what's new in neoliberalism? a review of recent scholarship on chile

Reference Cited

Dalton, Roque

1972 Miguel Marmol: Los sucesos

de 1932. San Jos e, Costa Rica:

Editorial Universidad Cen-

troamericana.

What’s New in Neoliberalism? A Review

of Recent Scholarship on Chile.

Edward Murphy, Michigan State

University

Battling for Hearts and Minds: Memory

Struggles in Pinochet’s Chile, 1973–

1988. Steve J. Stern, Durham: Duke

University Press, 2006, 538 pp.

Salt in the Sand: Memory, Violence and

the Nation-State in Chile, 1890 to the

Present. Lessie Jo Frazier, Durham: Duke

University Press, 2007, 388 pp.

Neoliberal Economics, Democratic

Transition, and Mapuche Demands for

Rights in Chile. Diane Haughney, Gain-

seville: University Press of Florida, 2006,

310 pp.

Chile in Transition: The Poetics and

Politics of Memory. Michael J. Lazzara,

Gainesville: University Press of Florida,

2006, 199 pp.

Lines in the Sand: Nationalism and

Identity on the Peruvian-Chilean Fron-

tier. William E. Skuban, Albuquerque:

University of New Mexico Press, 2007,

314 pp.

Pablo Neruda once referred to Chile as a

‘‘remote land’’ with a ‘‘slender waist’’

(1994:215). Yet this small, Pacific nation

has long captivated international attention

as an emblem and testing ground for

national political projects. Shortly after

independence, Chileans forged a strong

central state, a development that distin-

guished their country from most of Latin

America at the time. During the late nine-

teenth and early 20th centuries, Chileans

achieved international fame as ‘‘the

English of South America,’’ a term that

celebrated industry and order, character-

istics that matched the period’s liberal

ethos. With the consolidation of a state-

led development project during the 1930s

and 1940s, popular front governments

integrated centrist and leftist political pro-

jects, a model of both reform and the

Comintern’s World War II strategy of

incorporating Communist parties into

liberal polities. Eventually, Chile’s project

of state-led development resulted in the

1970 presidential election of Salvador

Allende, an event that galvanized people

around the world committed to a legal and

democratic path to Socialism.

On September 11, 1973, a military

junta overthrew Allende’s government

and established a 17-year dictatorship

dominated by Augusto Pinochet. The mil-

itary implemented Latin America’s first

and most radical experiment in neoliber-

alism, a paradigm that has remained lar-

gely in place during the postdictatorship

democracy despite the ruling center-left

coalition’s stated commitment to achieve

growth with equity. During the heyday of

the 1990s’ ‘‘Washington Consensus,’’ Chile

achieved iconic status as a model for mar-

ket reform and government efficiency.

Even as many Latin American govern-

Book Reviews 499

ments have recently distanced themselves

from the ‘‘consensus,’’ Chile nevertheless

remains a symbol of neoliberal possibility,

particularly in development and financial

circles.

This sketch highlights two important

characteristics of Chile’s political culture.

First, the state has long produced distinct

ideological projects that have served as

lightning rods for conflict and promise.

Second, these provide a clearly demar-

cated, conventional timeline of Chilean

history, one that has resonance with

broader developments in Latin America

and, to a lesser extent, the world. Juxta-

posing these two characteristics under-

scores a less obvious point: that the

symbols, institutions, and effects of a

strong central state have provided critical

conditions of possibility for Chile’s diverse

political projects and for their peculiar

power to garner international attention.

This makes it clear that there have been

important continuities in state formation

amidst the ruptures of Chilean history.

Nonetheless, Chilean analysts have placed

little attention on continuity, particularly

in terms of neoliberalism. Fortunately, the

books under review here begin to move in

this direction, providing promising ave-

nues for understanding better the nature

of Chile’s present circumstances.

The United States backed coup and

its aftermath gave rise to radical shifts in

Chilean history, many of which parallel

neoliberal experiences elsewhere. As is

now well-documented, Pinochet’s mili-

tary dictatorship was brutal, as ‘‘national

security state’’ institutions took part in

mass killings, disappearances, torture,

blacklists, and exile. This violence enabled

the establishment of neoliberalism, as the

dictatorship’s agents targeted the sectors of

society most opposed to market reforms.

Free to work without major opposition,

Chile’s ‘‘reformers’’ dismantled import-

substitution industrialization, sold off

the vast majority of nationalized indus-

tries, slashed welfare state institutions, and

liberalized capital markets and banking.

Wealth became more concentrated, Chile

underwent a process of deindustrializa-

tion, and economic growth, while often

spectacular, was highly uneven. Gover-

nance, moreover, became increasingly

technocratic in style, and the repressive

environment and the inequitable diffusion

of consumer goods heightened atomiza-

tion and individualism.

The secondary literature on Chile and

on neoliberalism more broadly has shed

considerable light on these intense changes.

Chile, moreover, has played a crucial role in

the spread of neoliberal hegemony across

much of the globe (see, e.g., Harvey 2003;

Grandin 2006; Coronil 2007). This neolib-

eral consolidation included intense forms

of violence. But Chile also helped to legit-

imize neoliberalism through less coercive

means, acting as a testing ground and

model for free market policies elsewhere.

Yet despite these insights, questions

remain about the precise nature of the

shifts that have occurred under neoliber-

alism and of the contradictions, conflicts,

and schisms that continue to trouble

Chilean society. The books reviewed here

provide historical specificity to Chile’s

contemporary situation and point to the

importance of legacies from both the dic-

tatorship and the deeper past. For the most

part, the approaches the authors have

adopted are well suited for this task. Draw-

ing on literatures on state formation,

memory, nationalism, violence, and polit-

ical and social rights, the works tend to

5 0 0 J O U R N A L O F L A T I N A M E R I C A N A N D C A R I B B E A N A N T H R O P O L O G Y

reflect a suspicion of clear origins and

definitive watersheds that marks schol-

arship produced in the wake of posts-

tructuralism and postcolonialism. And

even as the texts anchor their narratives

within the radical breaks embedded in

Chile’s conventional timeline, they cannot

escape the importance of legacies from

Chilean history. Such perspectives

point ultimately to more subtle and re-

vealing understandings of neoliberalism

itself.

In Neoliberal Economics, Democratic

Transition, and Mapuche Demands for

Rights in Chile, Diane Haughney analyzes

a long-term continuity in Chilean state

formation within the specific context of

the postdictatorship period. A political

scientist, Haughney explores how a cen-

tral presumption of Chilean governing

structures is that of a ‘‘unitary and homo-

genous nation-state’’ (2006:8). Haughney

demonstrates persuasively that this pre-

sumption remains a crucial obstacle facing

the Mapuche, Chile’s largest indigenous

group, as they have sought to receive

political recognition as a community

with distinct customs and land tenure

practices. In analyzing policies toward

the Mapuche, Haughney reveals that the

state is far from a unified and impartial

actor, even as this belief helps animate its

power.1 Haughney brilliantly lays bare the

web of private interests and state institu-

tional frameworks behind land policy and

resource extraction in the areas of South-

Central Chile where many of the Mapuche

still live.

Haughney focuses on hydroelectric

power and timber, the two dominant in-

dustries in the region. While the expansion

of these industries has put relentless

pressure on Mapuche lands, it has also

contributed to Chile’s broad economic

expansion, one of the central goals of the

Concertacion, the center–left coalition in

power since 1990.2 Government officials,

moreover, have given special priority

to hydroelectric power for reasons of

‘‘national security,’’ since it is one of the

few sources of electricity produced in

national territory (2006:125).

But if these industries’ growth has ful-

filled central goals of the Concertacion,

it has also led to tensions and contra-

dictions. The Concertacion officially

supports indigenous rights and the devel-

opment of tougher environmental stan-

dards. It has passed landmark legislation

that includes the creation of such agencies

as the National Corporation for Indige-

nous Development (CONADI). Haughney

demonstrates, however, that liberal princi-

ples of private property and individual

rights dominate the CONADI’s mandate

(2006:135–9). Moreover, in cases where

the CONADI has released reports in favor

of Mapuche claims, it has been relatively

powerless to follow through on its recom-

mendations. Generally speaking, the tight

links between multinational corporations,

Chilean economic interests, and key fig-

ures in the Concertacion have had more

weight in decision making processes.

Haughney productively points out

that the specific circumstances facing the

Mapuche in the postdictatorship democ-

racy are indicative of dilemmas central to

liberal governance. To begin, there is the

basic difficulty of matching liberty, equal-

ity of opportunity, and the right to polit-

ical participation with the inequities

created by economic liberalism. The sta-

tus of the Mapuche complicates matters

further, as it raises the question of whether

or not collective rights can be valued over

Book Reviews 501

individual ones. As Haughney describes it,

this has been a tension in state policy since

the conquest of the Mapuche in the 1880s.

Following their defeat, the Chilean state

placed Mapuche into reducciones, small

plots of land, often of poor quality. While

the reducciones led frequently to the im-

poverishment of the Mapuche, they also

had a collective, protected status that pro-

hibited their sale to non-Mapuche and

helped facilitate indigenous activism.

Eventually, usurpation and legislation

that permitted the individual sale of plots

in reducciones undercut the Mapuche lands’

protected status. Yet the question of

what kind of collective rights to grant the

Mapuche persisted, re-emerging with

particular vigor in the postdictatorship

democracy.

These issues are clearly of great

personal interest to Haughney. She spent

eight years in Chile as a researcher and

activist and she notes occasionally that she

was present at significant protests, meet-

ings, and press conferences. Yet despite her

knowledge and experience, Haughney of-

ten fails to paint an intimate and engaging

portrait of her subjects. Instead, her prose

at times has the feel of a legal brief (e.g.,

2006:128). This style can serve her well,

particularly when she demonstrates the

contradictions embedded in the stances

taken by business interests and govern-

ment bureaucracies.

At other times, however, Haughney’s

commitment can lead her into playing

games of the state, making it difficult for

her to develop an analytically independent

voice. In discussing the resurgence of

Mapuche activism, Haughney argues that

‘‘ethnic identity is not ‘invented,’ but

revalued by the members of the culture’’

(2006:190). Interpretive social scientists

generally agree that traditions are inven-

tions and that ethnic identity is histori-

cally and linguistically constructed. But

Haughney refuses to engage with such per-

spectives. Perhaps this refusal is born of

her commitment to the Mapuche cause: to

assert an ‘invented’ or ‘constructed’ ethnic

identity might place Mapuche in danger,

undermining their claims to authenticity

and their hopes of receiving legal protec-

tions.

While Haughney should be concerned

about this, she nevertheless misses the

point behind arguing that ethnic identity

is invented. She laments the fact that the

Mapuche who live in cities, some two-

thirds of the population (2006:30), have

often found it difficult to be included in

collective claims. Their status as urban

largely disqualifies them, supposedly dem-

onstrating that they lack a connection to

their ancestral homelands. But given the

pressures that capitalist expansion and

state policies have placed on the Mapuche,

it is not surprising that they have had

to reinvent themselves in urban settings.

Yet Chilean state institutionsFacting

within fairly standard practices of liberal

governanceFmust identify, locate, and

bound ‘‘deserving’’ Mapuche. In effect,

state institutions define these ‘‘traditional’’

Mapuche as outside of the processes of

history. Obviously, however, they are not.

To say that ethnic identity is invented and

constructed is merely to recognize this

crucial fact. It should not mean that eth-

nic identity is invalid or false. Rather, it

stresses that contemporary Mapuche iden-

tity has been produced within an ongoing

colonial encounter that has placed heavy

constraints on the Mapuche, including the

very ways that they have to represent

themselves in the Chilean public sphere.


In contrast to Haughney and largely

owing to their focus on memory, Steve J.

Stern, Michael Lazarra, and Lessie Jo

Frazier concentrate more directly on the

relationship between representation, sub-

jectivity, and the public sphere. In Battling

for Hearts and Minds, Stern analyzes these

issues within the specific context of the

dictatorship. The book is Stern’s second

in his trilogy, ‘‘The Memory Box of

Pinochet’s Chile.’’ A major project, under-

taken by a scholar who has helped to set

trends in Latin American historiography

for the past quarter century, the trilogy is a

thorough, revealing, and absorbing ac-

count of the fraught politics of memory

in Chile during the neoliberal era. In the

first book, Remembering Pinochet’s Chile,

Stern (2004) analyzed the memory ques-

tion as it stood in 1998, just before Pin-

ochet’s detention in London for violating

human rights. Succinct and evocative,

Remembering Pinochet’s Chile accom-

plished the rare feat of engaging the gen-

eral reader and challenging the specialist.

While Battling for Hearts and Minds main-

tains the first book’s accessible style, it is

nevertheless prohibitively long for under-

graduates and general readers. For special-

ists, however, the book reinterprets

brilliantly many of the well-known public

events and key transformations that

marked the dictatorship. For non-

Chileanists, it relates a dramatic history

that successfully integrates approaches

to memory, authoritarianism, civil soci-

ety, social movements, the mass media,

and state formation.

Stern’s basic thesis posits that in the

wake of the military coup Chileans devel-

oped four ‘‘emblematic memories,’’ public

narratives about the past that have been

central to the ‘‘making and unmaking

of political and cultural legitimacy’’

(2006:xx).3 In providing the contours of

Chile’s political dialogue, these emblem-

atic memories afford radically different

perspectives through which to interpret

the coup and its aftermath. One frame-

work paints the period as one of salvation

from ruin, in which the military regime

rescued the country from international

Communism and social breakdown.

Another describes the same era as one

of painful rupture and loss. Stern claims

that this emblematic memory has a

‘‘cousin,’’ a framework that also empha-

sizes the dictatorship’s illegitimate

violence, yet simultaneously focuses on

how dissidents awakened to the tragedy

and developed the ability to criticize the

regime. The last emblematic memory that

Stern identifies seeks to ‘‘close the box on

the past.’’ Chileans who hold this view per-

haps concede that unnecessary violence

has stained Chile’s recent history, yet they

nevertheless argue that it is best to move

on: dwelling on the past will only stir

up counterproductive polarization and

discord.

For Stern, not all memories fit neatly

within emblematic frameworks. If mem-

ory can conform to recognizable, public

scripts, it is also elusive, dynamic, and per-

sonal. To account for this, Stern argues

that there are ‘‘loose’’ memories, some nar-

rated within emblematic memories and

some consigned to generally confusing

and painful private recollections. Stern

tends to explore these ill-fitting memories

in often poignant afterwards to his chap-

ters. In one powerful passage, Stern de-

scribes how during a period of economic

crisis and widespread protest in the mid-

1980s, a number of low-income, urban

youth with burns and cuts approached

Book Reviews 503

human rights workers for treatment and

recognition. But the wounds turned out to

be self-inflicted, a fact that prevented the

youths from occupying a privileged role as

heroes who had suffered human rights

abuses in the struggle against the military

regime (2006:333–4).

Because Battling for Hearts and Minds

focuses exclusively on the dictatorship, it

tends to emphasize the ruptures and hor-

rors initiated by the military coup or what

Stern, citing Hannah Arendt, describes as

‘‘radical evil’’ (2004:31). Looming over the

discussion is the Holocaust, and, more

broadly, the all-too-common phenome-

non of modern nation-states’ mass vio-

lence against their citizens.4 As in the

general processes of authoritarianism

that afflicted much of South America

from the 1960s to the 1980s, these state-

directed modes of horror have drawn

on legalism, modern bureaucratic struc-

tures, and, to varying degrees, popular

consent.

Stern’s analysis is exceptionally strong

in this last area. He reveals how the mili-

tary junta initially garnered majority

support by casting its mission as one

of salvation from ruin. This memory

achieved its power by tapping into both

persistent myths that shape Chilean na-

tionality and basic expectations of citizen-

ship. According to this framework, an

apolitical and professional army had

seized power in order to serve the national

interest. Proper, hardworking families

were once again able to depend on stabil-

ity and the impartial rule of law. Profes-

sional, rational reformers diagnosed social

ills and prescribed appropriate cures, over-

coming debilitating conflict.

Importantly, the regime’s opponents

developed their own memory frameworks

within similar registers, as they pointed

to the hollowness and hypocrisy of the

dictatorship’s positions. Stern traces the

arduous emergence of the opposition,

demonstrating how this diverse group

would eventually convince a majority

that the dictatorship was illegitimate by

exposing human rights abuses, undermin-

ing the regime’s legalisms, and pointing to

the intense polarization fueled by the dic-

tatorship itself. This process, Stern argues,

ultimately laid the foundation for the

opposition’s victory in a 1988 plebiscite.

Stern’s emphasis is on agency and ac-

tive subjecthood. His book’s title stresses

this point: actors battled to transform po-

litical footings and public consciousness.

Yet the stress on agency also raises ques-

tions: who can play the role of an active

subject and what does it take to be effec-

tive? Stern’s implicit answer is that politi-

cal actors are most effective when able to

take part in causes perceived as ‘‘respect-

able’’ and ‘‘dignified.’’ Stern employs these

terms often, particularly in describing the

formation of dissident networks. Widely

used in Chile and elsewhere, these terms

have broad appeal. Human rights activists

who opposed the dictatorship, for exam-

ple, often drew on them in garnering in-

ternational solidarity. And over the course

of the book, the reader becomes aware of

the contours of respectability and dignity

and their importance in laying the

groundwork for political and cultural le-

gitimacy. But while Stern demonstrates

these two points in his narrative, he tends

not to make them analytically explicit.

Had he done so, his account would place

more emphasis on the discursive footing

within which Chileans battle over mem-

ory. While such a move would not deny

agency to Stern’s subjects, it would under-


score that they operate within particular

boundaries and limits.

In Chile in Transition, literary scholar

Lazarra takes on this issue by considering

what is discursively possible in narrating

the dictatorship’s tragic devastation.

He asks, ‘‘when a nation has suffered a

traumatic and scarring episode, in what

‘languages’ is it possible to convey the ex-

perience?’’ (2006:13). In his search for the

outer reaches of what can be communi-

cated, Lazarra describes only briefly the

official discourses of the dictatorship and

the Concertacion. Instead, he concentrates

on the ‘‘story of the conquered,’’ or what

Walter Benjamin dubbed the ‘‘expression-

less’’ (2006:13–14).

A focus on the margins permits

Lazarra to expose official power structures

and narrative frameworks from a vantage

point that is both troubling and illumi-

nating. Exploring memory through ex-

perimental artistic expression, Lazarra

considers sources such as a literary critic’s

testimonial of a madman, the memoir of a

torture victim and dictatorship collabora-

tor, and the display of images of the dis-

appeared in an urban overpass. Lazarra’s

sources occupy liminal and fractured

spaces. Chileans tend to dismiss them as

illegitimate or treat them as relics from the

past, irrelevant to the tasks at hand and out

of place within the vertiginous changes of

neoliberal expansion.

But if the margins lie on the outer

edges, they nevertheless form part of the

whole. For this reason, marginal voices

persist, even as they are ignored and de-

nied. In interpreting his sources, Lazarra

uncovers elements of the dictatorship’s

destruction, emphasizing the shattering

pain borne by the survivors and their

anguished and occasionally inarticulate

voices. These sources force their audiences

to consider the ‘‘ruins’’ of history, another

term that Lazarra adopts from Benjamin. In

contemplating ruins, Lazarra reveals both

the powerful force and the unsettled con-

sequences of the dictatorship’s violence.

Such violence is not limited to human

rights violations, but includes the con-

straints imposed by dominant frameworks

and the uneasy legacies that persist. Lazar-

ra’s lucid interpretation of the marginal re-

veals the tensions and constrained

possibilities of memory in the wake of ‘‘rad-

ical evil.’’

While Lazarra achieves great analyti-

cal insight in adopting the perspective of

the margins, he does not find easy comfort

by celebrating marginal subjects. In one

chapter, Lazarra examines Luz Arce Sand-

oval’s 1993 memoir, El infierno (2006:64–

100). In the memoir, Arce describes

her own past as a member of Salvador

Allende’s personal security team who

became, following her detention by the

dictatorship’s secret police forces, a paid

collaborator. Having been brutally beaten

and raped, Arce was clearly a victim.

Furthermore, as Lazarra notes, the fact

that Pinochet’s henchmen ‘‘broke’’ Arce

was hardly unique among the tortured

(2006:66). Yet despite her desire to re-

nounce her role in the dictatorship, Arce

is a marginal figure, whose past makes her

suspect, even contemptible, for both the

right and the left. She attempts to find

redemption by seeking reconciliation and

forgiveness, central tenets in the Concert-

acion’s approach to the legacy of violence

and democratic consolidation. Arce thus

seeks to build a new subjectivity that will

overcome her fractured past by embracing

the dominant narrative of the Concert-

acion. As Lazarra astutely observes, this

Book Reviews 505

case demonstrates that ‘‘the dominant and

the residual always exist in a complex and

inseparable dialectic’’ (2006:26).

Lazarra treats the dictatorship’s vio-

lence as a ‘‘limit experience,’’ a phenome-

non at the boundaries of possibility and

comprehension. While this term eluci-

dates Lazarra’s central concern with the

edges of narration, it also represents the

dictatorship as exceptional, a clear water-

shed in Chilean history. But attention to

the margins also forces questions about

ongoing violence and how to define the

exceptional. In reflecting on the immedi-

ate horrors of Europe in the late 1930s,

Walter Benjamin wrote that ‘‘the tradition

of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state

of emergency’ in which we live is not the

exception but the rule. We must attain to a

conception of history that is in keeping

with this insight’’ (Benjamin 1969

[1940]:257). In viewing history from the

ruinous margins, Benjamin came to the

disconcerting conclusion that the imme-

diate horrors of his day were not so

unique, even as their particular intensity

could overwhelm consideration of persis-

tent oppression.

In Salt in the Sand, Frazier takes up

Benjamin’s challenge as she seeks to avoid

viewing the violence after the coup as ‘‘an

aberration in the nation’s otherwise dem-

ocratic history’’ (2007:24). A superb study

that breaks provocative new ground, Salt

in the Sand reveals how the dictatorship’s

violence and the memory frameworks that

narrate it are intertwined with the past and

the present. Providing a long-term view

that begins in 1890, Frazier analyzes the

formation of the nation-state through the

prism of its violence. She uncovers both

quotidian forms of violence and a series of

state-directed violent events and projects.

Frazier thus confronts the significant and

unsettling role that violence has played in

shaping the social landscape, even as it has

been alternatively well-remembered and

forgotten.

Frazier focuses on Tarapaca, Chile’s

northernmost region, whose history re-

veals the entangled evolution of the mili-

tary, a powerful labor movement, leftist

political parties, the nation-state, and a

mining based economy. Chile gained pos-

session of Tarapaca in 1880Fpart of its

conquest of nearly a third of its present

national territoryF through its military

victories in the War of the Pacific. The los-

ers, Bolivia and Peru, ceded valuable prov-

inces as Chile gained nitrate fields and

extensive copper mines. Yet the economic

windfall was, as Frazier’s historical and

ethnographic perspective demonstrates, a

mixed blessing. In compelling passages,

Frazier describes the scattered, physical

ruins of the nitrate industry in the desert

landscape, a testament to the chronic

booms and busts of Chile’s dependence

on export mining.

If the nitrate mines themselves are

now mostly decaying relics slowly being

recovered by shifting desert sands, they

nevertheless helped to shape social worlds

and affective ties that have left deep lega-

cies. Victory in the War of the Pacific

contributed to the Chilean military’s

heroic image as an apolitical, disciplined

body that brought wealth, power, and or-

der to the nation. Upon its integration into

Chilean national territory, Tarapaca be-

came a celebrated military stronghold,

including a prison camp in the coastal

town of Pisagua and a series of army

and naval bases. At the same time,

Tarapaca holds a significant place in the

memory of the left as the cradle of a mil-


itant labor movement. In their struggles

and sacrifices, labor activists ultimately

carved out a space for working class de-

mands and culture, playing a pivotal role

in the establishment of leftist political par-

ties and the policies of state-led develop-

ment.

Within Tarapaca’s conflictive setting,

Frazier explores how remembering and

forgetting forms of state-sponsored vio-

lence are consequential acts that reveal

deeply held sensibilities. For example, in

her discussion of key moments in the use

of the Pisagua detention center (2007:158–

189), Frazier demonstrates how the mili-

tary has frequently been able to cast itself

as a protector of national security and

honor in its administration of the camp.

This construction has been a significant

pillar in the state’s power, permitting the

state to regain legitimacy in the wake of

violence committed by its agents. More-

over, in calling attention to how Chileans

have responded to the distinct moments in

Pisagua’s use, Frazier uncovers ‘‘a hierar-

chy of deserving victimhood’’ (2007:161).

Dissident leftists, for example, have re-

membered when the state used the Pisa-

gua camp to detain Communists in the

late 1940s and, later, the dictatorship’s po-

litical prisoners. In poetry, song, popular

histories, public monuments, and every-

day recollections, these dissidents recall

harsh detentions, tortured bodies, and

the murdered as living symbols of the

past. But there have been few enduring

memories of when the state used the

camps to detain Germans, Italians and

Japanese in 1943, political and labor lead-

ers in 1956, and ‘‘common criminals’’ in

the 1980s. At certain times in these memory

frameworks the military supported an

unjust order that unfairly persecuted its

own citizens. During other moments, how-

ever, the military violently enforced a

proper order, helping the state assert its

legitimacy.

In analyzing memory’s work over the

course of more than a century, Frazier

provides a narrative that is both non-lin-

ear and broadly chronological (2007:10).

Taking seriously how memory can connect

the past to the present and to imagined

futures, Frazier emphasizes its vitality. Yet

she also anchors memory to particular pro-

jects in the evolution of the nation-state,

thus moving dialectically between context

and memories’ morphology (2007:11).

This narrative style is particularly

effective when she explores the massacre

of some 3,000 striking nitrate workers in

Santa Marıa de Iquique in 1907, an event

that has maintained a privileged place in

national memory since its occurrence

(2007:117–157). In a narrative that skips

across temporal frames, Frazier demon-

strates how leftist memories of the slaugh-

ter have taken different shapes in relation

to the nation-state’s trajectory. During the

nitrate era, labor militants interpreted the

1907 massacre through a framework Fra-

zier calls ‘‘cathartic memory, which called

for ongoing, direct, and collective mobili-

zation of non-elite sectors’’ (2007:118).

During the period of state-led development,

when leftist political parties sought to in-

corporate labor militancy and popular

collective action into a hegemonic state

project, the dominant lens through which

to view the massacre was one of ‘‘empa-

thetic memory.’’ In this framework, the

massacre represented a past struggle linked

inextricably to the unfolding and inexora-

ble drive of the left toward power. The

shattering experience of the dictatorship

changed this memory framework, trans-

Book Reviews 507

forming the Santa Marıa massacre into an

allegory for defeat and suffering. In this

case, Frazier argues that memory became

sympathetic, a framework that helped to

garner solidarity and understanding. In

the postdictatorship, as ‘‘renovated’’ left-

ists have contributed to neoliberal expan-

sion and radical leftists have failed to gain

political traction, memories of the mas-

sacre alternate between nostalgia, mel-

ancholy and the ‘‘vestiges of cathartic

memory’’ (2007:119). In tracing the

structure of these memories over the past

120 years, Frazier boldly reveals the tense

and intimate relationship between the for-

mation of political subjectivities, struc-

tures of memory, violence, and the

nation-state.

In Lines in the Sand, William Skuban

also focuses on Tarapaca, but he maintains

a more specific focus than does Frazier on

the question of nationalism. By means of a

fascinating, accessible narrative, Skuban

examines the construction of the Peru-

vian–Chilean frontier during the 50-year

period following the War of the Pacific. He

explores the re-constitutions of national

identities and the ‘‘lines in the sand’’ mark-

ing national territories, concentrating on

the former Peruvian provinces of Arica

and Tacna after they fell under Chilean

administration in 1883. The two provinces

are of particular interest because their long

term status was left unresolved after the

war: Chile was to administer the region for

a period of ten years, after which the inhab-

itants of the provinces would take part in a

plebiscite to determine to which nation they

would belong. But Peru and Chile were un-

able to come to terms on holding the pleb-

iscite. In 1929, the two countries divided the

territories, with Peru regaining Tacna and

Chile permanently annexing Arica.

Drawing on social sciences’ extensive

literature on nationalism, Skuban exam-

ines how Peruvians and Chileans devel-

oped distinct allegiances. Skuban’s case

brings the passion, malleability, and con-

tested nature of national imaginings to the

foreground, as the looming finality of a

physical border lent urgency to the ques-

tion of national affiliation. In general,

Peruvian self-fashioning stressed cultural

tradition and historical continuity, while

Chilean boosters emphasized the political

and civic achievements of the Chilean peo-

ple and government. Throughout Lines

in the Sand, Skuban provides a layered

account of these imaginaries. This

approach allows Skuban to stress that

nationalism is ‘‘more than an imposition

from the political center’’ and that social

actors separated by class, gender, and race

can understand and experience national

belonging differently (2007:112, xv–xvii).

Skuban begins his study by revealing

official statist efforts to propagate and po-

lice the boundaries of the national in Arica

and Tacna. This includes an examination

of campaigns by both Peruvian and Chil-

ean officials to sway public opinion during

the lead-up to a failed plebiscite sponsored

by the United States in the early 1920s.5

Skuban subsequently moves on to explore

the evolution of an elite public sphere.

With aid provided by the Peruvian state,

a network of social clubs, literary groups,

mutual aid societies, and patriotic organi-

zations denounced the occupation and

celebrated the Peruvian nation. In his

final chapters, Skuban approaches the

question of nationalism among the popu-

lar sectors. Providing a perceptive account

of workers in the mining camps, Skuban

reveals the tensions that beset an increas-

ingly militant labor movement as it sought


to forge transnational solidarity in the face

of heightened nationalist sentiments. In

his final chapter, Skuban analyzes similar

frictions among certain Aymara indige-

nous groups that defended the Peruvian

nation while maintaining allegiances and

practices at odds with the national. With a

keen eye for revealing engaging anecdotes

and sources, Skuban provides an absorb-

ing account that deserves a wide audience.

His astute presentation of Peruvian and

Chilean nationalisms’ gender and racial

dynamics is particularly effective material

for undergraduates.

If Skuban provides a rich account of

nationalism, he nevertheless fails to analyze

sufficiently one significant issue. Through-

out Lines in the Sand, Skuban recognizes

that the conflict between Peru and Chile was

one among unequal players. With its weaker

armed forces, Peru had little recourse to en-

gage with Chile militarily. Yet even as Sku-

ban points to the importance of this

asymmetrical relationship, he largely leaves

unexplored the reasons behind it. Clearly,

however, the Chilean state’s ability to tax the

nitrate and copper industries of the Ata-

cama Desert were crucial in allowing the

development of government institutions

and the armed forces (see Cariola Sutter

and Sunkel 1982). This, in turn, had a cen-

tral impact on Chilean national self-fash-

ioning: Chile produced results through

infrastructure projects and institution

building. Chileans, in fact, repeatedly in-

voked this claim during the campaign to

convince residents in Arica and Tacna to

join Chile (2007:71–73). Following much

of the literature on nationalism, Skuban

emphasizes that it is constructed and ar-

bitrary (2007:xv). While true, ideologies of

nationalism do not float free of material

contexts. Skuban misses the opportunity

to analyze this theme, since he generally

treats the War of the Pacific’s political eco-

nomic consequences as an already under-

stood, separate topic. Yet if Skuban had

engaged with these entailments, he could

have pointed the way toward bridging

gaps between analyses of materiality and

discourse.

Skuban ends his study with an evoca-

tive question: ‘‘is any frontier ever really

closed’’ (2007:223)? Given their con-

structed nature, frontiers, like nations,

states, and political projects, are in con-

stant formation. Such formations unfold

in multi-stranded, often unsettled con-

texts, undermining a sense of singular

linearity or definitive historical breaks.

The now more than century old annexa-

tion of Tarapaca continues to reverberate

in Chile’s neoliberal present, almost im-

perceptibly impacting such important

contemporary phenomena as the material

foundations of state power, national affil-

iations, and competing memory frame-

works. Similarly, Mapuche struggles for

land and collective recognition underscore

persistent tensions in liberal governance

within the very specific contours of neo-

liberal Chile. At the same time, the partic-

ular ruptures and horrors initiated by the

dictatorship’s violence remain without full

closure. In analyzing these themes and

bringing them to bear on the present con-

text, the studies discussed above make one

point abundantly clear: what’s new in neo-

liberalism can also be about what’s old.

Notes

1Haughney thus analyzes a phenomenon

that anthropologists have come to refer to as

state fetishism, even as she herself does not use

the term.

Book Reviews 509

2The development of the forestry sector is

an important part in the rise of ‘‘nontraditional

exports’’ during the neoliberal era. While

defenders of neoliberalism often point to

growth in forestry as a sign of neoliberal success,

they fail to recognize that interventionist gov-

ernments in the 1950s and 1960s developed

much of the infrastructure for the sector. See

Klubock (2004).3Stern develops this thesis in a general

introduction that is reproduced in each of

the trilogy’s volumes. Each volume also con-

tains an excellent guide to Stern’s sources and

methods.4Technically, these regimes have often tar-

geted persons whom they have stripped of cit-

izenship. Through this process, states can deny

these ‘‘non’’ citizens standard legal protections.5The U.S. delegation eventually cancelled

the plebiscite, claiming that the Chileans had

not provided the conditions for a fair election

(2007: 105).

References Cited

Benjamin, Walter

1969 [1940] Theses on the Philos-

ophy of History. In Illumina-

tions: Essays and Reflections.

Pp. 253–264. New York:

Schocken Books.

Cariola Sutter, Carmen and Osvaldo

Sunkel

1982 La historia economica de

Chile entre 1830 y 1930: Dos

ensayos y una bibliografıa.

Madrid: Instituto de Cooper-

acion Iberoamericana.

Coronil, Fernando

2007 After Empire: Reflections

on Imperialism from the

Americas. In Imperial For-

mations. Ann Stoler, Laura

McGranahan and Peter C.

Perdue, eds. Pp. 241–274.

Santa Fe: School of Ameri-

can Research.

Grandin, Greg

2006 Empire’s Workshop: Latin

America, The United States,

and the Rise of the New Im-

perialism. New York: Metro-

politan Books.

Harvey, David

2003 Neoliberalism: A Brief His-

tory. New York: Oxford Uni-

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Klubock, Thomas Miller

2004 Labor, Land, and Environmen-

tal Change in the Forestry

Sector in Chile, 1973–1998.

In Victims of the Chilean

Miracle. Peter Winn, ed. Pp.

337–387. Durham: Duke Uni-

versity Press.

Neruda, Pablo

1994 Canto General. trans. Jack

Schmitt. Berkeley: University

of California Press.

Stern, Steve.

2004 Remembering Pinochet’s

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what's new in neoliberalism? a review of recent scholarship on chile

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