On September 11th, 1973, Augusto Pinochet orchestrated his coup against socialist president Salvador Allende, effectively implementing a military dictatorship. He soon passed the National Law for Internal Security which increased penalties for violating the Press Law and established the institution DINACOS (the National Information Directorate) which was responsible for censoring the written word and the airwaves. Over the course of his reign, Pinochet continued to enshrine censorship in the law. The constitution was changed to establish limits to the freedom of speech, opposition media was prohibited and reporting about protests against the Pinochet government was criminalized.
As a direct result of Pinochet’s decisions and legal changes, over 40,000 editors, authors and other artists were persecuted and more than 3,000 were murdered. Often, the military hid any trace of their remains. Publishers were strictly monitored and ordered not to publish certain books and newspapers. On multiple occasion, books were burned, for example in Valparaíso on November 28th, 1986. Chilean customs had seized nearly 15,000 copies of books written by Gabriel Garciá Márquez and subsequently incinerated the stacks.
Since the fall of Pinochet’s dictatorship in 1990, democratic Chile has facilitated a lot of research into the censorship practices of his regime. Access has been provided to official records and researchers have investigated human rights violations. As part of such an investigation, a list of formerly prohibited books was published by José Miguel Moral Bravo (Universidad de Concepción) and Miguel Ramos Rojas (Universidad de la República). From this list, we have added approximately 170 titles to the Kasseler Liste as part of a seminar at the University of Kassel.
March 31st, 2025
Source and foundation of our research: Moral Bravo, J. M. & Ramos Rojas, M.: Colección Libros Destruidos y Prohibidos en Dictadura 1973-1990, https://www.librosprohibidos.cl.