Word: chileanization
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...silenced once more, the only news stories you can find tell about new waves of repression, coupled with new, albeit startlingly familiar boasts by the generals who rule Chile that the country is saved because the ships now run on time. But even if American newspapers had covered Chilean politics impartially from the beginning, it wouldn't be enough to understand what they were about, because life goes deeper than politics. And great historic revolutions, if they're really revolutions and not just epicycles, cut deeper than politics too, more widely and more piercingly...
Luckily, a few English-speaking commentators treat social change with understanding--David Kunzle, a British art historian who spoke and showed slides of Chilean art at Carpenter Center last week, was the most recent one in these parts--and it's possible to get from them at least a less distorted picture of some of the aspects of the Chilean revolution with which American newspapers never dealt...
...these upsets were not momentary interruptions in a stable history. Chilean society has been marked by militant labor struggles for the last century, since Britain and not the U.S. was the country's dominant economic power. The government killed 2000 men, women, and children crushing a miners's strike in 1907; demonstrations were quashed violently under Frei in the sixties. As the film says, Allende's election was the culmination of a process, perhaps the turning point which proved that Chile's road to socialism will not be traveled peacefully...
...such facts could be conveyed in a printed pamphlet. This documentary is uniquely effective addressing imperialism's effect on Chile's culture and in demonstrating the junta's war against the hearts and minds of Chile's working class. Under UP government, Chilean worker art and culture flourished. "Art," the narrator says, "was joyous, collective, and public." New images and themes emerged, an emphasis on labor, freedom, and unity. A dazzlingly colorful abstract form arose unlike some other socialist countries's crude, gray realism...
...guns is not a complete film. For example, it does not sufficiently explore the relation of UD to the Christian Democrats or disagreements with UP. What it does do, vividly, is establish a perspective on the blather which North Americans have heard these last three years about Allende, the Chilean working class, and the prospects for socialism. It relates Chile's experience to the experience of U.S. workers and is particularly sensitive to problems of racism, sexism, and the exploitation of children. What shines through the horror, the anger and frustration is the Chilean people's determination to resurrect...