Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Allende revisited: historiographically

So I know we have already read about Allende's coup, but this time, I want you to focus on the approaches of the different historians mentioned in the reading.  First, note Robert Moss, who studied the extent of Soviet involvement in Allende's Chile (p. 197).  Also consider the historical interpretations section of the reading at the end.  Stephen Graubard's reports (p. 200) plus Skidmore and Smith's assessments (p. 201) help shed light on why Allende's government might have failed.  Why are all of these interpretations significant?  Why is it key to note that historians are still not sure about the extent of the US's involvement in the 1973 coup?

9 comments:

  1. Well the interpretations are significant because it means even now no one is really sure exactly what happened, meaning a lot went into covering the real information I suppose. The true status of American involvement would be important because depending on how just involved they were they could be responsible for certain outcomes and breaking international laws.

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  2. All interpretations are important because all of them could be correct. Being that these events occurred in a time of high tension, secrecy, and violence, there was little rational comprehension of going was on. Much of what occurred in these events have not been understood until much later. This is an automatic signal that we may never be able to be completely certain about what actually happened. This is important to note because it reveals the secretive and ambiguous nature of these events.

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  3. All the interpretations offer more skepticism as too what happened during this period. This attests to the Soviet Union's and Allendes regime's plan to cover everything up. Maybe Allende and the Soviet Union had bigger plans and we may never know about them. These are important however, because understanding what happened as best as we can would help the US and other leading countries to not allow the same thing to happen. Whether this holds true over time could be argued.

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  4. The interpretations are significant because they can be used to try to understand what really happened.They sort of work like puzzle pieces- you can put each individual interpretation with the rest to get the bigger picture. However, the difference in historical interpretations raise many questions about what exactly happened- they also tend to be biased. There seems to be a lack of information regarding Chile's relationship with both the US and Soviet Union.

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  5. I believe that all of the different interpretations are very significant and more importantly a necessity because of the fact that no one really knows the exact answer. Everybody has their own opinions and ways of thinking so everyone will touch on different areas of the topic. I like how ashley said they work like a puzzle or how I thought, if you were to layer different pieces of paper each representing a different skepticism, over each other then press down, a full image will emerge from the overlapping themes. And I think that finding out just how involved we were is key to note because finding out the true answer may lead to some potential laws that we may have broken.

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  6. In all historical events it is important to look at different interpretations. In Chile and Allende's case we don't know until today whether he was involved with the Russians or not. These different interpretations don't help us to find out the truth but they give us a way more elaborate picture on what kind of person Allende was. And even in cases were we believe to know the truth, there are other interpretations that speak against it. I think i used this example before, but I was stunned and shocked when I heard how strongly South Americans believe that Hitler retired in Argentina and died of old age.

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  7. Interpretations are different because the accounts of the events differ between beliefs and evidence. People that are predisposed to like Allende, interpret his death in a different light than a completely unbiased person. Granted, none of these accounts are entirely biased basked upon what I have seen, there are several factors that influence what goes into a historical account. There is no finite answer, it lived and died with Allende. This is a complex event that has different moving parts, as my classmates said.

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  8. Its good to have all the different perspectives of the various authors. What one author might not know or might be biased about another one wouldn't necessarily have the same problems. The areas of history that these scholars debate about even to this day are important to consider because they could mean a secret interest in the coup involving the US. If you consider the US's involvement as truth, then it could have a negative impact on the reputation.

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  9. Just like Mike says, it might just be a good thing for us to have different version of history and interpretations. It is all about taking sides sometimes i read about history articles.

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