I sarcastically recommended former Chilean strongman Augusto Pinochet to be considered as one of our top five presidents in another conversation. 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 right wing monster.
Fidel Castro took one of, if not the top economy in Latin America and obliterated it. Chavez (R.I.P.) wiped out the upper and middle classes in Venezuela. Cuba’s Castro terrorized and impoverished “his” people for a couple of generations, and not even in death will Chavez’s reign of terror end in Venezueala.
On the other hand, Pinochet (with much help from ‘the Chicago boys’) 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 eventually even voluntarily gave up power, yet he is still demonized by both right and 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 experienced under Pinochet’s benevolent dictatorship?
ST UnWoked & UnVaxxed! 
Leftists and “scholars” are the same thing now, aren’t they? That might answer your question 😦
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Tru dat, Judy. It’s like in “Brave New World”: any study of history or even the texts of the past, like the Bible, Shakespeare—is prohibited “simply because it IS the past”. People HAVE to believe they are living in “the best of all possible worlds”! So when the world of the present is, manifestly, shitty, the only way to foster that belief is to vilify the past.
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