This is a time "to pray for the soul of Gen. Pinochet, but also for the soul of Chile" Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz of Santiago. Monday, December 11, 2006. The Chicago Tribune.
There is no question Augusto Pinochet was a bloodthirsty fascist, and the notion that we would pray for his soul – not his victims – challenges my ideas of forgiveness and love. However, I think Cardinal Errazuriz’s point is one of reconciliation, the violence Pinochet stood for should not continue in a cycle after his death.
Many news outlets are reporting on the Pinochet regime’s dark and murderous reign, and some have included details of the complicity of the governments of the U.S.and Great Britain. Pinochet’s state sponsored terrorism and violent repression are well documented, but what has become muddled in the wake of his death is, of all things, his transformation of Chile’s economy.
Marketplace, a news program focusing on business, economics and money and often heard on NPR, reported on Monday December 11th, that after Pinochet’s 1973 military coup and murder of democratically elected President Salvadore Allende, “(Pinochet) then turned his country into a laboratory for free market reform. He removed trade barriers, created an independent central bank and privatized social security.”
Dan Grech, a reporter for Marketplace went on to say: “Even Pinochet's worst critics admit his economic model has been a success.”
While it has become fashionable to point out Allende’s flaws, giving credit to Pinochet for his economic policies is completely misguided. In fact, crediting Pinochet with anything other than proving that unchecked economic liberalization will lead directly to economic disaster is a blatant disregard of the historical record.
As author and economist Greg Palast chronicles here, in the first ten years of Pinochet’s rule, unemployment rose from 4.3% to 22%, real wages declined by 40%, and by 1990 the number of people in poverty doubled – from 20% to a stunning 40% of the population.
Make no mistake, it was not dumb luck that Pinochet was able to cripple a once thriving economy the way he destroyed a once fully functioning democracy. According to Palast, “...the General abolished the minimum wage, outlawed trade union bargaining rights, privatized the pension system, abolished all taxes on wealth and on business profits, slashed public employment, privatized 212 state industries and 66 banks ...”
This is what led President Ronald Reagan’s State Department to report: “Chile is a casebook study in sound economic management.”
Pinochet’s economic policies had nothing to do with Chile’s economic growth of the past two decades. It was not until Chile was on the brink of utter economic collapse, and its citizens took to the streets that Pinochet restored many of the programs and controls he had previously abolished. It was the restoration of those measures that allowed Chile to recover and thrive.
Chile’s economic growth has clearly been in spite of Pinochet’s legacy and of the neo-liberal economic orthodoxy, not a result of them.
Bob Lyon
Donor Outreach Coordinator
Center of Concern
The link to Greg Palast’s full article on Augusto Pinochet’s disastrous economic policies: http://www.gregpalast.com/tinker-bell-pinochet-and-the-fairy-tale-miracle-of-chile-2#more-1551
An article on Pinochet by Christopher Hitchens, whose reporting ten years ago in Harper’s magazine was among the first to reveal the extent of U.S. involvement in Pinochet’s rise to, and brutal grip on power: http://www.slate.com/id/2155242/
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