Paul E. Sigmund, author of The Overthrow of Allende and the Politics of Chile, 1964-1976, studied Chile for more than a decade. He lived there and taught there. He combines scholarly research with firsthand experience to give the reader a detailed accounting of Allende's years in power, the Frei government that went before, the coup that ended it, and the Pinochet government that followed Allende.
Dr. Sigmund scrutinizes every aspect of Chilean government, society, politics, economics, and international relations. He carefully examines the role of the military and the voting behavior of different groups in the elections leading up to the coup. In the last section of the book he discusses Pinochet's government, including an analysis of this entire Chilean experience with implications for other nations.
The point of view is that of a historian, political scientist and scholar. Sigmund is Professor of Politics at Princeton University. He has authored several books on Latin America, political theory, and developing nations. Sigmund calls himself a Chile watcher. He began this book before the Allende coup, while teaching in Santiago under the auspices of the Rockefeller foundation. He had no preestablished thesis in mind, but the tragic overthrow of Allende in 1973 led him to shift the emphasis of his work to a more direct analysis of the distant and proximate causes of the coup. His original training was in political philosophy. This work, essentially narrative, does include interpretation of happenings and ideas that led to them (p. xi).
Sigmund describes the social context in Chile in 1960. About 35 percent of the population belonged to the middle or upper social class, mostly living in Santiago or Valparaiso. Many identified with the middle class, even if their incomes did not justify membership. People were chronically dissatisfied. The national literacy rate was 84 percent. The disparity of incomes between ...