The UN Human Rights Watchdog is crediting Chile with making “extraordinary progress” in poverty reduction, but cautions that it also has the widest gap between rich and poor among the 34 nations of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. 

In a press conference with President Michelle Bachelet, United Nations special rapporteur Philip Alston said Chile “continues to tolerate levels of poverty and inequality which are very high”.  Bachelet has instituted economic and social reforms, such as by increasing corporate taxes gradually by 5 percentage points to raise some US$8.2 billion.

But thanks to the failed, leftover neo-liberal policies of the “Chicago School” of economics rolled out by the 1973-1990 fascist dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, Santiago’s glitzy mansions and soaring skyscrapers sit just across walls and avenues from barrios of zinc-roofed wooden shacks.  Conservatives and Pinochet loyalists still hold enough congressional seats to effectively block many of the much-needed reforms that would turn those shacks into real housing.  When they talk about the so-called “Miracle of Chile”, real results on the ground show that it didn’t happen – wealth was transferred from the lower and middle classes to the elites at the top.

The problem is worsened by Chile’s education system.  Prior to Pinochet, schools were free.  But the “Chicago School” prescribed ending central control and funding of primary and secondary schools, replacing it with a voucher system that siphoned billions of dollars in public funds to privately run high schools.  In the poorer districts, the vouchers didn’t even cover the basics.

It set off years of students protesting for fair, free, equal, and quality education for all.  Michelle Bachelet has introduced legislation to try and iron out the problems.

The special rapporteur also said that Chile’s record on the rights of indigenous peoples remains “the ‘Achilles Heel’ of its human rights record in the twenty-first century.”

“Efforts to eliminate extreme poverty in Chile cannot succeed without a concerted focus on the situation of indigenous peoples,” Alston said.