Finishing Off the Pinochet Dictatorship
Finishing Off the Pinochet Dictatorship
BY
NOAM TITELMAN
Chile’s ongoing uprising has made clear that the country's neoliberal order needs to be overthrown. There’s no better place to start than with the pensions Pinochet sold to private, profit-seeking management companies during his dictatorship.
Owing to its mix of macroeconomic stability, sustained growth, and diminishing levels of poverty, Chile was, until recently, considered a success story of neoliberal orthodoxy. Last month’s subway fare hike changed all that, unleashing a massive wave of civil disobedience and rebellion.
Protests erupted in major cities across the country, including an unprecedented mass rally of more than a million people in Santiago. Since then, more than forty metro stations have been destroyed, several supermarkets burned or looted, and many other buildings ravaged, including the corporate headquarters of Santiago’s main electricity company.
The government’s strong-arm response has so far resulted in seven thousand arrests, thousands of injured, and twenty-five dead. But weeks after the initial flare-up, Chileans are still on the streets. Their rage can’t easily be quashed, and their concerns will need to be addressed before Chile returns to normal.
Pinochet’s Pension Scheme
Rafael Herrera is a seventy-five-year-old retiree. According to La Tercera, he receives a monthly pension of 140,000 pesos (approximately $175) and spends 180,000 pesos (approximately $225) paying off medical debts accrued after a car accident. To cover the difference (and his monthly living costs), he depends on what sporadic work he can find — despite his back problems — and support from his son. When asked why he went out on the streets and joined the protests, he explained his reasons as follows:
More:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/11/chile-protests-pension-pinochet-neoliberalism
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Scenes from Pinochet's funeral:
They cruised around with dead Pinochet lying in a see-through funeral car so his groveling supporters could wave bye-bye. He was denied a state funeral.
President Bachelet, whose father had died imprisoned and tortured relentlessly and Michelle and her mother Angela, had also been tortured and imprisoned earlier to put psychological stress on the Chilean General, her father, who remained loyal to the elected President Allende and lost his life.
Michelle with father near the ocean.
General Alberto Bachelet gave his life, died with dignity and honor at the hands of people who were so far beneath him.
