The Chilean Revolution: "One of the great miracles of our time".

By José Piñera

From 1975 to 1989, a true revolution took place in Chile, involving a radical, comprehensive, and sustained move toward economic and political
freedom (from a starting point where there was almost none)

This Chilean Revolution brought liberal democracy and the rule of law, doubled Chile's historic rate of economic growth (to an average of 7 percent a year from 1984 to 1998), restored limited government, drastically reduced poverty, and introduced several key structural reforms that modernized the country.

The importance of the Chilean Revolution to the world has been described in this way: 
"In a sense, it all began in Chile. In the early 1970s, Chile was one of the first economies in the developing world to test such concepts as deregulation of industries, privatization of state companies, freeing of prices from government control, and opening of the home market to imports. In 1981, Chile privatized its social-security system. Many of those ideas ultimately spread throughout Latin America and to the rest of the world. They are behind the reformation of Eastern Europe and the states of the former Soviet Union today... which demonstrates, once again, the awesome power of ideas" (James Flanigan, Los Angeles Times, August 5, 1998). 

The starting point
 

In the
1970 presidential election, Salvador Allende got 36.2% of the national vote. According to the Constitution, the Chilean Congress could elect as President either the first or the second plurarility. It decided to demand Allende to agree to a special bill of rights to be added to the Constitution before electing him President. Allende agreed and was elected President by the Congress. But in the following years Allende's government lost its democratic character by repeatedly violating the Constitution, as it was established in the historic Resolution of August 22, 1973 of the Chilean Chamber of Deputies, a branch of the same Congress that had elected him President (for an in depth analysis of this Resolution see my essay "The breakdown of democracy in Chile", published in the journal "Society", September/October 2005).

Since the Constitution did not allowed for a viable impeachment process, the Resolution petitioned the Armed Forces to end "inmediately" the situation that had produced those constitutional violations.
Eighteen days after the appeal to them by the Chamber's Resolution, the four branches of the Armed Forces, led by the then commander-in-chief of the army (appointed by President Allende) general Augusto Pinochet, removed Allende from office and vowed to restore democratic rule. The Economist stated at the time: "The temporary death of democracy in Chile will be regrettable, but the blame lies clearly with Dr. Allende and those of his followers who persistently overrode the Constitution".

As it was inevitable, the Armed Forces had to fight the
armed members of the Allende coalition. In that context of quasi civil war, 2.279 persons died (Allende got a million votes and Chile's population was 12 million), according to the Rettig Commission (fully appointed by President Aylwin, being Rettig a former Ambassador of Allende). Brian Crozier, founder of London's Institute for the Study of Conflict, states that "most of them died during the first months of military rule, when Chile was in effect a combat zone."  He gives the context: "Allende transformed the country, in effect, into a satellite of Cuba, and hence an incipient addition to the Soviet Empire. By then Chile could be truthfully described as a Marxist state in ideological and economic terms. From a strategic viewpoint, it had been turned into a major base for Soviet and Cuban subversive operations, including terrorism, throughout Latin America. The Soviet KGB was recruiting members for training courses in terrorism. . . North Korean specialists were training young members of Allende's Socialist Party" (The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire, 1999). 

I
t has been proven in Chilean courts that some members of the intelligence services went beyond the law and committed human rights violations in the fight against political violence and terrorism. Those actions should be unequivocally condemned (see "Standing up for human rights") and the guilty individuals should suffer the penalties imposed by courts after a due process of law. Indeed some are, the most notorious example being the former head of the intelligence office, an army general, who is in a Chilean jail. Neither President Pinochet nor any member of the military Junta has been proven guilty of any human rights violations by the Chilean independent judiciary system, despite 17 years of allegations promoted by four center-left governments.

The final result 


Some of t
he classical liberal economists who engineered the transformation of the Chilean economy were also the foremost proponents of a gradual and constitucional return to democracy. A special care was shown in the period 1981-1989 to create "the institutions of liberty"-a market economy, an independent central bank, a constitutional court, private television, voting registration laws, etc- before voting for political authorities was restablished.

President Pinochet, according strictly to the 1980
Constitution, surrendered its power to a democratically elected government on March 11, 1990. (Here a brief story of the restoration of democracy in Chile). Since then, Chile has had four center left governments and, despite setbacks on tax, labor and regulation policies, the essence of the free-market reforms has survived intact. The 1980 Constitution is still the law of the land, with some amendments made by consensual agreements between all parties represented in Congress. In the latest ranking on economic freedom by the WSJ/Heritage, Chile ranked in the top ten countries of the world.

It is a fact that the Chilean
Revolution has produced the best economy and democracy of all Latin America, and arguably also the best of all the emerging countries of the world. As Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek stated: "Chile is now a great success. The world shall come to regard the recovery of Chile as one of the great economic miracles of our time". (Source: "Friedrich Hayek. A Biography", by Alan Ebenstein, p.296)

© JOSÉ PIÑERA