Pinochet Affair

Roger Burbach was director of the Center for the Study of the Americas and a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. He wrote extensively on Latin America and US foreign policy for over four decades. He died in 2015.

'As a witness to the military coup that overthrew the democratic socialist government of Salvador Allende in 1973 and a visitor to Chile at critical moments over the past thirty years, Burbach relates the story of the heroic resistance to the brutal regime of Augusto Pinochet. Based on extensive interviews in Chile, England and Spain, the Pinochet Affair examines the socio-pathological tendencies of General Pinochet and provides vivid portraits of many of the leading human rights activists, lawyers and judges who succeeded in apprehending Pinochet in London in 1998 and stripped him of his parliamentary immunity in Chile, making the dictator one of the most ignominious figures of contemporary history.' Isabel Allende 'This riveting book recounts the first historic September 11 in 1973 when Augusto Pinochet seized power in Chile and launched a seventeen year reign of state and international terrorism with U.S. backing. The dramatic consequences of this coup are still shaking our world today and enable us to understand why Washington is so fanatically opposed to the International Criminal Court.' Mike Davis 'The Pinochet Affair portrays one of the most vile dictatorships of the twentieth century and the efforts of a brave and determined human rights movement to bring Augusto Pinochet to justice. Thanks to this movement, Pinochet will die despised and live in infamy. This book, on the other hand, will stand as a classic.' Susan George

• Introduction: The First September 11 that Shook the World1. The Dictator's Prelude: Allende, Chile and the Coup2. The Formation of a Dictator3. Quest for Absolute Power4. Globalization of the Chilean Human Rights Movement5. The Bitter Transition, 1990-1998 (By Marny Requa)6. The Entrapment of a Dictator7. Five Hundred Days in the British Docket8. Pinochet's Return and the Reckoning in Chile9. Conclusion: State Terrorism Versus the Globalization of Justice