Professor Thomas Klubock Publishes New Book, Ránquil: Rural Rebellion, Political Violence, and Historical Memory in Chile

Friday, January 28, 2022

The history department congratulates Professor Thomas Klubock on the publication of his new book, Ránquil: Rural Rebellion, Political Violence, and Historical Memory in Chile. Below, is the description for his book:

The first major history of Chile’s most significant peasant rebellion and the violent repression that followed
"In 1934, peasants turned to revolution to overturn Chile’s oligarchic political order and the profound social inequalities in the Chilean countryside. The brutal military counterinsurgency that followed was one of the worst acts of state terror in Chile until the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990). Using untapped archival sources, award-winning scholar Thomas Miller Klubock exposes Chile’s long history of political violence and authoritarianism and chronicles peasants’ movements to build a more just and freer society. Klubock further explores how an amnesty law that erased both the rebellion and the military atrocities lay the foundation for the political stability that characterized Chile’s multi-party democracy. This historical amnesia or olvido, Klubock argues, was a precondition of national reconciliation and democratic rule, which endured until 1973, when conflict in the countryside ended once again with violent repression during the Pinochet dictatorship."