Between hope and despair: Women learning politics. Donna M. Chovanec. Fernwood Publishing, Blackpoint, NS, 2009, 128 pages.

professor at the University of Alberta, has written about her long-term research connection with women anti-dictatorship activists living in Arica, Chile, the country's most northern coastal city.Early in the book, Chovanec offers a succinct summary of Chile's long history of oppression, also pointing to the equally significant history of resistance and dissent through labour, women's, and indigenous movements.Through interviews, she explores (with depth and great detail) the retrospective reflections of the women of Arica about the past and their contributions to the battle for freedom that took place after the overthrow of Allende's socialist government in 1973, which was followed by a brutal repressive military dictatorship led by General Augusto Pinochet.Thousands were assassinated and exiled.Chovanec reminds us that Pinochet's repressive regime was part of a long-standing process of colonization, which has left its mark throughout Latin America.Forced underground by the military dictatorship, many Chilean citizens lived in fear until the early 1980s, when protests began to reemerge with women at the forefront.This book tells the story of their courage, tactics, and strategies, as well as the long-term impact on these women of their engagement.The book makes a significant contribution to the scholarship of learning in social movements, an important area of inquiry in the field of adult education.The book is divided into two parts.In Part One, Chovanec focuses on the data, organizing her analysis into four sections, or acts, while in Part Two, she considers the case in light of current theorizing about social movement learning.In the first act (Los Antecendentes) of Part One, Chovanec maps the background and the family and social contexts that influenced the women's activism.Readers will be drawn into the geography of Arica as Chovanec provides a thick description of the setting, giving us a sense of the geography, street scenes, houses, markets, and businesses of the city.We learn how family and, in particular, the democratic and socialist orientations of many in this northern city were significant spheres of learning for these women.Municipal politics, richly informed by leftist approaches, also influenced their activism.The second act (La Lucha, or the struggle) outlines the different activities and women's experiences during the anti-dictatorship movement, beginning with the first meeting in 1983 and ending in 1990 when the dictatorship was finally overthrown.We learn there were two women's organizations: MODEMU and CEDEMU.The first was the largest group and oriented to leftist politics, while the second was smaller and more explicitly feminist.At times their activities came together, and in 1984 efforts were made to create a new organization, Women for Democracy, which folded after three years.Along with very public activities such as protests and disruptions of meetings, underground strategies such as creating and distributing anti-dictatorship materials, spray-painting, and bomb-making took place.Many communal survival efforts, such as collective kitchens, were also initiated and were

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