We had to wait ten years for a version in Spanish of this important book written by Stefan Rinke, which was translated by Mónica Perl and Marisol Palma. Despite the passage of time, its interpretive proposals and analytical framework are still relevant, and will have a profound impact in Chile and Latin America, especially among those who study relations between the United States and Chile from perspectives that go beyond the scope of diplomacy.
It is a book about international relations whose wide margins cover numerous topics that are linked to the economy, politics, identity, changes in urban environments, movies, consumption, television, commerce, diplomacy, nationalism, education and intellectuals, in addition to considering aspects related to the elaboration of representations and the emergence of imaginaries. It is then a work that addresses a diverse range of topics yet is far from providing a superficial analysis of them. Its 586 pages are filled with a copious amount of information from Chilean and American archives and provide sharp historiographical analysis.
This work is divided into six parts in which topics related to a material as well as to a symbolic North Americanisation are presented in a balanced manner, appealing to the concrete and to the imaginary. In the first three parts of the book, the author studies the initial stages of the North Americanisation of Chilean society, from 1898 to 1930. The final sections cover the period between 1970–90, a period in which the North Americanisation of Chile intensified because globalisation and other particularities of the time, including the new economic model imposed by Pinochet's dictatorship.
For the period of the first decades of the century defined as ‘transnational’, Rinke argues that the United States became for the majority of the population synonymous with modernity, not without avoiding the sharp criticism of its growing influence from conservative groups, especially when North American presence grew after World War I. Within the chapters devoted to the initial decades of the century, noted for their originality are those that study American mining enclaves and cinema.
In the final part of the book which spans the period from 1970–90, Rinke centres his analysis on the framework of the processes of globalisation throughout the world, which will explain the strengthening of the ties between Chile and the United States, fuelled by television, an attractive popular mass culture that was primarily North American and particular elements of Chilean society among which the author highlights the strong American economic influence during Pinochet's dictatorial regime despite its evident nationalist character regarding diverse matters. In this section, the author's contributions to the chapters relative to consumerism, mass culture and neoliberal modernisation are particularly original.
One of Stefan Rinke's greatest contributions that adds to other recent historiographic efforts, has to do with the emphasis on the ‘encounters’ and the dynamics of interaction between the United States and Chile, avoiding the utilisation of rigid analytical frameworks that only see imposition, hegemony and a unilateral influence of the United States in Latin America. Appealing to anthropologists like James Clifford, Rinke places his discussion regarding the existence of ‘contact zones’. This is how he defends the concept of the appropriation of what is North American, a process that would have been complimented by a particular estrangement of certain sectors of Chilean society. What Rinke does is to defend the argument that despite the innumerable conflicts and efforts by some to distance themselves from the United States, and despite the permanent tension between the local and the foreign, those North American elements which generated greater resistance would end up ‘splitting’ and becoming incorporated into the process of the North Americanisation of Chilean society throughout the twentieth century.
One of the book's greatest virtues, which is the profuse display of documents and the variety of topics addressed, is also one of its main problems. The book addresses, chapter by chapter, a diverse variety of topics without having an obvious thread that binds them together. That is how in one section of the book the reader can find a chapter dedicated to mining camps, followed by another about economics, only to later address urban change and end by addressing Hollywood propaganda without an introduction or closing that makes sense of the section as a whole. What various passages lack is an exercise that gives perspective to the entire book, which is in itself very extensive.
Another thing that attracts my attention is that the book does not present a story with a sense of continuity between 1900 and 1970, especially because it does not provide a comparative approach between both moments either. Despite the author explaining his decision in the introduction, it remains unclear why the crucial decades of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s are omitted, independent of which there are some sections, although brief, which serve as a bridge that connects both moments, such as the chapter ‘Chile during the “American century”’.
The book constitutes an extensive, complex and very well-documented work that presents a solid interpretation. Going beyond its notable historiographic contribution, it is a book for specialists and not one for the general public. Nevertheless, this book will interest many types of specialists, including those who study the topics of nationalism, identity, mass culture, economic history and international relations.
