Tinsman, Heidi. Buying into the Regime: Grapes and Consumption in Cold War Chile and the United States.

Hall, Michael R.

Tinsman, Heidi. Buying into the Regime: Grapes and Consumption in Cold War Chile and the United States. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014.

Given the fluid writing style and the Californian/Chilean geographic setting encountered in this historical case study, one could easily imagine that the book under review is the latest installment of acclaimed Chilean novelist Isabel Allende's saga of the adventures of Eliza Sommers and her descendants. Buying into the Regime: Grapes and Consumption in Cold War Chile and the United States, however, is so much more than a well-written novel. Heidi Tinsman, Professor of History at the University of California at Irvine, has done extensive research into the historical linkages of production, consumption, and social movements in Californian and Chilean grape industry during the Cold War era. Readers familiar with Duke University's American Encounters/Global Interactions series, edited by Gilbert M. Joseph and Emily S. Rosenberg, will not be surprised that Buying into the Regime is part of this illustrious series of scholarly works.

The availability of fresh fruits and vegetables in US supermarkets expanded rapidly after 1970. According to Tinsman, the "growth in the US appetite for grapes outpaced that for all other fruits" (1). At the same time that grapes became more available to US consumers, they also "earned political notoriety" (1). The author explains how Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers (UFW) struggled to improve the lives of agricultural laborers, especially in California's grape industry. Although the UFW organized several grape boycotts, US consumers dramatically increased their consumption of grapes. As the US passion for grapes grew, consumers demanded access to grapes year-round. Following the 11 September 1973 military coup that overthrew Marxist President Salvador Allende, "almost all grapes eaten in the United States between January and April have come from Chile" (2). Military leader Augusto Pinochet implemented neo-liberal economic reforms that salvaged Chile's tattered economy adversely affected by three years of Allende's Socialist experiment. For many, Chile's grape exports were heralded as an example of Pinochet's success in re-invigorating the economy. Tinsman, however, laments that the so-called economic miracle was "predicated on extensive repression and exploitation: persecution of organized labor, ghastly human rights abuses, and the massive employment of low-paid workers, unprecedented numbers of which were women" (2).

For the author, grapes were part of a long list of commodities, such as sugar, bananas, and coffee, that were produced overseas by authoritarian regimes and exported to US markets to satisfy the eating habits of US consumers. Tinsman contends that it was during the Cold War era that the symbiotic relationship between Third World producers and US consumers became "most charged" (2). The author contends that it seemed that "American consumer plenty was based on exploiting Latin American neighbors rather than sharing the American Dream" (3). Meanwhile, businessmen in both Chile and the United States engaged in elaborate promotion campaigns designed to encourage consumers to purchase more grapes as a healthy alternative to fat-laden processed foods such as Twinkies. At the same time, Tinsman examines the desires and consequences of Chilean fruit workers' consumption. Although Pinochet claimed that his regime had brought consumer plenty to the Chilean people, his opponents argued "the idea of inadequate consumption-either the notion that there was not enough to go around or that some forms of consumption were morally bankrupt" (6).

Tinsman's discussion of the connection between US consumption of grapes and social justice is thought-provoking. On the home front, the UFW argued that grapes "were poisoned with pesticides and made with the blood and sweat of farm-workers, most of whom were Mexican American or Mexican immigrants" (8). In addition, US activists and other vocal radicals complained that US purchases of Chilean grapes supported Pinochet's authoritarian regime. Although the activists were quite critical of the close economic relationship between the United States and Chile during the Cold War, especially during Ronald Reagan's administration, the American people "ate more grapes-imported and domestic-than ever before" (9).

Buying into the Regime: Grapes and Consumption in Cold War Chile and the United States is a well-balanced case study. Whereas most case studies of commodities in US-Latin American relations emphasize the production aspect of the commodity, Tinsman (without ignoring production) provides a coherent discussion of the impact and nature of consumption. Significantly, the author posits that "many of the concerns in the twenty-first century about globalization were forged during the Cold War and particularly shaped by relations between the United States and Latin America" (22-23). Students and scholars of US and Chilean gender, labor, and commodity history will benefit from reading this path-breaking study.

Michael R. Hall

Armstrong State University