Pollack, Marcelo

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POLLACK, Marcelo

PERSONAL:

Male.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—c/o Publicity Department, St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Amnesty International, researcher for Colombia, Americas program; Institute for European-Latin American Relations, Madrid, Spain, research associate; Oxford Analytica, Latin-America analyst.

WRITINGS:

The New Right in Chile, 1973-1997, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1999.

SIDELIGHTS:

Although Marcelo Pollack's work with Amnesty International is focused on Colombia, he has had a long professional and personal interest in Chile, where both of his parents were born. In The New Right in Chile, 1973-1997, Pollack takes a close look at the origins and development of the Chilean "New Right," which strongly supported General Augusto Pinochet's overthrow of the democratically elected leftist government of Salvador Allende in 1973. In his book, Pollack asks whether, following Pinochet's removal from office in 1990, the Chilean right could now be referred to as a "loyal opposition." As Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs contributor Steven S. Volk pointed out, "it is the left, not the right, that has been at the center of Chilean historiography during the past 15 years. Therefore, Marcelo Pollack's superb new study is both welcome and overdue."

In fact, the New Right that came to power with Pinochet provides an interesting case study of an ideology free to pursue its goals despite popular dissent and cultural constraints. Unlike the more traditional conservatives, who largely defined themselves as a contrast to leftist ideologues, the New Right had a definite ideology of its own based on a free-market system, "Chicago School" economics, and "gremialismo," an ultratraditional Catholicism deeply hostile to liberal democracy. While this ideology held unchallenged sway throughout much of Pinochet's regime, Pollack shows that serious questioning within the Right began well before Pinochet was forced out of office. For Nicola Miller, writing in the Journal of Latin American Studies, "It is when Pollack starts discussing the regroupings of the right after 1983, when economic disaster and political protest had created a widespread belief that the dictadura duradera would not, in practice, last that much longer, that his prose really comes alive. By far the most interesting section of the book is the second part, in which Pollack discusses the evolution of the right since Pinochet left power."