Augusto Pinochet's legacy hasn't aged well in the era of cancel culture (and for good reason). However, it's fair to say that Chile's current, pro-free market constitution, drafted in 1980 during his regime, has served the country well, bringing staggering economic success by Latin American and even global standards. But in an October 2020 referendum, 78 percent of Chilean voters chose to ditch the constitution altogether, a damnatio memoriae by unequivocal popular decree.
It seemingly mattered little to voters that, for years, Chile has had one of the region's highest per capita GDP. As Chilean writer Axel Kaiser points out, the country has led Latin America in terms of access to university education and poverty reduction. Poverty, in fact, decreased from 45 percent in 1982 to a mere 8 percent in 2014, according to Chile's Commission on National Productivity. The country (which is the world's leading copper exporter and was the second largest lithium producer in 2020) also reduced inequality and led the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in social mobility in 2018. Not bad for a nation whose economy between 1950 and 1970 was, according to a Library of Congress country study, "the poorest among Latin America's large and medium-sized countries."
