Jason Y writes:
I looked at World Book Encyclopedia article (1986) edition, laying around the house. It said Cuba, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay have literacy rates above 90 percent. Note that one of those nations, Chile, is both right wing, and has a high mixed race population. Of course, now the rates could even be higher, considering it’s 30 some years later.
Chileans are only about 20% Indian and 80% White. They are pretty much White people. Only 7% of the population are Indians.
Argentina and Uruguay still have functioning social democracies installed during the boom years of the 1950’s (Argentina’s was installed by Peron) that were never successfully dismantled. Argentina and Uruguay are now ruled by Leftists who refer to themselves as socialists.
Chile is not really a rightwing country. The newly elected leader is from the Socialist Party and she proudly calls herself a Leftist.
They have a very well developed social democracy and Pinochet was never really able to dismantle it. All of their good health and education figures stem exactly from that social democracy. In addition, in recent years, the state has badly neglected the public schools as a result of rightwing ideology. Many of the public schools are literally falling apart. I mean the roofs are caving in, stuff like that. The students hate it and are very angry. They protest and riot in the streets constantly.
No rightwing country will ever have a good educational system because all conservatives the world over are utterly hostile to the idea of public schooling. Bottom line is that conservatives the world over have been completely hostile to public education from the moment it started and they’ve never let up. I think that conservatives simply do not believe in the notion of pubic schooling. Instead, conservatives tend to send their kids to private schools.
Chile is shit. Basically what you have here is some sort of a rightwing dream. However, first of all, it’s not really all that rightwing, and second of all, there is a horrible price to pay for a rightwing paradise.
The classes absolutely hate each other’s guts. In particular, the poor and the workers have an extreme hatred of the rich. The rich hate the poor too. The right represents the rich as it does everywhere and the left represents the poor and the workers as it should everywhere. A while back they were having alternating rallies in the streets that usually turned violent. The Left would have a demonstration burning Pinochet in effigy and the Right would stage a counter-demonstration and soon it would turn violent. Basically there was regular street fighting between the Right and the Left, the rich and the poor and workers. People got hurt all the time and quite a few people got killed.
As recently as 20 years ago, the Left was heavily armed and there were bombs going off all the time.
The rich live on hills in big houses that are surrounded by big walls and barbed wire. Every night whole armies of poor people creep up from the slums below to steal from the rich. Crime is very high, mostly property crime. Chile has one of the worst income distributions on Earth. As you can see, you can either have the state redistribute income or the people will just do it themselves. Income gets redistributed in one way or another.
The rich, even the more progressive college educated rich, is unbelievably racist and classist. I had a friend once, a wealthy college student whose father had worked in the Allende Administration and who claimed to be a progressive person. He was an incredibly racist and classist individual.
In Chile, a man must have “soft hands.” If you have “hard hands,” then no woman wants you because you work with your hands like a worker. Soft hands means you are rich and never worked a day in your life so all the women want you.
This man also told me how poor people were poor because as soon as they got a paycheck, they spent all their money on booze and gambling. If they only saved their money, they would all be rich like he was and live in mansions. Blaming the poor for their poverty is very common among Third World elites. The Filipino elites talk like this all the time.
This fake Leftist was also shockingly racist towards Chile’s Mapuche Indians. He was always laughing his ass off about them and commenting on how ugly they were. To him, Indian = ugly. Chileans really hate Peruvians and you can see a lot of online battles between them. It is common for nations to be rivals, but online you can see the Chileans ripping the Peruvians to shreds calling them “Indios.” To have Indian blood is to be worthless. Chileans are contemptuous of Peruvians because they are seen as Indians, and supposedly Chileans are White. Actually Chileans are mestizos too, but they are much Whiter than Peruvians.
I finally decided after reading some stuff and talking to this guy that Chile was a really shitty country. If this is the Right’s poster country, that is really pitiful.
