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Latent Memory
Human Rights and Jewish Identity in Pinochet's Chile
Maxine Lowy
In the first half of the twentieth century, Jewish immigrants and refugees sought to rebuild their lives in Chile. Despite their personal histories of marginalization in Europe, many of these people or their descendants did not take a stand against the 1973 military coup, nor the political persecution that followed. Chilean Jews’ collective failure to repudiate systematic human rights violations and their tacit support for the military dictatorship reflected a complicated moral calculus that weighed expediency over ethical considerations and ignored individual acts of moral courage.
Maxine Lowy draws upon hundreds of first-person testimonials and archival resources to explore Chilean Jewish identity in the wake of Pinochet’s coup, exposing the complex and sometimes contradictory development of collective traumatic memory and political sensibilities in an oppressive new context. Latent Memory points to processes of community gestures of moral reparation and signals the pathways to justice and healing associated with Shoah and the Jewish experience. Lowy asks how individuals and institutions may overcome fear, indifference, and convenience to take a stand even under intense political duress, posing questions applicable to any nation emerging from state repression.
Maxine Lowy is an editor, translator, and freelance journalist based in Santiago, Chile. Her work focuses on human rights and contemporary social issues. She is the author of Sembradoras de fe y esperanza: El legado de mujeres de comunidades cristianas populares. She created and coordinated the human rights website www.memoriayjusticia.cl.
Praise
“Remarkable. . . . Latent Memory is a substantial piece of scholarship, but above all a plea that latent memory should be transformed to an active, militant remembering of the past, and the determination not to see the suffering and injustice repeated.”
—Latin America Bureau
“A compelling and, of course, sobering read. . . . Lowy hopes that memory can create meaning, and prevent the same from happening again. I highly recommend reading her effort to do so.”
—The Americas
“A powerful and important book. . . . The book focuses on the Chilean Jewish community but the lessons it leaves extend to all of humanity. This is a book with universal relevance.”
—Bulletin of Latin American Research
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Larger images
January 2022
LC: 2021028713 F
304 pp. 6.5 x 9
6 b/w illus., 2 maps
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