MONGABAY.COM
Mongabay.com seeks to raise interest in and appreciation of wild lands and wildlife, while examining the impact of emerging trends in climate, technology, economics, and finance on conservation and development (more)
WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
|
|
Chile
Index
A Mapuche rug representing a chilko, a plant
reputed to cure cardiovascular illnesses
THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHILEAN SOCIETY since the country broke
away
from Spain early in the nineteenth century reflects in
many ways a
significant incongruity. On the one hand, the nation's
political
institutions and many of its social institutions developed
much
like their counterparts in the United States and Western
Europe. On
the other hand, the economy had a history of insufficient
and
erratic growth that left Chile among the less developed
nations of
the world. Given the first of these characteristics,
Chilean
society, culture, and politics have struck generations of
observers
from more developed nations as having what can be
described, for
want of a better expression, as a familiar "modernity."
Yet this
impression always seemed at odds with the lack of
resources at all
levels, the highly visible and extensive urban and rural
poverty,
and the considerable social inequalities.
Chile's location on the far southern shores of the
Americas'
Pacific coast made international contacts difficult until
the great
advance in global air travel and communications of the
post-World
War II period. This relative isolation of a people whose
main
cultural roots lay in the Iberian-Catholic variant of
Western
civilization probably had the paradoxical effect of making
Chileans
more receptive to outside influences than would otherwise
have been
the case. The small numbers of foreign travelers reaching
the
country in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
usually
found a warm welcome from people eager to hear of the
latest trends
in leading nations. The immigrants to the country were
similarly
accepted quite readily, and those who were successful
rapidly
gained entry into the highest social circles. One result
was a
disproportionate number of non-Iberian names among the
Chilean
upper classes. Moreover, many Chileans, the wealthy as
well as
artists, writers, scientists, and politicians, found it
virtually
obligatory to make the long voyage to experience firsthand
the
major cities of Europe and the United States, and they
rapidly
absorbed whatever new notions were emerging in more
advanced
nations.
At the same time, Chile's physical isolation probably
buttressed the commitment of the nation's leaders in all
walks of
life to building strong national institutions, which then
developed
their peculiarly Chilean modalities. For example, the rich
could
not easily envision sending their children to universities
in
Europe or the United States, and this created a demand
that would
not otherwise have existed for strong domestic centers of
higher
learning. A feeling of pride in these various institutions
soon
developed that contributed to Chile's strong sense of
national
identity.
This combination of openness to outside influences and
commitment to the nation is undoubtedly related to the
relative
"modernity" that has been a feature of Chilean life since
independence from Spain. From the very first national
administrations, there was a strong expression of
commitment to
expanding the availability of education to both boys and
girls,
principally at the primary level. The University of Chile
was
established by the national government in 1842 and soon
had a
large, centrally located building in Santiago. In a matter
of
decades, the University of Chile became one of the most
respected
institutions of higher learning in Latin America. Women
were
admitted to the University of Chile beginning in 1877,
making it a
world pioneer coeducational instruction; by 1932 about a
third of
the university's enrollment was female.
In the Americas, Chile was second only to Uruguay in
creating
state-run welfare institutions, adopting a relatively
comprehensive
social security system in 1924, more than a decade before
the
United States. A national health system was created by
pooling
existing state-founded institutions into a comprehensive
organization in 1952. Under this program, curative and
emergency
care were provided free of charge to workers and poor
people; in
the early 1960s, preventive care became available to all
infants
and mothers.
However, inadequate development of the economy
undermined
Chile's relatively modern institutional edifice. The lack
of
resources often led to sharp conflicts between different
groups
trying to obtain larger pieces of a meager pie. As better
placed
and politically more influential groups were able to draw
disproportionate benefits for themselves, inequalities
were
generated, as was made apparent by the wide disparities in
the
pension benefits that were paid by the state-run system.
Despite
the government's early commitment to public education,
budgetary
limitations meant that illiteracy decreased very slowly.
By 1930
about a quarter of the adult population still could not
read or
write, a low proportion by Latin American standards but a
far cry
from the universal literacy existing at the time in
France,
Germany, and Belgium, whose educational systems had served
as
models for Chilean public education. Primary school
attendance only
approached universal levels in the 1960s, and full adult
literacy
was not achieved until the 1980s. The lack of educational
opportunities limited social mobility, and investments in
new
technologies often ran into the difficulty of not having
properly
trained workers. The nation's industries, mines, and farms
had at
their disposal a large pool of unskilled or semiskilled
workers,
and for most jobs the wages, benefits, and working
conditions were
generally deplorable. On numerous occasions, worker
demands met
with heavy-handed repression, and class divisions became
deep fault
lines in Chilean society.
The military government that took over after the bloody
coup of
1973 embarked on a different course from that followed by
the
country's governments over the previous half-century.
Based on
economic neoliberalism, the military regime's primary
objectives
were to reduce the size of the state and limit its
intervention in
national institutions. Most state-owned industries and the
staterun social security system were privatized, private
education at
all levels was encouraged, and labor laws limiting union
rights
were enacted. Although new programs enhancing prior
efforts to deal
with the poorest segments of the population were
successfully put
into place, the authoritarian regime's overall social and
economic
policies led to increased inequalities.
At the start of the 1990s, Chile began to recover its
democratic institutions under the elected government of
Patricio
Aylwin Azócar (president, 1990-94). Committed to
redressing the
social inequalities that had developed under the military
regime,
the new government redirected more resources to programs
and
institutions in education and health in order to improve
their
quality and the population's access to them. Although the
Aylwin
administration made some changes in these institutions,
there was
no attempt to undo the privatization of the social
security system,
which was now based on individual capitalization schemes
rather
than on the old state-run, pay-as-you-go system.
In 1993 and early 1994, there was a sharp sense of
optimism
regarding the Chilean economy. High rates of economic
growth were
expected to last through the 1990s. With its newfound
economic
dynamism, Chile seemed poised in the early 1990s to begin
resolving
the long-standing incongruity of a relatively advanced
social and
political system coexisting with a scarcity of means.
Data as of March 1994
|
|