Set against the romance of revolution and the terror of the 1973 Chile military coup, this arresting mystery is also a reckoning with the callousness of U.S. foreign policy.
In 1972 two idealistic young Americans, Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, arrived in Chile to participate in President Salvador Allende’s socialist and democratic revolution. A year later they were secretly executed as the Chilean military, with U.S. backing, deposed Allende. Embarrassed at the murders by their new ally, U.S. officials feigned an investigation and assisted in a coverup. A Chilean defector then levelled a stunning but ultimately false accusation charge: that a CIA agent was in the room when one of the killings was ordered.
The defector’s tale inspired the acclaimed 1982 film Missing, and established U.S. involvement as the accepted narrative. But Chile in Their Hearts exposes the tale as a fabrication and leads us to a more intriguing reality. This book will force readers to rethink what they thought they knew about this infamous case. Renowned investigative journalist John Dinges scoured U.S. and Chilean archives and interviewed new witnesses to reveal the true story of the killings and the compelling adventure of the two Americans’ lives against the backdrop of U.S. intervention in the 1973 Chile military coup.
New book by John Dinges, forthcoming in March 2025 from University of California Press
John Dinges reported from Chile during the coup and its violent aftermath (1972–1978). A correspondent for the Washington Post, and later managing editor at NPR, he is Professor Emeritus of journalism at Columbia University. His books include The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents.
