A Nation of Enemies: Chile Under Pinochet
A Nation of Enemies: Chile Under Pinochet seeks a historical explanation for “how military rule dominated and shaped a society for nearly seventeen years, only to be rejected by the people” (12). As simple as it may sound, this thesis takes a lot into consideration, such as the context of Chilean society at the time. The authors must answer this question taking into account how severely divided Chilean society was at that time, especially during the regime itself, forming a “nation of enemies”, composed of these two polarized societal groups, and how Pinochet’s dictatorship had divided these groups further and further into isolated ‘microcosms’. Moreover, it seeks to find how, even after this disruption and division in society, they were able to rise up again after Pinochet in the 1980s, and find the values of democracy that they once had in common thirty years ago and begin to reconcile as a nation. These groups that had to be reconciled included the technocrats and the ‘winners’
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What was especially interesting to me in this chapter was the discussion concerning the “Chicago Boys” an their economic ideals and their immense impact on the Chilean economy. Their policies involved extreme free-market competition in order to attract foreign investment, staying away from inflation, and deep budget cuts. To me, it is so interesting how extreme their economic ideologies were and how they were able to insert these ideas into the Chilean economy, giving it the “shock treatment” they thought it deserved through the use of very tough actions and revolutionary attitudes towards the economy (170). Additionally, the fact that these extreme policies were placed in the right climate at the right time and were able to work and grow Chile’s economy, even if it was only in the short-term, is extremely