>>1091

It's nice to hear an opinion from a different point of view. The debate about this in Chile is kind of taboo.

I don't know how much you know about Chile besides politics, but there are huge discrepancies in social standings.

The high/rich class which manage the country in every way, usually they are from rich families from the colonial times, caucasian and usually with a "foreigner" last name. They live isolated from the middle and lower classes in the most expensives areas of the country, working in conglomerates that monopolized the market, you can name at least 10 families that literally own the country.

Obviously they are biased towards right wing politics, Pinochet and conservatism. In the 70-80' Pinochet had the Chicago Boys, a group of chilean economists that went to study to USA and brought a liberal economy model (very experimental) that Americans wanted to try in South America. This went well on the great scale and granted them a huge political influence. But this was good only for the high class. With time, rich people managed to privatize the education (it was free for everyone before) , natural resources: water, eletricity, copper, etc.

We are the only country in the world that has it's water privatized, there a lot of memes about the thing that Nestle wants to do right now.

When you see our GPD per capita, it's about 15000 USD, but in reality 70% of the citizens earn less than 700 USD per month (and I think that even that this data is wrong, the % should be higher and the money even less). So imagine the 70% of the country living with less than 700 USD per month, just the rent cost at least 400-500 USD/mo, college about 600 USD/mo, and add to that transport, food, basic and fucking water, gas and electricity (and you have no choice, there is literally just one company that provides those services in every city and no more options unless you are in Santiago).

So yeah, we are not like Cuba or Venezuela right now, actually, Chile is one of the most stable countries in South America, but this a great country just for the rich people because they get even more rich . The rest of the country is fucked in every way, we can't "climb" to the high class because is a very closed circle that depends on name, family history, business, looks, etc. Almost every student has a huge debt that they have to pay with a deadly interest rate for about 20 years after graduating, and even with that, there is no certainty that you will make more than 700-1000 USD per/mo because employment depends on connections, so If you are lucky and have a family/friend working in a place, you have more chances than a brilliant student or a hard worker, because merits has no value at all. And forget about buying a house in these days, or having a good pension/retirement
(politicians even want to extend the age of retirement for men to 70 years old)

My parents lived both sides of the story, my mother having a lot of young friends being killed for being pro socialist/comunnist, "missing" relatives, and being poor as fuck. My father instead was a soldier in the middle of the dictatorship. Even if Pinochet regime brought a lot of good things, there is a general rejection because of the killings, exiles, censorship, etc.

Personally, I find that right or left wing here are shit. You have socialist/comunnist earning tons of fucking money when the turn into politicians. Parliamentarians earn 14000 USD/mo and they don't even go to work because fuck the people. They don't have idea of how is to live in the middle-low class and every law that they put is about earning more money for them, lowering taxes for conglomerates but increasing taxes of basic resources and SME. The right wing is also shit because they don't want to lose face towards the progressive ideas that are trends nowadays and only approve ridiculous laws that has none impact on improving something important.

Sorry for the long text, about that last part, the impressive thing about Victor Jara is that they killed him in the most important stadium of the country (Estadio Nacional), cutting his finger and teasing him to play and sing (and he did). Every good thing that the dictatorship had is ruined because of the cruelty and blood that is behind, but also Communism doesn't have that much of approval either. That's why we never have a far left or far right goverment, just something in the middle that goes back every 4 years (left-center to right-center).