"I am, of course, referring to what in Latin America is often called “the first 9/11”: September 11, 1973, when the United States succeeded in its intensive efforts to overthrow the democratic government of Salvador Allende in Chile with a military coup that placed General Pinochet’s ghastly regime in office. The dictatorship then installed the Chicago Boys—economists trained at the University of Chicago—to reshape Chile’s economy. Consider the economic destruction, the torture and kidnappings, and multiply the numbers killed by 25 to yield per capita equivalents, and you will see just how much more devastating the first 9/11 was." - Noam Chomsky
I see your September 11, 1973 and raise you the actual first 9/11, the fall of Barcelona in 1713 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41510919 ( tongue in cheek, no event is more important than another of course )
Remembered on this very day as "La Diada" in Catalunya.
During the rule of Pinochet the people of Chile we oppressed horrendously. Fascism is no excuse to justify economic growth. That is not the point. The point is to look at different economic systems and compare the results; not compare how they were implemented. Fortunately Pinochet’s power was not indefinite and Chileans became much freer economically and politically after he left.
> The point is to look at different economic systems and compare the results; not compare how they were implemented.
We never got to look at Allende's economic system and how it compares.
Politically Allende was freedom minded to a fault in the sense that the coup would have been a lot harder if he'd accepted violence. Economic freedom doesn't mean anything.
True, though I was referring socialism in general as the system. Yes we don't know how it could have turned out, but we can estimate the results by looking at the failure of the other socialist systems that were tried in the 20th century.
By economic freedom I mean the measure of freedom from coercion to spend your money. All governments must collect taxes, but the more you are forced to pay in taxes the less economic freedom you have. If you can spend your money how you like, and if you want to save it to fund your own or other's political activity, you are more able to campaign for your political freedoms. This seems to be how Pinochet was removed from power.
Chile's economy started really growing only in the late 1980's when Pinochet was ousted and the "monetarist experiment" had ended (in a huge banking crisis in 1982). And the poverty rate increased from 29% to 36% under the Chicago boys.
Can that be said to be a result of the coup, though? The nationalization of copper mines was never reversed and the post-coup economy was pretty bad and unstable until the tail end when Pinochet was already on the way out.
It is definitely not the result of the coup. However I think it is a result of the economic policies put in place after the coup. You can see how different the other South American economies have been since then.
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/noam-chomsky-responsib...