Opinion

Around the World in 80 Days, Chile: South America’s Most Stable Democracy?

Larry Alex Taunton Founder, Fixed Point Foundation
Font Size:

This article regards day 58 on a series that document travels around the world from a Christian perspective. Read the previous entry here.

At this moment, I am on a flight following the spine of the Andes northward from Santiago, Chile to Lima, Peru.  Running some 4,300 miles, the Andes are the longest continuous mountain range in the world.  Looking out on the endless snowcapped peaks, I am reminded of the 90s film, Alive.  It is the story of the Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashed somewhere in these mountains in 1972.  It’s South America’s version of the Donner Party.  Pausing to look at the passenger in the seat next to me, I can only be thankful that he is happily eating a sandwich and not eating me.  Let us hope that this is a sign of things to come.

How does one assess Chile, this peculiar country once dominated by the Incas; that the Spanish subdued and colonized; that Sir Francis Drake bombarded and pillaged; this long, narrow, mountainous country of active volcanoes that gained its independence in 1840, suffered the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, and is now a (tentative) model for other South American democracies?  Chile defies simple categories.  Its history is remarkably like that of, say, its neighbor, Argentina—a former colony, civil war, military dictatorship, a penchant for governmental corruption and brutality, Milton Friedman economic reforms, and an ambition to join the great democracies of the world.  But where Argentina remains trapped by the gravitational force of its history, Chile seems to have reached escape velocity, leaving the dark atmospheric pressure of the past while maintaining a trajectory for better things.

Yesterday, I misjudged the square-footage of the hotel elevator and stepped into a huddle of women speaking an easy Spanish.  Apparently returning from an afternoon of shopping, their hands were full of the day’s spoils.  Holding my arms up and turning awkwardly to face the door, I was met with an oversized bag from Banana Republic.  I smirked at the irony.  A derogatory term for Latin American governments, to this group of affluent women, it was territory to be conquered, plundered.

All over South America you see it.  Ostentatious displays of American commercial enterprise dominate the fashionable parts of cities like Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and even Buenos Aires.  Nike, Starbucks, Calvin Klein, Apple—they are all there, and to own their products is to be hip and cool.  American businesses have accomplished worldwide what the CIA and the United States Armed Forces and diplomacy and trillions in US tax dollars could not in a half-century: advance the American Way of life.  Nowhere is this more evident than in Santiago, Chile.

Over the last three decades, democracy in South America has flourished.  Writing for The Brookings Institute, Daniel Zovatto describes South America’s democracies:

Latin America is a paradox: it is the only region in the world that combines democratic regimes in almost all countries with large sectors of their populations living below the poverty line (27.9 percent for 2013, according to ECLAC), the most uneven economic distribution in the world, high levels of corruption and the highest homicide rate in the world.  Nowhere else in the world is democracy shaped by such an unusual combination of factors.  It is a fact that our democracies exhibit important deficits and symptoms of fragility.  The main unresolved issues are institutional problems that affect governability and the rule of law, independence and interconnection between state powers, hyper-presidentialism and re-election, corruption, constraints to freedom of expression, poor performance of electoral and political systems, lack of gender equality, and citizen insecurity, all factors that undermine its functioning.

That statement is true of South America generally, but Chile is an outlier to the rest of this troubled continent.  It isn’t a banana republic.

The geography of some countries makes them virtually ungovernable.  Authorities in Brazil cannot, for example, effectively control what happens in the mysterious Amazon.  Russia’s enormity has been a historic problem.  Japan’s lack of space and natural resources have led its leaders to expansionist disaster.  Poland’s proximity to hostile, militaristic nations has made for a tragic history.  And Belgium’s absence of natural defensive barriers on its eastern border has made it a doormat for invaders.  Geography is the most underrated factor in the development of nations.

As nations go, Chile’s geography, though beautiful and interesting, is awful.  2,653 miles long while only an average of 110 miles wide, the country is chiefly uninhabitable mountains.  Worse still, it is actively volcanic and thus prone to epic earthquake disasters.  Yes, geographically speaking, if Chile were a square on a Monopoly board, it would be the slums of Baltic Avenue, and the United States would inhabit the exclusive districts of Boardwalk and Park Place. (Make a mental note.  We will return to this theme as the trip continues.)

Mitigating this potentially insurmountable obstacle to national greatness is the fact that Santiago, in central Chile, is home to one-third of Chile’s 18 million people.  That makes governance as well as social and economic development possible for such an elongated state.  Remarkably, Chile has largely managed to overcome these difficulties, and it has become Latin America’s most stable democracy.  The secret to Chile’s success is found in a free market economy that relied on the development of industry where most of Latin America remained agricultural.  That has given birth to a thriving middle class.  Furthermore, since the brutal dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet ended in 1990, successive Chilean presidents have shown a willingness to devolve federal powers in favor of the local governments, expand civil liberties, and demonstrate greater transparency.

What about faith?  Chile, like the rest of Latin America, is overwhelmingly Catholic.  But only 13 percent of Chilean Catholics attend mass regularly.  Evangelical Christianity, however, has grown rapidly in recent decades.  Writing for Reuters, Lisa Yulkowski estimates that evangelicals now number 15 percent of Chile’s population.  Growth among the poor has been spectacular.  Yulkowski says:

One change that could spark even greater growth among evangelicals is the fact that the movement has gained acceptance among Chile’s middle class.  ‘It used to be looked down upon for a middle or upper class person to say they were evangelical,’ said Francisco Ruiz, a 60-year-old former Catholic priest.  ‘It’s no longer embarrassing and business people are starting to take notice and hire evangelicals because of their reliability.’  Ruiz, who is still a practicing Catholic, said he didn’t think the more traditional Catholic Church was prepared for how this could reshape the religious landscape in Chile.

But if the Protestant ethic gave rise to capitalism and prosperity as Max Weber famously observed, prosperity often gives rise to a fatally irreligious spirit, and that, too, is at work in Chile.  Socialists, communists, and anarchists are finding universities fertile for their ideologies. (Sound familiar?)  Home-grown terror groups are burning churches, destroying infrastructure, and attacking opponents.  So great are these problems, that some suggest Chile’s image of stability is only a veneer.  But with a rapidly growing church, there is much reason for optimism in the face of these threats.

Chile star rating: 5.5/10

 Larry Alex Taunton is a cultural commentator, columnist, and the author of The Faith of Christopher Hitchens and The Grace Effect.  You can follow him at larryalextaunton.com or on Twitter @larrytaunton.


Views expressed in op-eds are not the views of The Daily Caller.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel