Ariel Dorfman is the author of Death and the Maiden. His new novel, The Suicide Museum, which deals with the death of Salvador Allende, will be published in 2023.
The fight over a memorial to my friend Carlos Berger and other victims of the Caravan of Death reveals that there are still many in Chile who resist the lessons of our country’s tragic past.
Chilean President Gabriel Boric and Spanish Prime Minster Pedro Sanchez both find themselves besieged by a virulent resurgence of the same right-wing movements that demolished democracy in Chile.
Chile has a new leader and a bright future. But a country in which 44 percent of the electorate voted for an admirer of Pinochet is in need of as many obstacles to forgetting as possible.
A half-century after it fed the Pinochet regime’s bonfire of heretical books, a celebrated “handbook of decolonization” has new relevance to a country on the brink of a momentous choice.