In other words, Chile was pulled from depression by dull old Keynesian remedies, all Franklin Roosevelt, zero Margaret Thatcher. To save the nation's pension system, Pinochet nationalized banks and industry on a scale unimagined by Communist Allende. The General expropriated at will, offering little or no compensation. For nearly a century, copper has meant Chile and Chile copper. This is the hard currency which has built today's Chile, the proceeds from the mines seized from Anaconda and Kennecott in 1973 - Allende's posthumous gift to his nation.
Agribusiness is the second locomotive of Chile's economic growth.
This also is a legacy of the Allende years. So there we have it. Keynes and Marx, not Friedman, saved Chile. Within the faith of the Reaganauts and Thatcherites, Chile provides the necessary genesis fable, the ersatz Eden from which laissez- faire dogma sprang successful and shining. Half a globe away from Chile, an alternative economic experiment was succeeding quietly and bloodlessly.