Chile: between the image of success and the ghosts of underdevelopment

Abstract

The development model known as “growth with equity” proposed by the “Concertación”, after 18 years  of government, shows its first signs of exhaustion.  The successes reached in the economic sphere, the public policy and the political transition after the military dictatorship, have not conducted to equity.  Through a critical analysis of the available social and political-economic data, the author establishes that the ghosts of underdevelopment: productive structure based on primary products, poor quality of education, unjust distribution of income and low investment in science and technology, are circling Chile and threatening to stay.  Chile has now an extraordinary patrimonial situation because of the millionaires profits obtained from the sales of copper, but collides with a political establishment fearful of making decisions of structural change to  the political model, and unwilling to undertake the necessary economic reforms to pass to the second phase of development with greater aggregate value.