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

by Heidi Tinsman

Buying into the Regime is a transnational history of how Chilean grapes created new forms of consumption and labor politics in both the United States and Chile. After seizing power in 1973, Augusto Pinochet embraced neoliberalism, transforming Chile’s economy. The country became the world's leading grape exporter. Heidi Tinsman traces the rise of Chile's fruit industry, examining how income from grape production enabled fruit workers, many of whom were women, to buy the commodities—appliances, clothing, cosmetics—flowing into Chile, and how this new consumerism influenced gender relations, as well as pro-democracy movements. Back in the United States, Chilean and U.S. businessmen aggressively marketed grapes as a wholesome snack. At the same time, the United Farm Workers and Chilean solidarity activists led parallel boycotts highlighting the use of pesticides and exploitation of labor in grape production. By the early-twenty-first century, Americans may have been better informed, but they were eating more grapes than ever.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

376 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoroughly researched transnational history of grapes in the US and Chile, I especially enjoyed the interdisciplinary approach to Tinsman’s scholarship. Exploring consumerism, labor history, women’s history, and international trade, I’d recommend this book to anyone interested in food studies.

[Gregory · Rating 4 out of 5]

From http://weeksnotice.blogspot.com/2014/...

I read Heidi Tinsman's Buying into the Regime: Grapes and Consumption in Cold War Chile and the United States (2014) to review for Journal of Interdisciplinary History. I don't know when that will come out, but here is a small taste. It analyzes what became a strong connection between the two countries based on grape exports and what I like in particular is that Tinsman consciously avoids easy answers and simplifications, which makes it a worthy contribution to the already large literature on Cold War Chile. There are a lot of contradictions and contrasts:

Academics from the United States are part of the contrasts. The Chilean grape industry grew substantially under the market-driven economy of the military government, but existed in the first place because of the state-driven policies of the Eduardo Frei and Salvador Allende administrations. Universities in the United States played important roles in both, as researchers from the University of California at Davis gave extensive agricultural assistance in the 1960s and Chilean economists from the University of Chicago created the policy architecture for the grapes to be exported in the 1970s and beyond.

As Tinsman points out, consumption was central to the historical development of the grape export industry and the long-term responses to it. Depending on your vantage point, eating (or choosing not to eat) grapes could denote support for a government, opposition to a government, general nationalism, protest over a repressive global economic system, support for labor and/or recognition of the human costs of feeding the United States. Those perspectives shift if you are a Chilean or if you are a U.S. citizen, and if you are eating fruit from Chile or from the United States.

[Aura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent piece of scholarship! Great analysis on Neoliberalism, exposing many actors that do not appear in traditional historiography. Also did a great job in problematizing gender relations and consumption.

[Elly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I never thought I would be excited to read about grapes.

[katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't been adding my school books because I don't want to count them toward my challenge, but I want to remember this one for later. I won't input a date so it won't count it (though I read it on Feb 28, 2016). This is an excellent book about labor, neoliberalism, and gender, and the best transnational history I've read. Very engaging and inspiring for research.