Buying into the Regime: Grapes and Consumption in Cold War Chile and the United States

378 Pages·2014·4.105 MB·English

by  Heidi Tinsman

BUYING REGIME
INTO THE
(cid:43)
american encounters / global interactions
A series edited by Gilbert M. Joseph and Emily S. Rosenberg
This series aims to stimulate critical perspectives and fresh interpretive frameworks
for scholarship on the history of the imposing global presence of the United States. Its
primary concerns include the deployment and contestation of power, the construction
and deconstruction of cultural and pol itic al borders, the fl uid meanings of intercultural
encounters, and the complex interplay between the global and the local. American En-
counters seeks to strengthen dialogue and collaboration between historians of U.S. inter-
national relations and area studies specialists.
The series encourages scholarship based on multiarchival historical research. At the
same time, it supports a recognition of the repres ent at ional character of all stories about
the past and promotes critical inquiry into issues of subjectivity and narrative. In the
pro cess, American Encounters strives to understand the context in which meanings re-
lated to nations, cultures, and po liti cal economy are continually produced, challenged,
and reshaped.

Grapes and Consumption in Cold War
Chile and the United States HEIDI TINSMAN
Duke University Press Durham and London 2014
© 2014 Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper ∞
Designed by Courtney Leigh Baker
Typeset in Whitman by Westchester Publishing Services
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Tinsman, Heidi, 1964–
Buying into the regime : grapes and consumption in cold war
Chile and the United States / Heidi Tinsman.
pages cm — (American encounters/global interactions)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978- 0- 8223- 5520- 5 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn 978- 0- 8223- 5535- 9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Grape industry— Chile. 2. Chile— Foreign economic relations— United States.
3. United States— Foreign economic relations— Chile.
I. Title. II. Series: American encounters/global interactions.
hd9259.g7c55 2014
382′.41480983—dc23
2013029332
In memory of my father,
r. hovey tinsman jr.
★
And for my mother,
margaret neir tinsman

CONTENTS
Ac know ledg ments ★ ix
Introduction ★ 1
one
The Long Miracle
Collaborations in the Chilean Fruit Industry, 1900– 1990 ★ 25
two
Fables of Abundance
Grape Workers and Consumption in Chile ★ 64
three
The Fresh Sell
Marketing Grapes in the United States ★ 103
four
Boycott Grapes!
Challenges by the United Farm Workers and
the Chile Solidarity Movement ★ 146
five
Not Buying It
Democracy Struggles in Chile ★ 207
Epilogue ★ 255 Notes ★ 267 Bibliography ★ 331 Index ★ 349

AC KNOW LEDG MENTS
Buying into the Regime marks my eff ort to participate in debates about trans-
national studies and world history. While bearing my name as author, the
book directly springs from collaborative scholarship. I am particularly in-
debted to two smart and talented women, Sandhya Shukla and Ulrike Stras-
ser. My work with Sandhya at the Radical History Review and in our coedited
volume, Imagining Our Americas, provided the framework for examining
Chilean and U.S. history together. Sandhya pushed me to think across the
boundaries of Latin American and U.S. area studies, insisting that interdis-
ciplinary frameworks could reconceptualize area and region in ways espe-
cially relevant to historians. Ulrike and I cotaught the University of California’s
fi rst large survey course on gender and world history, coled a faculty re-
search seminar at the uc Humanities Research Institute titled “Historical
Problematics of Gender, Sexuality, and the Global,” and coauthored several
articles on masculinity, gender, and world history. Ulrike’s sharp insights
concretized why feminist analysis must be central to any serious project on
“the world.” It was also Ulrike who taught me the importance of studying
disconnections as well as connections in transnational dynamics. While col-
laborative work is given more lip ser vice than real recognition in many hu-
manist disciplines, this book would never have happened without the thrilling
opportunity to think, write, and publish with others.
Buying into the Regime is also the product of the rich intellectual environ-
ment at the University of California, Irvine. The Department of History’s
leadership in developing world history as a dynamic research and teaching
fi eld provided an inspiring place to craft a transnational project. I thank
Ken Pomeranz, Steven Topik, Bob Moeller, Jon Wiener, Mark Poster, Jeff