Freedom Circle logo
Freedom Circle

Where Can You Find Freedom Today?

Territory in southwest South America, ruled since 1980 by the República de Chile

Chile, officially the Republic of Chile (Spanish: República de Chile), is a South American country occupying a long, narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east and the Drake Passage in the far south. Chilean territory includes the Pacific islands of Juan Fernández, Salas y Gómez, Desventuradas and Easter Island in Oceania. Chile also claims about 1,250,000 square kilometers of Antarctica, although all claims are suspended under the Antarctic Treaty.

Geographical type: Territory

Latitude: 30° S — Longitude: 71° W

Area: 756,096 km²

ISO 3166-2 code: CL

Home To

Libertad y Desarrollo, Las Condes

Measures of Freedom

Chile | Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2022
2016: Status: Free, Aggregate Score: 95, Political Rights: 1, Civil Liberties: 1
A series of corruption scandals characterized Chilean politics in 2015, and impeded President Michelle Bachelet's plans for large-scale tax and education reform. Two of the scandals involved allegations that corporations had made illegal contributions to political parties, and another centered on Bachelet's son and daughter-in-law, who were accused of using their political influence to secure a profitable real estate deal. In response to the events, the president proposed a series of anticorruption measures in April, and reorganized her cabinet in May.
Human Freedom Index [PDF], The Human Freedom Index 2021
2019: 8.44, Rank: 28, Personal Freedom: 8.86, Economic Freedom: 7.85
Level of Economic Freedom, Economic Freedom of the World
2014: 7.83, Rank: 13

Articles

Capitalism and Statism in Latin America, by Manuel Ayau, 4 Oct 1997
Speech given to The Philadelphia Society, San Antonio, Texas regional meeting
[A]ll of that assistance ... contributed to the postponement of the corrections ... now taking place, following the successful example that Chile began in the middle seventies without AID, World Bank etc. Please note that Chile did it while it was considered a pariah by the community of developed nations who did their best to sabotage their successful efforts. Incidentally, this tells us a lot about how unimportant are the effects of displeasing the community of nations, for, in spite of their hostility, Chile stuck to its free market policies and became an example to the rest of the world.
The Drug War as a Socialist Enterprise, by Milton Friedman, Friedman & Szasz on Liberty and Drugs, 16 Nov 1991
Chapter adapted from keynote address at Fifth International Conference on Drug Policy Reform; examines why, 20 years after his admonition against the drug war, the government continues its attempts at enforcement, in spite of the predicted results
Chile was a case in which a military regime, headed by Pinochet, was willing to switch the organization of the economy from a top-down to a bottom-up mode. In that process, a group of people who had been trained at the University of Chicago ... played a major role in designing and implementing the economic reforms ... Chile is by all odds the best economic success story in Latin America today. The real miracle is that a military junta was willing to let them do it ... In fact, I did meet with Mr. Pinochet, but I never was an adviser to him, and I never got a penny from the Chilean government.
How We Privatized Social Security in Chile, by José Piñera, The Freeman, Jul 1997
Explains how the Chilean private pension system works and how the previous government-controlled system was transformed into the current one (the author was the Secretary of Labor and Social Security under Pinochet and designed the new system)
Going to pension savings accounts helped boost the economy, because it has raised the saving rate—now about 27 percent of GNP—and people's contributions became available for private capital markets. Since pension savings accounts got started, they have generated capital equivalent to 40 percent of Chilean GNP. During the past dozen years, annual growth has been about 7 percent, double our historic growth rate. Faster economic growth made it easier to handle the transition gap.
Improve the CIA? Better to abolish it, by Chalmers Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle, 22 Feb 2004
Lists countries where the CIA conducted subversive operations and recommends abolishing the agency.
Since the overthrow of the Iranian government in 1953, the CIA has engaged in similar disguised assaults on the governments of Guatemala (1954); the Congo (1960); Cuba (1961); Brazil (1964); Indonesia (1965); Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia (1961-73); Greece (1967); Chile (1973); Afghanistan (1979 to the present); El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua (1980s); and Iraq (1991 to the present) -- to name only the most obvious cases.
The Power of Propaganda, by Paul Craig Roberts, 27 Dec 2006
Discusses the history of Chile from 1970 to 1990, covering Salvador Allende's election and the military coup d'état that resulted in the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, comparing the latter's actions to George W. Bush "war on terror"
Gen. Augusto Pinochet ... was confronted with an indigenous terrorist movement. Chilean terrorists engaged in assassinations and bombings of public infrastructure. ... The left hates Pinochet for overthrowing Allende and for turning Chile's economy over to economists ... who privatized Chile's social security system and put in place the institutional basis for Chile's successful market economy. ... In truth, Allende overthrew himself. He disregarded the constitution, permitted private property to be seized by communist organizations, ... and disorganized the economy to the extent that there were food shortages.
Related Topic: Terrorism
The Secret State, by Carl Oglesby, 19 Dec 1991
Details various events from the dismantling of the Office of Strategic Services after World War II to the 1991 death of Danny Casolaro, which Oglesby said are reason to be worried about "a secret and invisible state within the public state"
1973: Allende Murdered
Frustrated in its 1970 efforts to control the Chilean election, the CIA resorted to murder once again in the elimination of Salvador Allende. Allende government official Orlando Letelier along with an American supporter, Ronnie Moffit, were also killed, not far away in Chile, but in Dupont Circle in our nation's capital.
Trump’s Support and Praise of Despots Is Central to the U.S. Tradition, Not a Deviation From It, by Glenn Greenwald, 2 May 2017
Discusses recent criticism of Donald Trump that claims that his foreign policy towards known dictators and tyrants constitutes a major shift, when in fact that has been standard U.S. policy since at least the end of World War II
Upon the 2006 death of Augusto Pinochet — the military dictator imposed on Chile by the U.S. after it overthrew that country's democratically elected left-wing president — the Washington Post editorial page heaped praise on both Kirkpatrick and Pinochet. While conceding that the Chilean tyrant was "brutal: more than 3,000 people were killed by his government and tens of thousands tortured," the Post hailed "the free-market policies that produced the Chilean economic miracle," concluding that like Pinochet, "Kirkpatrick, too, was vilified by the left. Yet by now it should be obvious: She was right."
U.S. Regime Change, Torture, and Murder in Chile, by Jacob G. Hornberger, 24 Nov 2004
Discusses the unwelcome reception given to George W. Bush on a visit to Chile and various reasons for Chilean animosity towards the U.S. government, contrasting it with general opinion about these matters in the U.S. and the lack of action by Congress
Chileans still remember that in the 1973 "regime change" in their country, the U.S. government played an active role in ousting their democratically elected president because he was a communist and replacing him with a brutal military dictator, Augustin Pinochet, who ended up ruling Chile for almost two decades ... Chileans remember the ... military rule in their country, characterized by middle-of-the-night arrests, obliterations of civil liberties, torture, executions, disappearances of suspected terrorists, and other human-rights abuses that eerily bring to mind the U.S. military's ... policies ...
Related Topics: George W. Bush, Iraq War, Terrorism

The introductory paragraph uses material from the Wikipedia article "Chile" as of 27 Jul 2018, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.