Dr. Sebastian Hurtado Torres
The Contemporary History Institute presents Dr. Sebastian Hurtado Torres discussing “The endless relevance of diplomatic history: the case of Cold War Chile” on Oct. 15 at 4:30 p.m.
- A Teams link will be provided.
Hurtado Torres is an Assistant Professor at the Instituto de Historia, at the Universidad San Sebastian in Santiago Chile. His book, The Gathering Storm: Eduardo Frei’s Revolution in Liberty and Chile’s Cold War, was published by Cornell University Press in 2020.
The history of U.S. involvement in Chilean politics in the 1960s and 1970s through covert operations has been the subject of great public and scholarly attention in the United States. The focus on U.S. attempts to subvert the Chilean political system through covert operations is not illogical. However, it misses other parts of the story and, as a result, attributes a disproportionate amount of agency and responsibility in the affairs of Chile to decision-makers in Washington. A more traditional approach to the relations between both countries in the period, with a focus on the diplomatic relations between the administrations in power and based on the official correspondence that recorded their day-to-day developments, offers a more comprehensive picture of a relationship in which the asymmetry of power in favor of the United States was not the driving force.
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