The Coup d’etat After 50 Years:  Chile Today

Fifty years ago today, the Chilean military overthrew the democratically elected, leftist government of Salvador Allende, plunging the South American country into 17 years of a brutal dictatorship.  An estimated 3,000 dissidents and political opponents of the military were killed, some 30,000 people were tortured, and hundreds of thousands of Chileans fled into exile during the military regime  of General Augusto Pinochet.  A veneer of bland conformity blanketed Chilean society, as creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurial spirit were drummed out.  Crony capitalism managed to eke out impressive economic results, but that was also due to a dearth of trade union activity and a quelling of civil and political rights.  

The repression of the Pinochet regime became the standard playbook in much of the region thereafter, visited upon Argentina 3 years later and Uruguay after that.  Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Venezuela all experienced similar mismanagement as troops left the barracks and attempted to run governments.  In the end, military leaders proved to be inept at managing their country’s respective economies, even with export-led economic growth.  Chile, however, managed to rack up great economic growth year over year (except for a few in the 1980s) but at great societal cost.  

As we reflect on where Chile has been and what the future holds for the long, thin, Andean country, it is important to note that democracy was only reinstated in 1990.  It has taken a long time for the country to heal indeed.  There has never been a full accounting of what happened, for fear of provoking the military over the years and exposing the roles that the Church and some political and corporate leaders may have played over the seventeen year dictatorship.  

Lately, the country has suffered wave after wave of unrelenting immigration, much of it unregulated, with migrants coming from Peru, and then later the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Colombia, and Venezuela.  Some street gangs and organized crime have created problems in Santiago, which, along with Antofagasta and Concepción, have become increasingly more dangerous.  

Most of the immigrants, however, only want to be part of the “Chilean dream,” home to an economic powerhouse in an otherwise stagnant region.  Chile has excelled as a model for modern financial services, private healthcare, and post-secondary education for the rest of the Americas.  Chile is an amazingly robust marketplace and everything from cars to fashions are tested there before making their way to bigger markets in the region.  The country does suffer from overdevelopment and rampant inflation, with real estate prices in Santiago so exorbitant that young people are priced out of the city in which they grew up.  Stress levels have increased too, with high dependency and domestic violence rates resulting.  Progress has meant an overmedicated population, with pharmacies on every street corner.  There is much personal debt as usurious financial services become lifelines to status and conspicuous consumption.  

Chile has also led on the reform of its judicial sector.  The last country in Latin America to move from the inquisitorial system of criminal procedure to the adversarial system, Chile has successfully enshrined the rule of law.  Police and judicial corruption, a regional scourge, is rare.  But with crime increasing, there is little belief in the newly modernized system except as an opportunity to increase criminality.  

It is no surprise that the general population of the country remains as divided as ever.  One-third of Chile today still supports the old military regime, using arguments that General Pinochet stopped Chile from sliding into a Communist dictatorship, that there was only a few weeks of foreign reserves left due to Allende’s mismanagement of the economy, and that Chile was running low on basic staples given how Cuban-inspired farm occupations had derailed the food supply chain.  They look the other way when confronted with the repression that Pinochet’s troops and secret police unleashed on its people.  Yet another one-third of the population abhors any vestige of Pinochet’s rule including the forced disappearances, the tens of thousands put out of work by University of Chicago-trained economists’ shock economics tactics, and the privatization of much of the state-controlled industries.  And finally, one-third of the population just wants to go to the shopping mall, or at the very least, talk about anything other than the Pinochet years.  

These divisions have resurfaced during the recent Constitutional negotiations, the first of which was roundly rejected by popular plebiscite.  While it is difficult to live within the Constitutional structure of 1980 that was imposed during the Pinochet dictatorship, no grand bargain that brings about consensus is in the offing.  

But there is hope.  The country is replete with bountiful natural resources and a labor pool that constantly upskills with extension classes, night schools, and universities offering opportunities.  The pioneer spirit of the countryside and the economic needs of the constant grind to makes ends meet brings new levels of entrepreneurism.  The grand coalitions of left of center political parties that have, for the most part since the end of the Pinochet regime, dominated the electoral landscape continues on.  The Indigenous Peoples – the Mapuche in the south, the Aymara in the North, and the Rapa Nui on Easter Island – continue to toil in the midst of systemic discrimination.  It is here that Chile has the most work to do.  

Fifty years ago, General Pinochet destroyed a democratically led government that tried to make social change – albeit too fast and without enough popular support.  Today, the lethargy of governance needs to be reversed for Chile to grow where it should go: The region’s model for democratic governance, an economy that works for everyone, and the most beautiful place in the world.  

Author: James Cooper

Profesor de Derecho