The international dimensions of the Pinochet dictatorship

Throughout the Pinochet dictatorship’s lifespan, the radical changes implemented by the regime at home had significant repercussions for Chile’s place in the wider world, and in turn international events shaped the dictatorship’s domestic development. Through an examination of the secondary literature and the incorporation of primary source material, this chapter explores the international history of the Pinochet dictatorship, from its inception in 1973 to the beginning of the process of democratisation in 1988. It begins by examining Chile’s place in the rise of the international human rights movement and solidarity movements, before turning to the dictatorship’s worldview and its own diplomatic efforts to overcome international isolation, highlighting the connection between the dictatorship’s foreign policy and domestic efforts to secure the institutional bases of the regime. Next, the dictatorship’s engagement in Central America is used to draw out the competing impulses behind its foreign policy in at the turn of the 1980s. Finally, this chapter examines the important role international actors played in the return of mass opposition – both peaceful and armed – to Chile in the 1980s, and the implications of this phenomenon for the 1988 plebiscite that marked the beginning of the dictatorship’s end.