Augusto Pinochet toppled Salvador Allende in 1973 and formed a military dictatorship in Chile. This South American country's relationship to the world outside its borders has long been one of historic, cultural, and geographic isolation. To protest the dictatorship, democratic countries imposed a cultural boycott on Chile that lasted 16 years.

Isabel Allende, in The House of the Spirits, writes a fictional account of the 1973 coup, which she witnessed. Because of the coup, her uncle lost Chile to Pinochet, and the entire Allende family fled.