Chile Underground

 

Andra Chastain followed a circuitous path to her study of Latin American history. She took Spanish while growing up in Salem, Oregon and her family hosted exchange students, including one from Chile. After the school year, Chastain traveled to Chile to see her friend. “We visited her family, and that was a pivotal moment,” Chastain said. She was 17, with attitudes typical of American students at the time. A conversation with her friend’s family challenged her thinking. She had assumed Chile’s political system under dictator Augusto Pinochet was strictly ruinous and primarily an imposition by the United States. But her friend’s parents had supported Pinochet and told her how he had modernized Chile. “I learned I needed to listen more,” Chastain said.

https://news.wsu.edu/news/2024/07/30/chile-underground/