( Posted in The Desk, June 11, 2008 )
On December 4, 1972, the then president of Chile, Salvador Allende, had the opportunity to appear before the UN General Assembly in New York and to report on the country chairing. Many things have changed over the last 35 years but others are very similar and even, in some cases, has widened the gap between the desirable and the harsh reality.
As for the negative changes, an update to 2008 I should say, for example: "I come from Chile, a small country, in which any citizen today is no longer free to express themselves as best choice, with a disturbing intolerance cultural, religious and ideological, where racial discrimination has no place. A country with an atomized working class and poor in different unions, where universal suffrage and secret, is becoming less participatory and more and more the vehicle to enshrine a political regime inclusive, with a parliament which suffered a severe disruption in its operation since its establishment 196 years ago and remains a limited power and questionable representativeness popular, where the courts are not independent of the Executive and the economic and military. A country which since 1981 has created a charter according to the needs of an oligarchy represented in the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet and supported by Presidents Aylwin, Frei Ruiz-Tagle, Lagos and Bachelet, whose public life is organized civil institutions under the supervision of the Armed Forces, with an extremely limited democratic spirit. A country of about seventeen million people in the past 30 years there has been no Nobel prize for literature, as if they did Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda, both sons of modest workers a less pretentious and arrogant Chile but also more humane and noble. "
Following the same line of argument, today is not possible to say that the people of Chile "is fully delivered to the task of establishing economic democracy, so that economic activity responds to needs and expectations, and not the profit interests particular. " Less could be added that "workers are displacing the privileged sectors of political and economic power, both in work centers, as in the municipalities and the state. " Rather we should say that the process in the country is completely opposite and not be directed, then held Allende, towards overcoming the capitalist system, even worse, capitalism is consolidating more and more savage and ruthless.
In his speech applauded, Allende stated the need to serve the enormous needs of the Chilean people, all of our economic resources, which according to him was directly related to the recovery of the dignity of Chile. To Salvador Allende, we should end up with a situation in which we, Chileans, squirming against poverty and stagnation, we had to export huge amounts of capital for the benefit of the most powerful economy in the world, so that the nationalization of basic resources was a historical claim. Our economy could no longer tolerate the subordination implied to have more than 80% of exports in the hands of a small group of large foreign companies that had always prefix their interests to the needs of countries which were operating profit .
could not accept the scourge of large estates, commercial and industrial monopolies, credit for the benefit of a few nor brutal inequalities in income distribution. This fact denounced by President Allende, has not changed significantly and has even worsened, since today's monopolies and concentration of wealth is even worse than then, so also the land and major natural resources remain usufruct of transnational capital and national economic groups.
regard to copper, Allende claimed that "only in the last forty-two years away, in that period, more than four billion dollars in profit ...." How much more should not be shocked today when only In 2006, multinational companies that exploit the Chilean copper took the modest sum of 20 billion dollars. At that time, Allende comparing figures and asked to keep in mind that only a fraction of that amount would be secured forever proteins all Chilean children. With respect to amounts drawn foreign capital today we can say, as Allende did that for years could ensure an appropriate education for all children in Chile. The trouble is that this not only applies to copper, but also to water, soil, and all fisheries and forest resources available to the country for its development.
At that time, as Allende today, we can say that "Chile is also a country whose economy is alienated to foreign capitalist enterprises ..., a country with an economy highly sensitive to the external environment, where millions of people have been forced to live in conditions of exploitation and misery of open or disguised unemployment. "
A much has come back to Chile in almost every aspect even today are still valid conclusions de Allende, when referring to the Chilean people as politically mature. Today is just the opposite, because as people exhibit a political immaturity that prevents capital from lack of practice, reflective capacity, neglect, mediocrity, laziness, and even superior, active and determined to deal with looting, theft and all kinds of abuses that we are victims.
today's tragic that Allende's speech ovation, also extends to the consequences which he announced as a result of the globalization process and are now becoming increasingly apparent, when he held that the outlook for Chile, as for other countries Third World were simply doomed to exclude the possibilities of progress, welfare and social liberation more and more millions of people, relegating them to a subhuman life.
Still, as much as we trust Beyond that the great values \u200b\u200bof humanity will prevail and not be destroyed.
Marcel Claude, an economist.
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