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Foreign Affairs

14 October 2010

On the sloping peak of a coastal hill rising from the muddy banks of the Maule River, which cuts through the lower Chilean heartland and once marked the southernmost boundary of the Incan empire, a wildfire was vaulting through a dense thicket of pine trees. It was an arresting sight: a shock of red among the moody shades of green and brown that Chilean winters customarily color the south-central landscape. More…

Foreign Affairs

8 February 2010

In the weeks leading up to the final round of the 2010 Chilean presidential elections, Eduardo Frei, the candidate for the center-left Concertación coalition, ran a political advertisement in which an invisible hand scribbled words such as “ass” and “go to hell” on a white ballot. More…

Instead of adhering to then ruling leftist practice of revolutionary change through violence and terror, Salvador Allende proposed an unprecedented democratic route to socialism, one where ballots would replace arms. It would be, in his words, “a revolution of empanadas and red wine“—socialism Chilean style. More…