APSI Magazine: Underground Critiques in an Overground Magazine
APSI Magazine: Underground Critiques in an Overground Magazine
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9 October 2023
APSI, or Agencia Publicitaria de Servicios Informativos, was an overground magazine that circulated subversive critiques of the Pinochet regime. In this teaching tool, we show how APSI used this ‘permission to circulate’ to unmask Chilean military authoritarianism in broad daylight. Through coverage of internationalist issues, including Third Worldist movements and authoritarianism elsewhere, APSI cultivated an anti-dictatorial narrative […]
APSI Magazine
On 11 September 1973, Augusto Pinochet led an infamous and violent coup, that established a dictatorship led by all branches of the Chilean armed forces. After overthrowing the democratically elected government of President Salvador Allende, Pinochet and his accomplices suppressed the national congress and ruled through decrees, eliminating all left-wing outlets, and censoring the little media that remained. After the purge, only two newspapers remained: El Mercurio and La Tercera. El Mercurio and La Tercera were the two main newspapers in Chile. Both continue to operate to this day, and remain a voice of the political right. During the government of Salvador Allende, these two newspapers played an essential role in inciting the armed rebellion which led to the military coup. And, during the dictatorship these papers gave a voice to the adherents of the military regime. Journalists from media affiliated with the Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende were persecuted, exiled, imprisoned, and tortured. Many lost their jobs and all of them had watch what they said.
It was in this time, during the worst years of the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, that the fortnightly magazine APSI was born. This small publication was initially a humble attempt by a group of journalists to continue their work in an extremely hostile and violent environment.
APSI is the acronym for Agencia Publicitaria de Servicios Informativos (in English, Information Services Advertising Agency), a nondescript name that allowed those behind the initiative to continue their work without arousing further suspicion from the regime’s censors.
To circumvent censorship and crackdown, APSI was born as an international news bulletin. Its cover indicated that it was a fortnightly report on international news. However, in 1979, in its 59th issue, there was a small but significant turn: It added national news to its name, which now read APSI: National and International News.
APSI proved to be a successful publication. Building on this momentum, its editors decided to tackle the issue of the economy: faced with neoliberal reforms that they saw as detrimental, they decided to take the publication to the next level by reporting on national events, despite the risks this would entail. In addition, a cartoonist was incorporated and the covers, little by little, began to be more stylised. They used bold colours and striking photography to draw attention to controversial issues. Some national events, especially controversial ones that PAÍS began to cover, included repression in working-class areas of the cities and the state of the national economy under neoliberal reforms.
The magazine, as well as other magazines during those years, emerged under the wing of the Church, mainly the Archbishop of Santiago de Chile, Raúl Silva Henríquez. In the early days of the dictatorship, the Committee for Cooperation for Peace in Chile, or Comité Pro Paz, was created as a collaboration between the Christian churches and the Jewish community. This organisation tried to protect and defend the detainees of the regime. But around 1975, the Committee made the regime extremely uncomfortable, so the church was ordered to close it. In the wake of this closure, the Archdiocese of Santiago created the Vicaría de la Solidaridad, a Christian Catholic organisation which provided support for the victims of the Pinochet regime. It channeled international aid and allowed many journalists supported by the Pro Paz Committee to develop independent journalistic projects in a hostile media environment.
Since the media was under the strict control of the regime’s censors, the new journalistic initiatives including APSI, Analysis magazine, Hoy magazine, and others first had to submit a copy of their issue to regime censors before they were allowed to publish. The Direction of Social Communication or DINACOS, which was commanded by the military, oversaw the media.
Though APSI was born in a dangerous environment for journalists, its editors wanted to keep their readers informed. That is why they created this bulletin, which more than a magazine was a newsletter of internationalist information. One of the journalists who started working at APSI was John Dinges from the United States, who arrived in Chile during the government of Salvador Allende and stayed in Chile after the coup reporting to the United States media on Chilean events at great personal risk. Dinges wrote about the United States. Each journalist specialised in a region, including Africa, Latin America, Asia and Europe. They stayed on top of international events by reviewing international newspapers and magazines that were collected by a businessman at Santiago Airport from different airlines operating in Chile. Through this method, the magazine featured global socialist struggles in a context where the Chilean military dictatorship – a far right, extreme nationalist formation – was purging communists from Chile. By covering authoritarian, anti-communist violence elsewhere, the magazine surreptitiously commented on events within Chile without naming them directly.
Despite the threats, the editors of APSI – specifically its creator, Arturo Navarro – believed that the profession of journalism was fundamental in the fight against the dictatorship. So, he distributed the magazine’s serials himself, driving around in a humble car, to get it to his subscribers. The first issues were very simple and circulated almost clandestinely, but as the magazine began to attract attention and spread, it no longer circulated in secret.
Nineteen-eighty was an important year for the dictatorship–and a turning point for APSI itself. That year the new political constitution of Chile, drafted by pro-regime intellectuals, was passed. Yet, it allowed new media outlets to be published, and alternative magazines like APSI were able to opt for financing via advertising, subscriptions, and international aid. Yet, this opportunity also worked as a kind of exposure: those selling and distributing the magazine would now assume personal risks. That is because the regime, despite stating the opposite, continued its practice of censorship. Indeed, at different times, APSI‘s journalists were threatened with death, attacked, imprisoned, and harassed. Yet, they continued to report. Arturo Navarro, the first founder and first director of APSI, in an interview we did with him in 2023, exemplified this with his own story, by narrating how the Minister of the Interior Sergio Fernandez threatened to personally expel him from the country if he continued to publish the magazine.
▴ Front Page No. 2 1976: The style of the first issues was austere and nondescript so as not to anger the regime's censors. In this issue, it is possible to see an article on US politics at a time when that country's elections were crucial in South America due to the eventual rejection or support of the US for local dictatorships.
▴ This was the first issue of APSI, showing it as an international and national current affairs magazine. Given the success it was attracting, the directors and journalists decided that they would leap into direct commentary on national issues. This meant that they assumed significant personal risk. In addition, it is the first issue featuring the work of a cartoonist. The covers, from this point on, no longer had that austere style that characterised them at the beginning.
▴ Front Page No. 102 1981: This cover was very controversial. For the first time, a media outlet dared to talk about the feared CNI (national intelligence center), the political police of the dictatorship. Arturo Navarro tells in an interview in August 2023 that it was difficult for them to decide to put up that cover, but they dared to do it, and it cost them dearly. After this issue, they received constant threats of closures.
▴ Front Page 136 1984: After drafting the 1980 constitution commissioned by the military and approved in a fraudulent election, and after a deep economic crisis in 1982 and amid intense repression, APSI showed in a reportage how the dictatorship tortured its victims. This cover shows one of the diagrams prepared by the journalists of the featured reportage piece. It illustrates through the image the extreme form of torture applied by the secret police of the regime.
▴ Front Page No. 173 1986: The front of this cover reads: “Pinochet's psychic traits." At a time when the political opposition was preparing to forge a way out of the dictatorial regime and international solidarity movements supported this anti-authoritarian cause, APSI wrote about the dictator from a psychological angle, in an attempt to explain his authoritarianism and practices of bloody repression.
▴ In 1983 protests against the dictatorial regime broke out. This is reflected on this cover, which shows a saucepan and kitchen maso, two instruments used by people to make sounds from their homes in protest against the dictatorship. Chileans began to sound the pots discreetly at first, out of fear, but when fear gave way to weariness, the protests (and repression) intensified. The cover reads "International Recipe Book: Ingredients for Democracy," alluding to the fact that two kitchen gadgets were enough to protest the dictatorship.
▴ "It's not communism; it's hunger," reads this cover of APSI. The military regime responded to protests with extreme repression, declaring that they were part of an international communist conspiracy. But what drove Chileans to protest was not an organised international communist conspiracy, but hunger in the face of the squalid economic situation born out of the regime's disastrous neoliberal economic policies.
APSI Covers
▴ This was the first issue of APSI, showing it as an international and national current affairs magazine. Given the success it was attracting, the directors and journalists decided that they would leap into direct commentary on national issues. This meant that they assumed significant personal risk. In addition, it is the first issue featuring the work of a cartoonist. The covers, from this point on, no longer had that austere style that characterised them at the beginning.
Front Page No. 59 1979
This was the first issue of APSI, showing it as an international and national current affairs magazine. Given the success it was attracting, the directors and journalists decided that they would leap into direct commentary on national issues. This meant that they assumed significant personal risk. In addition, it is the first issue featuring the work of a cartoonist. The covers, from this point on, no longer had that austere style that characterised them at the beginning.
Censorship
APSI constantly faced censorship. Its journalists were constantly persecuted. Many issues were confiscated and bans were applied when the magazine attempted to write about national events. APSI editors and journalists confronted this censorship by ensuring that traces of it were visible to its readers, despite the constant oversight by the censorship office to which APSI had to submit every copy of the magazine before print and distribution. While it made the publishing process very slow, it did allow APSI to showcase its critique through creative methods.
There were several creative ways that APSI circumvented censorship.
When talking about the cultural marginalization of the country during the dictatorship, the magazine focused on the prior censorship policy of the regime. The culture section, which was born at the beginning of the eighties, became a platform to talk about the regime’s censorship, for example, in the interview with Joan Báez in 1982. In a time when almost no artist came to Chile, a major artist like Joan Báez performing in Chile and giving an interview was an important event.
A letter by Pope John Paul II to the peoples of Chile and Argentina was another device through which APSI circumvented censorship. The Catholic Church was an important institution during the military regime, giving shelter to a great number of intellectuals, politicians, and journalists. People in the country still consider themselves as Catholics, so a letter from the Pope was an important tool to fight the dictatorship, as it featured various critiques within the pages of APSI.
The most interesting way that APSI circumvented censorship was through humour. For example, in issues 170, 171, and 186, mocking images of the dictator appeared, which could have had serious consequences for editors and journalists.
The cover of number 188 of 1986 reflects the consequences the magazine faced for its provocations to the regime: Number 187 had been requisitioned.
At a time when left-wing parties were outlawed and their militants persecuted, showing left-wing journalistic content was dangerous, which is why the interview with Hortensia Bussi, widow of deposed president Salvador Allende, was an incredible feat given the intense pressures to censor what had happened. In that interview Bussi said that she didn’t hate Pinochet, she despised him. APSI managed to run the interview.
▴ No. 116 1982: This image shows a regime stamp that prohibits this particular issue's circulation. Those responsible for the magazine circulated it clandestinely among known subscribers of the journal, defying the censorship office's decision to block publication and distribution.
▴ No. 116 1982: This image shows a regime stamp that prohibits this particular issue's circulation. Those responsible for the magazine circulated it clandestinely among known subscribers of the journal, defying the censorship office's decision to block publication and distribution.
▴ No. 162 1985: Elizabeth Subercaseaux was a journalist for APSI and the magazine's national editor. On September 15 of that year, she was attacked by two people in her home in a clear example of the intimidation tactics of the dictatorial regime against APSI. The journalist received various signs of support, which this report indicates. Subercaseaux continued working at APSI, and a few years later, in 1988, she even interviewed Pinochet, making her and Raquel Correa the first journalists to interview the dictator.
▴ No. 138 1984: A clear example of how APSI transgressed and defied the censorship of the dictatorial government was this interview with the widow of Salvador Allende, Hortensia Bussi. On September 11, 1973, the Palacio de la Moneda and the presidential residence of Allende, where his wife and daughters lived, was bombed. They immediately went into exile, while Allende was buried without any protocol in a small cemetery in the city of Viña del Mar. Bussi became a spokesperson against the dictatorship around the world, denouncing the regime's abuses.
▴ During the dictatorship there was a cultural blackout, which was correlated with the absence of critical cultural networks that were allowed to operate, and a shortage of creators (intellectuals, musicians, artists) who could openly work against the regime. However, the few artists that stayed in Chile under adverse circumstances (poverty and political harassment) made efforts to keep alive a critical cultural sphere. It is in this context It is in this context that the folk singer from New York Joan Baez, was interviewed by APSI magazine. In her interview, she made an extensive analysis criticising the military dictatorship in Chile. This interview presented a direct challenge to the censorship policies of the regime.
The images above show the dictator Pinochet being mocked. These examples show the acidic humour of the magazine. Pinochet displayed his serious and circumspect demeanour, always in a military uniform in the 1970s. After the approval of the new constitution in 1980, he began to appear in civilian clothes; now, he was president, not just a member of the military junta. Showing him in athletic shorts was a challenge to his attempt to cultivate this serious, civilian image. Showing him as a dancer sought also to ridicule him, alluding to the pirouettes and dances that the dictator did to stay in power. The image in number 186 shows him as father, mother, and son, reflecting that the new transitional government that the dictatorship was preparing at that time was nothing more than the extension of eight more years of the same dictator. Pinochet was finally defeated at the polls by the citizens in the 1988 plebiscite, so that did not materialise.
Internationalism in APSI
APSI commented on Chile through its coverage of international anti-communist and authoritarian violence, which mirrored conditions in Chile and formed the basis of an internationalist critique of regimes like the one of Pinochet.
When the founders of APSI decided to inaugurate the magazine, they contacted DINACOS (National Division of Social Communication) which was in charge of the regime’s censorship policies, to ask about the requirements that they had to fulfil in order to establish a media outlet. Until then, in 1976, media outlets (primarily from the political left) had only been shut down; no new media organisations had been established. Given their decision to approach DINACOS, the censorship entity allowed APSI to establish a magazine under the condition that they not refer to events in Chile. APSI also had to agree to submit the magazine to DINACOS’ oversight. This meant that each issue went through the censorship office before it was printed. After it was published, its copies needed to again be sent to the regime’s censorship office. Only then – and after permission from DINACOS – did APSI have permission to distribute its copies to potential readers.
By commenting on international affairs, rather than events within Chile, APSI managed to use what was happening elsewhere as a mode through which to comment on domestic affairs. There are several examples of this.
For example, by covering news from Argentina or Brazil, the dictatorships of these neighbouring countries served as a metaphor to represent what was happening with the Chilean dictatorship. Covering those moments when these dictatorships began to give way to democratisation processes became a way to discuss the possibility of democratic recovery in Chile.
International solidarity was essential APSI’s ability to launch underground critiques in a legal, overground magazine. It was made possible for at least two reasons. Firstly, it was possible because those who financed it, and those who collaborated with the magazine, largely supported its anti-authoritarian stance within and beyond Chile. Funding for alternative magazines during the dictatorship came from European cooperation agencies, such as French Entraide Fraternité and Dutch Novib, whose governments largely supported the cause of democratisation within Chile. The Italian government also supported magazines like APSI by giving refuge to socialist exiles who moved and lived in Italy, like Jorge Arrate. Exiles like Arrate, Carlos Altamirano, and others, supported the cause against the dictatorship from abroad. The European cooperation agencies supported the cause against Chilean authoritarianism, and the international left and the exiles ensured that there was a constant flow of support for the re-establishment of democracy.
Secondly, in Chile there were a group of intellectuals and journalists who did not go into exile but who maintained left and internationalist positions; many of them circulated in magazines like APSI. This included people like the founder of APSI himself, Arturo Navarro, as well Mladen Yopo, Sergio Marras, Maria Olivia Monckeberg, John Dinges, and others. In 1983, during an act of solidarity with the Chilean press during the dictatorship, the deputy director of the newspaper El País, Augusto Delkáder from Spain, was in Santiago and was interviewed by the APSI team. Augusto Delkáder referred to the situation of Chile in dictatorship and his impressions from Spain, comparing the histories of dictatorship in Chile and Spain.
Finally, international events that mirrored similar conditions of repression allowed APSI writers to speak about domestic repression through international events, covertly but not directly referring to what was happening in Chile at the time. This was after all a time when information technologies were modest and censorship rampant. The offices of alternative magazines to the dictatorial regime were transformed into information centres, and international journalists, intellectuals, and politicians were informed by them and fed ideas into them. Because the military intervened in universities, the importance of these magazines was fundamental to maintaining an intellectual public space. As a result, alternative research centres and alternative magazines functioned as anti-authoritarian centres of thought, information, and dissemination of critical ideas. APSI was able to speak about repression locally through references to international events. For instance, at a time when protests were violently repressed, APSI turned to commentary on the First Intifada in Palestine. This was in 1986, when an attack on Pinochet, which the alternative press was unable to refer to, took place. Commentary on the intifada the following year made it possible to analyse the Palestinian situation and through that, covertly analyse the condition of protests and repression in Chile.
Discussions about the Third World were also crucial until the beginning of the eighties. With President Salvador Allende, Chile was a country valued by the countries that made up the Tricontinental. The dictatorship tried to erase memories of this historical moment, but a weak and persecuted anti-imperialist intelligentsia was able to continue to express itself, however indirectly, on the pages of APSI. The events in Africa and the Middle East also caught the attention of APSI; in a country closed in on itself and with a nationalist and fascist dictatorship, knowing the events in remote places was a way to talk about conditions of repression in Chile.
▴ No. 35 1978: "Egypt and Israel, how are we alike?" In this more controversial coverage of peace processes between Egypt and Israel, APSI used the negotiations as a way to speak about the necessity for compromises by the regime to ensure a pathway towards greater democracy and an end to dictatorship. Unlike its more favourable coverage of the First Intifada, APSI used this much-criticised deal to think through the challenges of moving away from dictatorship in Chile.
▴ No. 125 1983: APSI was born from the vocation of left-wing professionals during a far-right dictatorship. The concern of the Chilean left, in Chile and exile, was the renewal of socialism after the defeat of Salvador Allende's project and the persecution of the left. "Democracy in Latin America, the socialist challenge" is the title of this article. It has this title because of what it witnessed as the decline of dictatorships, which it saw as paving the way for eventual democratisation. The work facing socialism was to become a democratic alternative to the military junta.
▴ No. 110 1982: Latin American relations after the Malvinas. After Argentina lost the war against England over the Malvinas Islands (Falkland Islands), there was concern about the state of relations between Latin American countries. Specifically, there was a concern that dictatorships only cooperated with one another to persecute dissidents. This article explores how democracy can be brought in light of relations that may push in anti-democratic directions.
▴ About the Palestinian Intifada. The dictatorship harshly repressed Chilean social protests. When the Palestinian Intifada began in 1987, Chile was experiencing a difficult period. In September 1986, there was a failed assassination attempt against the dictator Pinochet. This encouraged the dictatorship to increase repression against civil society. The Intifada and the symbol of the Palestinian rebellion – of stones thrown against the Israeli occupier – were seen as a very significant form of popular rebellion in a country that was living under dictatorial brutality.
▴ This, too, is an article about the First Intifada in Palestine, which like Issue 249 showed a mode through which the APSI editors commented on the repression of rebellion under conditions of dictatorship and authoritarianism in Chile.
▴ APSI maintained broad and in-depth coverage of the situation in Nicaragua. In this Central American country, there was a revolutionary process of the left, called the Sandinista Revolution, named after Augusto Cesar Sandino, a guerrilla fighter at the beginning of the 20th century. The leader of that revolution was Daniel Ortega. Given that Chile had experienced the overthrow of democracy by a right-wing dictatorship, the Chilean left was looking for references, and found these in Nicaragua.
Key Figures
Image Source: La Nación Newspaper
Cardinal Raúl Silva Henríquez
Archbishop of Santiago since 1961, ordained a Cardinal by the Pope in 1962. During the years of the dictatorship, he was a key figure who confronted the dictatorship, offering shelter to those persecuted by the dictatorship, promoting respect for human rights and giving refuge to the families of the disappeared. Thanks to the efforts of Silva Henríquez, magazines in opposition to the dictatorial regime, such as APSI, Análisis, and Hoy, were born.
Image source: La Época Newspaper.
John Dinges
An American journalist who arrived in Chile in 1972 to cover the political events of Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity government. After the coup d’état by the Chilean Armed Forces, he stayed in Chile, taking advantage of his closeness to Chilean journalists to inform the international media about Chilean conditions amid military repression. Under the auspices of the Archbishop of Santiago, Dinges with Arturo Navarro formed APSI magazine.
Arturo Navarro
Sociologist and journalist, Navarro studied at the Catholic University of Chile in the 1960s, when Latin American sociology was an essential source of social criticism. During the time of Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity government, he worked at the Quimantú editorial, a publishing house formed by the government to encourage reading in the popular sectors and promote the values of socialism. After the coup, he worked for the Comité Pro Paz, formed by the churches of Chile and the Jewish community. In 1976, Cardinal Raúl Silva created the Vicaría de la Solidaridad after Pinochet forced the closure of the committee, which offered shelter to former supporters of Allende who neither went into exile nor were assassinated. Arturo Navarro and other journalists decided to create a means of communication that would be an alternative to the few media that existed and were close to the dictatorship. This is how APSI was born, whose first director was Navarro himself. For 150 issues, he was its director; in 1981, he had to leave APSI due to the pressures and threats he received from the sitting military junta.
Neoliberalism
APSI was one of the first publications to speak critically about the neoliberal economic model that the dictatorship was implementing. Between the late 1950s and the beginning of the 1970s, a small but select group of economics students from the Catholic University of Chile had the opportunity to go on to do postgraduate studies in economics at the prestigious University of Chicago. The first group to study economics in Chicago became leaders of the economic opposition to the Salvador Allende’s government. Since they studied in Chicago, they were soon called the “Chicago Boys.” When the government of Allende’s Popular Unity began, this group of economists elaborated on an economic proposal aimed at overcoming Allende’s socialism. They aimed to put the country on a neoliberal path inspired by the likes of Milton Friedman and his Chicago colleagues. The manuscript in which they spoke of thees ideas was called El Ladrillo (The Brick) due to its voluminous thickness and dry content.
After the overthrow of Allende’s government, many left-wing intellectuals and academics went into exile or were imprisoned, but some maintained ties with Chile, while others remained in the country. Some took advantage of the platform offered by APSI to write critically about the national economy under neoliberal ideas. For example, institutions like the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO), founded under initiative of UNESCO in 1957 to promote the development of scientific research in the social sciences within the region, used to be a key site of academic resistance to the dictatorship. However, during the dictatorship, sociologists and political scientists were fired from such universities. One of its researchers, Pilar Vergara, was interviewed by APSI magazine (issue no. 171). In the interview, she openly criticised the regime’s economic policies. Vergara explains in that interview that the progressive tradition of Chile had nothing in common with the neoliberal reforms of the dictatorship because the neoliberal reforms came from an authoritarian regime backed by the Chicago Boys.
In 1985, a dossier on the economy was published with articles by Chilean economists with critical reflections on the neoliberalism of the dictatorship. This dossier could have been an initial space within which alternative economic thinking to the mainstream view of the dictatorship in the Chilean press could be showcased. However, its impact was minimal because the magazine did not publish many numbers. Nevertheless, the issue did reveal that there was an alternative to the predominant attachment to neoliberalism under this Chilean dictatorship. The APSI magazine became a space in which dissident voices against neoliberalism were featured, at a time when they had been violently repressed elsewhere.
▴ No. 105 1981: Anibal Pinto Santa Cruz was a prominent economist at the University of Chile, one of the few critical voices that remained in Chile during the dictatorship. In this interview, he talks about the urgency of getting out of ”the ideological cobwebs to return the State as playing an active role in the economy.“
▴ No. 160 1985: Dossier on the economy, this supplement did not have many issues, particularly in this issue, they write about the privatization of companies. The question of the article is: Were the Chileans asked? Referring to the fact that this process was carried out in an authoritarian way.
▴ No. 171 1986: Interview with Pilar Vergara, a sociologist from the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO), in which she refers to the scope of the neoliberal reforms, which gradually spread from the economy to other spheres of social life. This interview was the first time a Chilean intellectual verified that a neoliberal society was beginning to be outlined.
▴ No. 35 1978: Countries can also be poorer is the article's title on the economy from 1978. It critically analyzes the international financial system and the substantial imbalances in the balance of wages. The article does not talk about Chile; at that time, APSI was not allowed to do so, but when talking about the international economy and neoliberalism, it warns about the consequences of the regime's reforms.
▴ Interview with Alejandro Foxley, an economist from the Christian Democracy party. Foxley had studied in the United States but was not a supporter of neoliberalism like the Chicago Boys. CIEPLAN (Corporation of Studies for Latin America), the think-tank founded in 1976, in where he worked, was a critical voice with the economic measures of the dictatorship. In this interview, he points out that there can be no economic opening without a political opening.
APSI Magazine: Underground Critiques in an Overground Magazine
APSI, or Agencia Publicitaria de Servicios Informativos, was an overground magazine that circulated subversive critiques of the Pinochet regime. In this teaching tool, we show how APSI used this ‘permission to circulate’ to unmask Chilean military authoritarianism in broad daylight. Through coverage of internationalist issues, including Third Worldist movements and authoritarianism elsewhere, APSI cultivated an anti-dictatorial narrative on international affairs. By speaking about issues elsewhere, APSI was able to indirectly comment on issues within Chile without indicating this directly. Meanwhile, through the use of creative methods like humour and letters from the pope – so revered in a primarily Catholic Chile – APSI circumvent direct censorship from the offices of the military regime. Through cartoons and the publication of the pope’s letter, the magazine mocked Pinochet and showed an alternative moral outlook on the dictatorship. And by publishing inteviews of leading Chilean social scientists who had lost academic jobs because of their critiques of neoliberalism, APSI provided an alternative forum for a vision of the economy that challenged that of the neoliberal, military regime supported by the likes of Milton Friedman’s “Chicago Boys.”