Chile - Psychedelic Chile: Youth, Counterculture, and Politics on the Road to Socialism and Dictatorship. By Patrick Barr-Melej. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. Pp. 362. $34.95 paper.
Americas July 1, 2018 J. Mcsherry
During the 1960s and 1970s, Chilean youth built a counterculture that blended psychedelic aesthetics, rock music, and leftist politics, challenging traditional social norms and authoritarian structures. This movement emerged alongside the rise of Salvador Allende's socialist government and later faced brutal repression under Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship. The book traces how young Chileans used cultural rebellion to express political dissent, creating alternative communities and identities that intersected with broader struggles for social change. It argues that this counterculture was not merely a foreign import but a distinctly Chilean phenomenon rooted in local political tensions and generational conflict, ultimately shaping the country's trajectory toward both socialism and dictatorship.