General Augusto Pinochet came to power in Chile in the 1970s after a brutal military coup and is seen by many as an archetypal Latin American dictator.
General Augusto Pinochet came to power in Chile in the 1970s after a brutal military coup and is seen by many as an archetypal Latin American dictator. But in the ’80s, he became the architect of the Latin American free-market revolution. A confidante of America’s Ronald Regan and Britain’s Margaret Thatcher, he was feted as a pioneer of the new world’s economic order. Now, aged 88, he is in England awaiting a decision on whether he should be extradited to Spain to face charges for crimes committed 25 years ago. Channel 4’s acclaimed biographical series strips away the myths surrounding the man viewed as both tyrant and saviour. With interviews from those who knew him and Isabelle Allende, author and daughter of the overthrown president, this is compulsive viewing.
