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University of California Press

About the Book

Despite the emergence of fragile democracies in Latin America in the 1980s, a legacy of fear and repression haunts this region. This provocative volume chronicles the effect of systematic state terror on the social fabric in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay from the 1960s to the mid-1980s.

The contributors, primarily Latin American scholars, examine the deep sense of insecurity and the complex social psychology of people who live in authoritarian regimes. There is Argentina, where the brutal repression of the 1976 coup almost completely smothered individuals who might once have opposed government practices, and Uruguay, where the government forced the population into neutrality and isolation and cast a silent pall on everyday life. Accounts of repression and resistance in Chile and Brazil are also vividly presented. The denial and rationalization by citizens in all four countries can only be understood in the context of the generalized fear and confusion created by the violent military campaigns, which included abductions, torture, and disappearances of alleged terrorists.

The recent transition to civilian rule in these countries has spotlighted their powerful legacy of fear. These important essays reveal disturbing insights into how fear is generated, legitimized, accommodated, and resisted among people living under totalitarian rule.


Despite the emergence of fragile democracies in Latin America in the 1980s, a legacy of fear and repression haunts this region. This provocative volume chronicles the effect of systematic state terror on the social fabric in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and

About the Author

Juan E. Corradi is Professor of Sociology at New York University and the author of The Fitful Republic: Economy, Society, and Politics in Argentina (1985). Patricia Weiss Fagen works for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in El Salvador and is the author of Exiles and Citizens: Spanish Republicans in Mexico (1973). Manuel Antonio Garretón is a member of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences in Santiago, Chile.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Fear: A Cultural and Political Construct
by Juan E. Corradi, Patricia Weiss Fagen,
and Manuel Antonio Garret6n 

PART ONE. FEAR AND AUTHORITARIANISM
1. Fear in Military Regimes: An Overview 
by Manuel Antonio Garret6n
2. Some People Die of Fear: Fear as a Political Problem 
by Norbert Lechner

PART TWO. CONSTRUCTING CULTURES OF FEAR
3. Repression and State Security 
by Patricia Weiss Fagen
4. Victims of Fear: The Social Psychology of Repression 
by Sofia Salimovich, Elizabeth Lira, and Eugenia Weinstein
5. Makers and Guardians of Fear: Controlled Terror
in Uruguay by Juan Rial
6. Gender, Death, and Resistance: Facing the Ethical Vacuum 
by Jean Franco

PART THREE. RESOURCES, STRATEGIES, AND CONSTRAINTS: FIGHTING FEAR
7. Resistance to Fear in Chile: The Experience of the Vicaria de la Solidaridad 
by Hugo Fruhling
8. Fear of the State, Fear of Society: On the Opposition Protests in Chile 
by Javier Martinez
9. Testimonial Literature and the Armed Struggle in Brazil 
by Joan Dassin
10. Cultures of Fear, Cultures of Resistance: The New Labor Movement in Brazil 
by Maria Helena Moreira Alves
11. Youth, Politics, and Dictatorship in Uruguay 
by Carina Perelli
12. Strategies of the Literary Imagination 
by Beatriz Sarlo
13. Beyond Fear: Forms of Justice and Compensation 
by Emilio F. Mignone

PART FOUR. A LOOK AHEAD
14. Toward Societies without Fear 
by Juan E. Corradi

Index 

Reviews

"A genuinely interdisciplinary work . . . the best attempt I have ever seen at a truly unified intellectuals' approach to an important issue."—Timothy Wickham-Crowley, Georgetown University

"Very seldom does a collected volume achieve the academic quality and internal coherence that one sees in this case. It is a major contribution to comparative research on post-authoritarian situations."—Carlos Waisman, University of California, San Diego