Document(s) 6 of 9

In the 1970s, the countries of South America's Southern Cone shared most of the common and ruinous features of their dictatorships: murder, torture, persecution of democratic political movements, purges of university faculties — and the terrifying phenomenon of disappearances. Among researchers and scholars, none were more threatened than social scientists, whose probing work and discoveries often challenged the regimes themselves.

In Chile alone, some 3 000 social scientists left the country after the 1973 coup; in 1980, more than 500 professors were fired from Chilean universities in a single semester.

The coercive suppression of social science research menaced lives and livelihoods — and undercut the region’s prospects for future development

Document(s) 6 of 9