Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
Your final book is Victims of the Chilean Miracle by Peter Winn. This brings us to the post-Pinochet political era.
There are many good books about the period of democracy since 1990, most them in Spanish. But there is no sort of comprehensive account of the whole period. I think what is interesting is how what has happened on the labour front has been ignored a great deal in literature. And Winn does this very well. He has brought together a group of researchers who look at what happened in various sectors in the economy. Places like the forestry sector, the fishing sector, the copper mines and so on, to try to explore what had been the benefits and drawbacks of this period of democracy. He wants to find out what has happened to ordinary working people.
And the story is fairly mixed. Women now are more likely to find employment. It’s often not very well paid employment and for long hours but it has had a peculiar effect in family relations. Women used to have a subordinate place in the family, but now that is changing.
Some might say paving the way for the first female president in Chile – Michelle Bachelet?
That was interesting. Chile is regarded as a very conservative society and the idea that Chile of all places would be somewhere to vote in a female president was really quite remarkable.
But do you think that is part of the nostalgia going back to Pinochet times and it was about who her father was?
Yes. Interestingly, a couple of days ago they actually opened a museum of memory in Chile, and there is something about her father there. He was an air force general, a democrat who believed in a subordinate role for the military. He died in prison because his heart condition was allowed to deteriorate. But, this book doesn’t go into that. It is a very serious academic book. And it tells you a great deal about how the Chilean so-called miracle has had a kind a complicated impact on the lives of ordinary working people in Chile.
Chile puts itself forward as one of the most stable and successful countries in the region. Looking back on the governments since Pinochet, what is your assessment of that?
Oh, profoundly positive. If you look at the economy, the economic growth since 1990 has been remarkable.
Right-wing apologists would argue that Pinochet laid the way for that.
No, no, no. Certainly Pinochet started some of the things. But, really, the situation when the new government took over was quite precarious. So what the government has done is to take some of the Pinochet reforms but get rid of the less successful ones. On the whole my assessment of the Pinochet regime is negative. Don’t forget that over 40 per cent of the population were living in poverty in 1990. It is down to about 13 per cent now. Also what the various governments have done since then is to develop a very stable democratic order. They really have constructed a democracy of institutions rather than a democracy based on one leader.
Read full interview
Alan Angell is Emeritus Fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford and was formerly University Lecturer in Latin American Politics and Director of the Latin American Centre. His first published work was a study of the union movement in Chile published during the Allende government. He was made a Gran Oficial of the Order of Bernardo O’Higgins in 2007 for academic work on the country and for support for human rights during the Pinochet dictatorship. He has published widely, not only on Chilean politics but on the left in Latin America and aspects of social policy.
