The Chile Reader: History, Culture, Politics, edited by Elizabeth Quay Hutchison, Thomas Miller Klubock, Nara B. Milanich, and Peter Winn

The history of Chile is deeply interesting, as is its culture. Unfortunately, this book is a poor example of how it is that leftist politics ruins everything. If this book is not complete trash–and it comes dangerously close–it is because at least some of the early sources provide an interesting perspective on the sources of Chilean distinctive culture (which, like American exceptionalism, is poorly treated and understood by the moronic leftist editors of this bloated, deeply repetitive book). The vast majority of the pages of this book, alas, are filled with various types of trash–novels of prurient interest that celebrate decadence, leftist political screeds, including a rather ironic case where some terrible historians (including at least one of the editors) take offense at the historical arguments by Pinochet that they find distasteful despite being at least as sound as their own historical arguments, if not more so. Over and over again the authors find themselves torn between trying to legitimize the violence of the left and deny it altogether, demonstrating a lack of historical and moral integrity and demonstrating the attitudes of the left in seeing themselves as the defenders of a progressive social and political order, which cannot help but be trash.

Why is it so hard for these books to be good? It would not seem that it would be a difficult task that would present writings about a culture in a decent light. Laws, constitutions, poetry and other literature, political speeches, and even the writings of ordinary people all make great sources, and a competent historian could easily find many such examples to demonstrate the nobility of a given nature and something worth remembering and celebrating. Why is it that so many collections of works end up to be such refuse as this one is? The problem is not in the raw materials themselves, but in the people who select such sources to make up books like this one and the perspective and criteria they use to do so. When one has Marxist historians, they inevitably want to portray the pedigree of their own corrupt worldview and want to celebrate those who thought like them and who hate the nations and their distinctive and noble aspects. The end result is a celebration of identity politics, class warfare, and the useful idiots of the left whenever they happen to live. The end result is history that cannot help but be skewed, culture that cannot help but be degraded and decadent, and politics that cannot help but be miserable. This book fully delivers on that.

In terms of its contents, this book is about 600 pages long and is divided into eight sections. After acknowledgements and an introduction, the first part of the book contains a discussion of Chile’s environment and history, which is almost all taken up by environmentalist panic over deforestation (I). This is followed by a discussion of Chile’s history before independence, starting with prehistory and then spending the rest of the time talking about colonial history, mostly from the tediously repetitive perspective of Mapuche and peons (II). This is followed by a section on the history of Chile in the 19th century, which again focuses a lot on the Mapuche as well as revolutionaries, immigrants, and complaints about hacienda owners (III). A discussion of the social question of the Nitrate era takes up the next part of the book, with more social radicalism (IV). Tedious class-based discussion fills the next section as well, on the politics of compromise as well as the Great Depression (V). This is followed by the tedious Marxist Chilean road to Socialism, which views Socialism as a sort of inevitable state for Chile (VI) rather than a contingent disaster. Comparatively less attention is paid, although it is equally biased to the rest of this book, on the Pinochet years (VII), while the last part of the book consists of some pretty terrible examples of contemporary texts in the period after the return to democratic rule in Chile (VIII). The book ends with selected readings, acknowledgement of copyrights and sources, and an index.