Memory Policies in Chile, 1973–2010

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September 11, 1973, marks the beginning of one of the most brutal and paradigmatic historical processes in the recent history of Chile, when a coup d’etat violently cut short the Unidad Popular (UP) government headed by Salvador Allende. While this was neither the first coup nor the first irruption of the military in national politics,1 it was framed within a regional context dominated by the Cold War in which the forces of global imperialisms, and in particular the influence of the United States on Latin American civilian and military elites, would in the long term produce changes, both structural and in everyday life, that would transform Chilean society forever (Grandin and Joseph 2010). Harmer, 2011 considered the decisive role of the Brazilian military dictatorship in the political scenario that led to the coup. Recent studies have shown that even before the military coup, the Chilean Right, especially the business associations, was devising the neoliberal transformation that would begin operating in the 1970s, changing not only the economic system but also social and cultural practices nationwide, as well as new generations of conservative political groups (Valdivia Ortiz de Zarate 2008). In the armed forces, statism, represented by high-ranking officers of the air force, was to be replaced by neoliberalism, which, with the support of civilian technocrats, would be promoted from the army by Pinochet (Valdivia Ortiz de Zarate 2003).