"I would like to see the world united by love.." --Mario Sepúlveda (one of "the 33")

[Peace Patriot]

Some good quotes from Chile in a Guardian-UK article:

"I would like to see the world united by love, not a religious love, but just no more fights, no more war." --Mario Sepúlveda (one of "the 33")

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My biggest hero of the day: Mario Sepúlveda

:bounce: :grouphug: :bounce:

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"Chile's wealth is not copper: it's miners." --President Sebastián Piñera (--to give credit where credit is due--a very meaningful and, indeed, progressive comment by a rightwing billionaire who just defeated the socialist party in Chile)

As night fell across the mine Pedro Gallo, a technician who helped build the rescue capsule, watched helicopters ferry away ordinary men whose extraordinary story captivated the world's imagination. He pondered what it all meant. 'They have left a permanent record of something beautiful that happened here.'"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/13/chilean-miners-rescue-world-rejoices

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Absolutely the truth: "something beautiful" happened in Chile today.

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One miner still to go, then pulling the 2 (or 5?) rescuers up. Then there is going to be one helluva party in Chile!

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Another item from the Guardian article: "Chile felt more than good. From car horns honking in celebration in the capital Santiago to bells tolling in Andean villages, it felt a country blessed. The miners' solidarity, and the state's impressive response to the crisis, earned praise and thanks from all over the world including Barack Obama, Nasa and the pope. For a country historically unpopular with its neighbours, it was a novelty to bask in adulation." --Guardian

Anybody know what this means ("...a country historically unpopular with its neighbours"). The "meme" of the day seems to be that Chile is no longer the "country of Pinochet" but is now the "country of the 33" and this superb and amazing rescue. Is that what the Guardian is talking about--Pinochet? Or Chile's dispute with Bolivia over Bolivia's access to the sea? (--mentioned by a BBC reporter earlier in the day, because Evo Morales was there, to greet one of the miners who is Bolivian) (Note: I thought that Chile's previous president, Michele Batchelet, had finally settled that hundred year old dispute--but then I heard that Peru was causing some trouble about the agreement.) Why is Chile "unpopular"?

[Bacchus39]

1. War of the Pacific I imagine, and the on going rivalry with Argentina n/t

s

[Peace Patriot]

2. Thanks! I'll look them up. I don't know that history. nt

[rabs]

5. Chile is the envy of its neighbors

Chile annexed huge swaths of Peru and Bolivia in the War of the Pacific. Bolivia lost access to the Pacific.

While the Chilean army and navy were busy fighting Peru and Bolivia at the same time, Argentina was grabbing a huge chunk of Chile's Patagonia. Chile never forgot that Argentina stabbed it in the back.

Then came the very dangerous Picton, Lennox and Nueva islands crisis in the Beagle Channel that almost, almost led to a war between Argentina and Chile in 1978. The pope stepped in to stop the war, which was literally hours away at the time. It would have been the Argentine dictatorship vs. the Pinochet dictatorship.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beagle_conflict

In Sept. 1976 the Chilean navy detected two Peruvian submarines in Valparaiso Bay. The navy dropped depth charges and one of the Peruvian submaries (recall that the subs were named Angamos and Ancash) was sunk while the other was made to surface. That sub was escorted by Chilean warships to Arica, on the Pacific border with Peru, and released to return to Peru.

The sinking of the sub was never publicized, because for Chile it would have meant a war, and Peru could not admit sending two subs into Valparaiso Bay and losing one of them to the Chileans. That probably would have led to the downfall of the Peruvian government at the time.

In 1982, during the Malvinas war, Pinochet allowed RAF planes and SAS helicopters that had carried out missions against military targets in Argentina's Patagonia to land at Punta Arenas, which did not set well with the Argentine dictatorship.

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But that is history.

Argentina under Cristina and Chile under Bachelet signed treaties resolving outstanding issues between the two.

The Bolivian access to the ocean advanced during Bachelet, but appears to have slowed down under Pinera.

Peru is still fighting for revising maritime territorial limits and has taken the case to The Hague. It may take years and expect there will be some sort of compromise to save face on both sides.

Today, there are thousands of Bolivians, Peruvians and Argentines who have migrated to Chile, which in recent years has had a booming economy. Chile provides employment the migrants cannot find in their home countries.

But overall, there is no danger now of a conflict in the Southern Cone. The neighbors are just envious of the Chilean success.

[Peace Patriot]

7. Thanks for the info, rabs! You are such a wonderful fund of knowledge! nt

[rabs]

11. Thank you for this, just saw it.

What I try to do is provide timely info on Latam issues that often are not available on the English-language media to the readers of this forum. Two decades living in South America ingrained a deep interest in what happens there and signed up on DU to share what I learned. I lurked all during the bushista years, and was aware of Judi, you, and the others.

Just read your post #10. It still amazes me how you can do such incisive analysis of events that are only one or two days past. :toast:

[ChangoLoa]

12. Other Latin American countries tend to see Chile as the historical ally of the Anglo-americans

Didn't the British Empire's banks (when Disraeli was the prime minister) funded the war against Peru and Bolivia?

[flamingdem]

3. Great quotes from the land of Neruda nt

[rabs]

4. The "33" coincidences

33 -- the number of miners

33 -- the number of days it took the rescue shaft to reach them

33 -- 10/13/10 = 33, the date they were rescued.

Think read somewhere that 33 was a lucky number for those who believe in such things.

[Judi Lynn]

6. The last rescue worker arrived back at the surface at 14:32, just a few seconds short of 14:33.

Manuel González was the rescue worker, a former football player.

They said he got 33 hugs as he helped the miners into the rescue capsule!

I was worried something might go wrong and watched until that guy stepped out of the cage. What an unbelievable event.

Spooky 33 coincidents. No doubt the number will have great meaning to everyone concerned after this.

[CJvR]

8. Very politician...

"Chile's wealth is not copper: it's miners." --President Sebastián Piñera (--to give credit where credit is due--a very meaningful and, indeed, progressive comment by a rightwing billionaire who just defeated the socialist party in Chile)

Sooo... If there was no copper to dig up thousands of unemployable miners would contribute to Chile's wealth - how?
Nice think to say, but totally meaningless.

[Billy Burnett]

9. However, there is copper.

Therefore, not meaningless. It's reality.

Deal with it.



:hi:

[Peace Patriot]

10. Pinera was talking about HUMAN values, which seemed notable to me in a rightwing billionaire.

He was saying 'our wealth is our PEOPLE.' He said "Chile OWES the miners and other workers" SAFE WORKING CONDITIONS.

Workers CREATE wealth, don't ya know? You can have all the copper and all the gold or all the oil or all the whatever--including plant life, animals, FOOD--in the ground or potentially producible from the ground, but if you don't have PEOPLE with the willingness, the knowledge, the skills, and often the courage and endurance, to DO THE WORK necessary to turn resources into wealth, where are you? Hm. Nowhere.

I think this was a pretty amazing statement for a rightwing billionaire politician to make. Copper is NOTHING without workers. It has NO value. It is an inert, inaccessible thing deep in the earth. It takes courageous, reliable, strong, skilled people to go get it. Without them, Chile has NO copper "wealth."

This rightwing politician has LEARNED this, personally, over this two-month ordeal, and, quite clearly--I could tell from watching him all day--was deeply impressed with the courage, resourcefulness, resilience and value of these human beings who were trapped deep in the earth. I think he was also impressed with their families, who never gave up on them, who camped out in that barren desert, refusing to leave, for 17 days, before they knew that the miners were still alive, and then for two more months of the rescue effort. We'll see if Pinera keeps his promises to them, but I personally think that he was genuinely moved and that it changed him. What I respect him most for is being open to change. All the political opportunism aside--and I grant you, there was some of that-- I think that's what happened: This political opportunity became MUCH MORE than a political opportunity, to Pinera--to him, personally, as a human being.

Maybe he won't stick with it; maybe he will. But he now has the opportunity to bridge the deep divide between the have's and have-not's in Chile, and show himself to be--unlike so many other rightwing politicians that South America has suffered--a fair-minded leader of ALL of the people. He won't be the first rich man to do that. FDR was wealthy. So was JFK. But we don't have a lot of examples of it in this era--the "era of greed" that Reagan initiated and that Bush Jr. took to its horrible conclusion: vast robbery of the poor, here and elsewhere, and a corporate resource war, where hundreds of thousands were slaughtered or maimed, to steal their oil.

I don't know why you want to diminish this insight that Pinera gained, and was able to express. Whether a country has lots of resources, or no resources, its wealth is ALWAYS its people and what they make of their circumstances. And the best government is OF, BY and FOR the PEOPLE.

Frankly, I think that our own Democratic Party leaders have forgotten this. Pinera--culturally, politically, economically--was likely to make their same mistakes, including their OBLIVIOUSNESS to the impacts of globalized "free trade for the rich" on THE WORKERS. Maybe he will not walk off that cliff, like our Democrats have done, as the result of this experience of the VALUE of the miners as HUMAN BEINGS, who ARE "the wealth" of their country.

You seem to think the other way: "Gold" IS wealth, and people are expendable. I hope that that is not what you are saying. But you seem to be. Perhaps you would like to clarify. The notion that "'Gold IS wealth" is the horror of our era, in my view. And our redemption as a democracy and as a society will only come when we realize what our only true wealth is: each other. Our material survival and recovery of general prosperity depends on this. Without human labor freely given, and our collective effort to rebuild our economy and our communities, and our nation as a whole, all the "gold-plated billionaires" and all the weapons in the world, and all the oil and other resources that our corporations and war profiteers steal, will avail us nothing. Our society will collapse. The "great American experiment" will be over. Our "wealth" has absolutely nothing to do with money wealth or resources. Our wealth is our PEOPLE.