Victims of the Chilean Miracle

Peter Winn (Editor); Paul Drake (Foreword)

Description

Chile was the first major Latin American nation to carry out a complete neoliberal transformation. Its policies-encouraging foreign investment, privatizing public sector companies and services, lowering trade barriers, reducing the size of the state, and embracing the market as a regulator of both the economy and society-produced an economic boom that some have hailed as a "miracle" to be emulated by other Latin American countries. But how have Chile's millions of workers, whose hard labor and long hours have made the miracle possible, fared under this program? Through empirically grounded historical case studies, this volume examines the human underside of the Chilean economy over the past three decades, delineating the harsh inequities that persist in spite of growth, low inflation, and some decrease in poverty and unemployment.Implemented in the 1970s at the point of the bayonet and in the shadow of the torture chamber, the neoliberal policies of Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship reversed many of the gains in wages, benefits, and working conditions that Chile's workers had won during decades of struggle and triggered a severe economic crisis. Later refined and softened, Pinochet's neoliberal model began, finally, to promote economic growth in the mid-1980s, and it was maintained by the center-left governments that followed the restoration of democracy in 1990. Yet, despite significant increases in worker productivity, real wages stagnated, the expected restoration of labor rights faltered, and gaps in income distribution continued to widen. To shed light on this history and these ongoing problems, the contributors look at industries long part of the Chilean economy-including textiles and copper-and industries that have expanded more recently-including fishing, forestry, and agriculture. They not only show how neoliberalism has affected Chile's labor force in general but also how it has damaged the environment and imposed special burdens on women. Painting a sobering picture of the two Chiles-one increasingly rich, the other still mired in poverty-these essays suggest that the Chilean miracle may not be as miraculous as it seems.Contributors.Paul DrakeVolker FrankThomas KlubockRachel SchurmanJoel StillermanHeidi TinsmanPeter Winn

Sujets

• Histoire
• Industrial relations
• Cultural studies
• Economic history
• Latin America
• Labour economics
• History of the Americas
• Chile
• Chili

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 20 juillet 2004
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822385851
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

victims of the chilean miracle

edited by peter winn

V ICTIMS OF THE C HILEAN M IRACLE

Workers and Neoliberalism in the Pinochet Era, 1973–2002

with a foreword by Paul Drake

Duke University Press§Durham and London§2004

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in memory

of my parents, who

fought for labor rights

in hard times, and

for the chilean workers

who struggled in the

face of dictatorship and

neoliberalism for the right

to shape their own

destiny

ix

xv

1

14

71

125

164

209

261

298

337

389

409

411

paul w. drake

Foreword

Acknowledgments

peter winn

peter winn

Introduction

The Pinochet Era

volker frank Politics without Policy:The Failure of Social Concertation in Democratic Chile,1990–2000

peter winn ‘‘No Miracle for Us’’:The Textile Industry in the Pinochet Era, 1973–1998

joel stillerman Disciplined Workers and Avid Consumers:Neoliberal Policy and the Transformation of Work and Identity among Chilean Metalworkers

Contents

thomas miller klubock Class, Community, and Neoliberalism in Chile:Copper Workers and the Labor Movement During the Military Dictatorship and the Restoration of Democracy

heidi tinsman More Than Victims:Women Agricultural Workers and Social Change in Rural Chile

rachel schurman Shuckers, Sorters, Headers, and Gutters:Labor in the Fisheries Sector

thomas miller klubock Labor, Land, and Environmental Change in the Forestry Sector in Chile, 1973–1998

Bibliography

Contributors

Index

paul w. drake Foreword

Peter Winn and his coauthors have the audacity to challenge the most success- ful economic experiment in Latin America since the 1970s. They do so by examining the human underside of the glowing aggregate data. While conced- ing numerous vaunted achievements from 1973 to 1998, these scholars argue that many workers in a wide range of sectors su√ered from Chile’s neoliberal ‘‘miracle.’’ They also contend that this market-oriented model had a di√erential and sometimes worse impact on women. At the same time, they expose the damage to the environment. This book is not, however, merely an exercise in ‘‘victimology,’’ for it emphasizes the agency and resistance of labor as well as its mistreatment and misfortune. Winn deserves credit for questioning the conventional wisdom about Chile’s economic triumphs. He also makes a valuable contribution by showcasing the innovative and gracefully written research of a talented new generation of Chil- eanists. Most unusually, he has produced a remarkably integrated, cohesive, and coherent collection, not simply another patchwork of loosely related arti- cles. Just as Chilean capitalists have imposed discipline on their workers, so this editor has on his authors. As the paragon of neoliberalism in Latin America, Chile is the crucial test case for the consequences of those market-driven policies for the working class. It has been hailed as the shining example not only for Latin America but also for other parts of the world. If the ‘‘Washington consensus’’ on the free market has produced economic and social well-being anywhere, it must be in Chile, which has been on that path longer than any of its neighbors. In the wake of the hemispheric economic downturn at the end of the 1990s, discontent with neoliberal economics mounted throughout the region, but least of all in Chile, which, despite declining from its earlier boom, continued to outperform other countries. Moreover, rising disillusionment with open mar- kets did not spawn any clear alternative formula, least of all in Chile, which