About Cristian Medina Valverde and Erna Ulloa Castillo, A Chilean ambassador against Stalin: Luis David Cruz Ocampo, Concepción, Editorial University of Concepción, 2023, Paseante Collection, 136 pp., ISBN: 978-956-227-558-3

Abstract

This work gives an account of the international stature of a prominent figure in 20th century Chilean history: Luis David Cruz Ocampo. Its authors, Cristian Medina Valverde and Erna Ulloa Castillo, have noted the need for a book capable of articulating the political and visionary capacity of the character whose national legacy is the University of Concepción with the courage and bravery of the diplomat in his defense of human rights following the threat of separation of the marriage between his son and a young Soviet woman, in essence, the hijacking of a free and sincere decision by the Stalinist regime resented by hundreds of people at the end of the Second World War. Such an episode of defense and eventual diplomatic confrontation—until now very little known—is duly problematized and contextualized in a complex postwar scenario in A Chilean Ambassador Against Stalin: Luis David Cruz Ocampo.