde, representative for the Andean Region and Southern Cone, Ford Foundation A highly original work that brings together literatures on identity, ideology, and political change. Written with both precision and passion, it enlivens our thinking about elites and educates us about the role of leadership in Chilean democracy. -- Nancy Bermeo, Princeton University

1. Interpreting Political Identity2. Chile's Revolutionary Generation
3. The Binds and Bonds of Party Loyalty
4. Personal Loyalists and the Meaning of Allendismo
5. Exile and the Thinkers
6. The Return: Political Entrepreneurs and the Chilean Transition
Conclusion: Political Identity, Post-Authoritarianism of the 1990s, and the Politics of the Possible