Diccionario histórico de la dictadura cívico-militar en Chile

This reference work provides an extensive compendium of annotated entries relevant to the Augusto Pinochet Ugarte dictatorship (1973–90) and the postdictatorship period through 2010. José Del Pozo divides the dictionary entries into nine chapters, organized thematically to include structures of power (people, institutions, and ideologies), the economy, society and culture, places and methods of repression, repressive structures, people whom the dictatorship killed, regime opponents who survived, international relations during the dictatorship, and key people and events of 1990–2010. In addition to people, places, and events, the entries include themes, organizations, and concepts (e.g., “the novel and dictatorship,” “theater and resistance”). The dictionary also includes a useful bibliography, an index, a chronology, a glossary of abbreviations, and interpretive essays.The book begins with an interpretive essay by the historian Luis Corvalán Márquez that describes several of the dictatorship's best-known characteristics, including its hybrid civilian-military composition, its human rights abuses, its neoliberal economic project, its political project (“protected democracy”), its attempts to co-opt the poor and working classes, and the transitional period of the 1980s through 1990. The interpretive essay does not address to any significant extent the postdictatorship period of 1990–2010, which leaves the last segment of dictionary entries without a supporting explanation in this introductory overview. However, Del Pozo begins each subsequent chapter with clear and concise introductory essays that weave the chapters into a coherent whole and incorporate the 1990–2010 period.An important contribution of the historical dictionary is its emphasis on the hybrid civilian-military nature of the regime. This is common knowledge in Chile but is often overlooked abroad, where the regime is still often characterized as a military dictatorship. The dictionary's collection of entries includes military and civilian actors, suggesting the breadth and depth of civilian involvement in the dictatorship's governmental structures and activities and providing a partial mapping of those who reaped the benefits thereof. Another important contribution is Del Pozo's treatment of regime opponents. Del Pozo disaggregates those who fell prey to the dictatorship's violence into those who died in resistance at the hands of state security forces and those who died under other, also atrocious circumstances, underscoring the multifaceted nature of the repression. Furthermore, Del Pozo's decision to foreground, in both chapters on the opposition, the lives—not only the deaths—of antiregime actors illuminates the complexity and humanity of the opposition. So too does his decision to include people involved in clandestine organizations and armed struggle alongside those involved in the less controversial public and unarmed resistance.Del Pozo's Diccionario histórico de la dictadura cívico-militar en Chile is a user-friendly, carefully curated reference work appropriate for specialists, historians in general, students, and general audiences interested in researching the history of the dictatorship and its legacies

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