In The Politics of Memory in Chile, editors Cath Collins, Katherine Hite, and Alfredo Joignant ask: How does memory of the recent past shape Chile’s political community today? Chile is often touted as a model of transition from authoritarianism. After suffering a long and brutal military rule under General Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990), it held a truth commission, trials, offered reparations, and has seen hundreds of memorial sites built. Yet, how to remember the past remains an area of important political debate and division. This debate offers insights that may be useful for other countries struggling with a traumatic past and makes an important contribution to the large literature on transitional justice (such as work by Kathryn Sikkink, Leigh A. Payne, and Elizabeth Jelin).

The editors answer their question through a rich exploration of how collective memory of the recent past has been debated and transformed since the return of electoral democracy (1990–2010). Each chapter explores memory in a different way: a turning point (Pinochet’s 1998 arrest in London), trials, the history of torture, memorials, Pinochet’s funeral, and public opinion polls. By retracing events from different perspectives the reader comes away with a deep understanding of the challenges and successes of building a collective memory of the past. Three issues tie the edited volume together.

First, this is a book written by political scientists (domestic and international). As the authors rightly note, political scientists have been drawn predominantly to the institutional aspects of transitional justice (especially trials and truth commissions) and largely ignored collective memory as an issue better addressed by psychology or sociology. One goal of the editors and their contributors is to show how political science can study memory and what it can contribute to the study of memory. The book achieves this goal.

In many countries, and in Latin America in particular, non-institutionalized aspects of politics are very important (see for example, Enrique Peruzzotti and Catalina Smulovitz, Enforcing the Rule of Law, 2006). This book studies the non-institutionalized politics of memory through the media, public opinion, and political discourse (p. 5). Almost all the chapters analyze the politics of memory through debates and statements made in the media as well as political discourses outside the media. Carlos Huneeus and Sebastián Ibarra (Chapter 7) explore how Chilean public opinion on the Pinochet regime changes over time, between political party affiliations, and by age. Institutions are important to provide, for example, justice through the courts and a Museum of Memory and Human Rights. Yet the book highlights that the debates that lead to these institutions taking action, the debates that happen once action is chosen, and the changes in those debates are equally important. They are part of the process of establishing (or not) a collective memory that will define not only the past but also how to live together in the future. This is an important contribution not only in the study of collective memory but also the study of ideas in politics more generally.

Second, The Politics of Memory in Chile aims to show collective memory and collective memory projects not as “successful” or “unsuccessful” but as fragmented. The chapters explore both “silence and voice” and the ways that memory is used for political ends (p. 2). For example, Collins and Hite explore not only the debates that led to the establishment of memorial sites such as Villa Grimaldi (a former detention center) and the Museum of Memory and Human Rights, but also counter, political, or anti-memory projects such as a 2008 memorial to Jaime Guzmán, a close advisor to Pinochet who was assassinated in 1991(Chapter 5), Collins also explores silences that result from constraints on trials taking place under an amnesty law and from political debates being judicialized (Chapter 3). By highlighting these fragmented voices and silences as well as the politics behind them, the book challenges the idea of Chile as a model of transition. Instead it contends that, despite rhetoric of reconciliation, Chile has not established a blueprint for reconciliation (pp. 17–18). The country lacks a “refounding myth” about the past that brings people together; nor has there been an economic, legal or constitutional break with the past (p. 246). The authors hold that without agreement on how to understand the past it is difficult to know how to move forward (p. 242). By bringing together these fragmented voices and silences, this book helps the reader to see where the obstacles and challenges lie.

Finally, the authors see the politics of memory as not just about transitional justice but also as a “framework for study of human rights trajectories” (p. 1). That is, the timeline of trauma that needs to be remembered may be different for different people. For the Mapuche indigenous people in the south of Chile it is much longer than the dictatorship. The political right contends that memory should begin in 1964 to include the context that led to the military regime. This is an important point that is mentioned in both the introduction and conclusion but is lost in most of the rest of the book (aside from the contention of the political right). Elizabeth Lira and Brian Loveman (Chapter 4) offer the best examination of the issue and their chapter stands out as quite different from the others. They contend that torture should not be remembered as simply an atrocity of the dictatorship. It has a long history in Chile, which they trace in the chapter from colonial times to the post-dictatorship period. The military, they argue, “perpetuated and expanded” what already existed and persists (p. 92). Indeed, the authors note that in 2009 the United Nations released a report on current practices of torture in Chile.

More examples of such continuities would have better highlighted how the past is not necessarily in the past. For example, the Mapuche are mentioned in the introduction and conclusion but there is no chapter on their memory of the dictatorship and its continuities. Similarly, the memories and continuities of people living in shantytowns are absent. Yet both these groups, along with students, continue to be subject to disproportionate police violence that political leaders and others often separate out as “different” from the abuses of the dictatorship (see for example Patricia Richards, Race and the Chilean Miracle, 2013). As the chapter by Lira and Loveman, and the editors brief note in the conclusion highlight (p. 248), it is not just that debates about what happened in the past continue to shape political community today but that the conclusions of these debates could have a profound impact on what is happening today. Not including the continuities of the past today in these debates could lead to the conclusion that the past is wrong but what is happening today is not the same. However, Collins, Hite, and Joignant’s introduction of this issue is important and can be read as a call for more research in this area.

Overall, this is significant contribution to the study of collective memory, transitional justice, and Chilean politics and should be read by those interested in the complexity of political change.