J. Patrice McSherry

J. Patrice McSherry is a professor and researcher currently associated with the Instituto de Estudios Avanzados (Institute for Advanced Studies, IDEA) of the University of Santiago, Chile, and Long Island University. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the CUNY Graduate School. A three-time Fulbright Award recipient, she has won various academic honors and grants such as the David Newton Award for Excellence in Teaching, Long Island University (2008) and the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Political Science M.A.-Ph.D. Program of The Graduate Center, City University of New York (2009). Her new book is Chilean New Song: The Political Power of Music, 1960s-1973 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2015), an analytical history of the New Song movement in its political and social context. McSherry’s previous books are Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005), named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title in 2006; Incomplete Transition: Military Power and Democracy in Argentina (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997; reissued 2008 iUniverse, Inc.); and the co-edited The Iraq Papers [with John Ehrenberg, José Ramón Sánchez, and Caroleen Marji Sayej, eds.] (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). She has written numerous articles on the New Song movement, military regimes in Latin America, Operation Condor, the Cold War, and the foreign policy of the U.S. in Latin America. McSherry teaches courses on these themes as well as on human rights, transitions to democracy, and Latin American politics.

Works

2015

Chilean New Song: The Political Power of Music, 1960s-1973

The music of la Nueva Canción, or Chilean New Song, that emerged in the 1960s was haunting and beautiful, incorporating indigenous stringed and wind instruments and combining folk rhythms with modern innovations. New Song's poetic lyrics cried out for social justice, equality, self-determination, and social change. The politically committed artists were an organic part of a larger popular movement for social and political change in Chile during the turbulent 1960s and 70s. The author argues that the music had democratizing power and created a potent sense of social unity, empathy, common cause, and political motivation among people. The New Song movement was crucial in electing democratic socialist Salvador Allende as president in 1970.