Down at Wattsy’s bar the other night, I sarcastically recommended former Chilean strongman Augusto Pinochet to be considered as one of the U.S. of A’s top five presidents. Pinochet was a hero to many Chileans who lived through the turmoil of the Allende administration, yet polite society will not entertain any notion other than Pinochet as monster. Castro took one of, if not the top economy in Latin America and obliterated it. Chavez wiped out the upper and middle classes in Venezuela. Castro terrorized and impoverished “his” people for a couple of generations, and not even his death has put an end to Chavez’s reign of terror.
Pinochet helped to create one of the most productive and free business climates (more so than the US’s according to The Heritage Foundation’s 2013 Index of Economic Freedom: http://www.heritage.org/index/) in the world, and voluntarily gave up power, yet he is demonized by the right and the left. The propaganda is working. Most of my Chilean friends look up to Pinochet, but their sons and daughter despise him at best. I get why leftists can’t admit Pinochet was a force for good in Chile, but why must scholars dissuade non-intellectuals like me from believing the reality we lived under Pinochet’s benevolent dictatorship?
It seems Chileans have now had too much of a good thing and have decided the time is ripe to turn their country back into your typical Latin American factory of misery. And all of this new wave of anarchy, death, and destruction is over exactly what – a 4¢ raise in the toll of a subway ticket?
ST UnWoked & UnVaxxed! 
I’mashamed to say I don’t know what is going on in Chile right now, Is there a revolution going on? As you say, I thought they had been doing great.
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There has been rioting in Santiago (maybe/ probably other cities as well) for several weeks. The usual suspects, Uni students and Prog agitators, are at it again trying to revert their country back to the halcyon days of Allende’s workers’ paradise. But this time they will get it right because “I’ am in charge!
“I” being the smartest guy in whichever room he is in at the time.
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Ai, yi, yi, dolores, hermano! Sólo Le Pido A Dios, verdad?
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Should lower the cost of real estate in the short term so I might consider buying instead of renting, as I had originally planned.
Finding the silver lining in whatever may come my way.
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Hoping so, hermano….
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Well well… If I remember correctly, Pinochet was an American poster boy for some time before he started to wander off on his own. And surely there is no doubt that Chile has been an economy to envy in Latin America, though we don’t hear much about that part of the world in Asia, except for the miseries of Venezuelans.
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I don’t think Pinochet was ever ‘an American poster boy.’ Americans only love communist dictators.
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I have conducted extensive research, (ok 10 minutes onWiki) and it seems real ironic-like that it was an increase in subway fares which sparked these protests ( by secondary school students sez Wiki—seriously?!?!) —protests concerning cost o’ living increases allegedly due to “privatization” . The metro is NOT privatized, it’s government owned and run. Oh my GOD— here we sit, wondering why NORTH Americans won’t take cognizance of Venezuela’s horrible example. What the fuck IS it about socialism: it face-plants in misery EVERY time—but nobody, nowhere, ever seems to remember that.
If I were you, ST, I’d be thinkin’ twice and again about acquiring private property in Chile!
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….And y’know whut: this is why the commies always wanna co-opt the kids. They literally have no memory even of the recent past. So all you hafta do is prevent them from actually learning about it,like, by encouraging them to skip school in favor of busting up,subway stations. Win-win!
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Hypatia, check out the last sentence of my OP again, please. I wrote it from memory but a believe that increase in the metro/ subway/ tube price was no more than 4¢. What started out as protests are now bull blown riots over less than a nickel per ride. The Santiago metro system was sublime last time I was there. Nothing that is that clean, efficient, and safe can operate for next to nothin’ forever.
Chile’s Uni students want to do for Santiago what antifa has done for Seatle. Too bad ’cause Chilenos were on an almost 50-year roll. I guess the 20-somethings there want what their parents have but they don’t want to have to work a couple or three decades for their ship to come in.
This is exactly why my beloved Pinochet took over ~50 years ago. He did it to prevent the Allende from turning the country into what the Venezuelans are enjoying today.
It is too stupid to comprehend!
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From what I read they’re not even mos’ly uni students, they’re high school kids! It’s like with Greta Thunberg: it’s understandable the she has no memory of the Medieval Warm Period. It’s less comprehensible thatshe isnt aware, f’rinstance, of the Calif drought, 2011-2015, now COMPLETELY reversed ( as has happened many times in geohistory.)
The awe-ful ,white-hot purity of the anger of the young is only possible cuz them young orbs ARE infantile, they havent been tempered, seasoned, smoothed out by observing the wheel of realty. Be afraid!
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I suppose by now it may be a self licking ice cream cone, but smell a rat behind this to kick it off. Maybe Soros and Obama decided that Pinochet’s legacy needed to be destroyed before people realize that right wing dictators are far better for countries than are their leftist counterparts?
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Apparently the Progs have ‘won’ and a referendum will be held in April to vote on whether or not to replace the current constitution. I guess there is just so much prosperity and first world living los latinos can abide before they demand a return to their natural ‘shithole’ state of being.
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Maybe you were being sarcastic, but I think that is so true,
Sadly: you can take the people outta the shithole, but you can’t take, etc…..
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I am not 100% certain but am pretty sure that I was not being sarcastic for a change. The thing that blows my mind is how spoiled and ignorant the Chileno Gen Z is. When I lived there in the early 80s, Chileans were a different breed from their fellow Latinos due to centuries of almost complete isolation (bordered by the longest and second highest mountain range, the Andes, to the east, from the north by the world’s second driest desert and nobody was coming to visit from the Pacific Ocean before man took to the air). They had had to be tough, fierce, and independent since day one. None of that genetic code seems to have been passed on to the deluded and delusional punks who began a riot over a 3-4¢ hike in the price of subway fare. S.A.D. sad!
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