"How to Read Donald Duck" was written and published during the brief flowering of revolutionary socialism under the government of Salvador Allende and his Popular Unity coalition and is closely identified with the revolutionary politics of its era. In 1973, a coup d'état, secretly supported by the United States, brought in power the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. During Pinochet's regime, "How to Read Donald Duck" was banned and subject to book burning; its authors were forced into exile.