Weavers of Revolution: The Yarur Workers and Chile’s Road to Socialism: Peter Winn
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Excellent book.”–Gregory Crider, Drake University
“The most useful of all my assigned supplementary texts. Students enjoyed reading it and felt they gained real insights into the causes of revolution…Provided a sustained and enthusiastic discussion.”–Bill Donovan, Loyola College in Maryland
“Well-written and accessible for a general audience.”–Latin American Research Review
“Provides valuable insights into one of the central dynamics of the short-lived Popular Unity government of Chile….No other work concretely takes us to the factory floor to examine the internal tensions of this revolutionary process.”–Science and Society
“[A] terrific book. Students loved it and learned a lot from it.”–Jeffrey Rubin, Amherst College
“A landmark in Latin American history and a leading example of the new social history in practice….Winn has combined the finest elements of historical work, a dramatic, human, and moving story recounted in the language of the main actors of the drama and woven into the larger context of its time and place….Written in a lively and often eloquent style…reads more like a novel than a scholarly work.”–Hobart Spalding, The Americas
“A richly textured…magnificent and much needed account of the most human and democratic phase of the Chilean road to socialism.”–James Petras, The Nation
“A marvelously good book; one of the best published on Latin America in the past few years.”–Arnold Bauer, University of California at Davis
“Rich, vivid and fine in the telling…one of the outstanding historical studies to appear in the great wave of new scholarship on Latin America in the last twenty years.”–John Womack, Harvard University
“A long-needed and well-written corrective to the simplistic views that have shaped too much of our understanding of the pivotal years in the U.S.-Latin America relationship.”–Walter LaFeber, Cornell University
–This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Weavers of Revolution is a major reinterpretation of the Salvador Allende era in Chile as well as a compelling drama of human triumph and tragedy that exemplifies “the new narrative history” at its authentic best.
Unfolding a vivid story as seen through the eyes of the participants themselves, the book focuses on the workers at the Yarur factory, Chile’s largest cotton mill. After Allende took office in 1970, the workers seized control of the mill and proceeded to socialize its operations. They were to learn, however, that Allende’s plans for transforming the country were less radical and more gradualist than theirs, and suddenly they found themselves on a collsion course with the government. Winn, who interviewed the workers and Allende while many of the events were taking place, brilliantly captures the turning point of Chile’s “democratic road to socialism” of 1970-73 in both the Yarur mill and the presidential palace, showing how a revolution was forged “from below.” As he demonstrates, the confrontation between Allende and the workers and its ultimate outcome reveal an array of complexities in the revolutionary process that too often elude American understanding and frustrate U.S. foreign policy.
Skillfully integrating oral history with penetrating analysis, this book uncovers the dynamic relationship between leaders and the people they propose to lead, and offers a striking new explanation of how revolutions are radicalized.
About the Author:
Peter Winn has taught at Yale and Princeton and is now Associate Professor of History at Tufts University, a Senior Fellow at Columbia University’s Research Institute on International Change, and Barnette-Miller Professor of International Relations at Wellesley College. He has written for The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times and was principal advisor for and award-winning documentary on Cuba.
The compelling story of how a Third World revolution was forged “from below”
Based on countless interviews with participants while the events were actually happening
Sheds new light on Chile’s Allende era and on the nature of revolutionary movements