Hello and welcome back to the Latin America Weekly newsletter! In this issue: the Chilean election hangs in the balance, but change is certain. Lula and Kirchner hold a joint rally in Buenos Aires. Covid concerns amid land border reopenings.
The end of the ‘Chilean way’
SANTIAGO — Chile heads to the polls on Sunday for an increasingly unpredictable presidential runoff election. But there is one near-sure thing: whoever wins the vote — left-wing Gabriel Boric or far-right José Antonio Kast — will begin veering Chile from the economic model it has had in place since the 1970s and 1980s, when former dictator Augusto Pinochet handed the keys to the country’s economy to the so-called “Chicago Boys.”
- Economists educated at the University of Chicago, a cradle for free-market economics, the Chicago Boys were given full autonomy to turn Chile into an experiment of how a hands-off approach to the economy could work in Latin America.
Why it matters. Chile’s economic model generated stellar macroeconomic results, but a look underneath the hood shows a deeply unequal country with looming problems related to its 100-percent private welfare system.
Veering away. The urge for public education and healthcare sparked mass protests in 2019, which...