Reddit mentions of Allende's Chile: The Political Economy of the Rise and Fall of the Unidad Popular (Cambridge Latin American Studies)

I'm trying to find an online source for copper price manipulation. I originally read about it in Allende's Chile: The Political Economy of the Rise and Fall of the Unidad Popular but it's not excerpted much online. I loaned it to my sister so I don't have the book on hand >_<. We'll call that one a maybe, but you can see a dip coinciding pretty neatly with Allende's tenure. Obviously that's not proof but it's the best I have right now. Essentially the accusation was that the US released parts of it's copper reserves in 1970 as retaliation for the undervaluing of Anaconda and Kennecott in the nationalization scheme. Despite my best efforts I'm having a really hard time finding resources online that show the American Copper reserve levels over the last century. What the fuck am I doing with my life.

The economic mistakes made by Chavez pretty closely map to Allende's, although it's pretty difficult to know if he would have attempted to diversify the economy had he served his full term without having to deal with foreign interference at every turn. They were both shit with monetary policy, that much is obvious. They continued working in the framework of an extraction economy which is obviously a huge mistake. Countries are vulnerable when their sole source of income is natural resources, even if natural resources are probably the most just industry for nationalization.

What's interesting is the increase in wages did lead to an increase in consumer purchasing at first. The Chilean economy wasn't producing consumer goods, so they had a huge spike in their dependency on imports within the first six months of Allende's tenure. Those imports were targeted in a really surprisingly granular fashion. There was certainly a conspiracy of business interests to make borrowing and purchasing from American firms difficult. Without being able to meet consumer needs, the cost of goods skyrocketed. The same thing would happen here if one of our major trading partners decided to evaluate the purchases of American firms on a case by case basis.

My problem with that blogpost was that the author kind of dismissed out of hand the problems Chile was having with importing goods. Obviously you're going to have a hard time fostering growth if the most powerful country in the world, and one of your largest trading partners starts antagonizing your ability to buy goods. Ironically, ff the Chileans had managed to establish stronger economic ties with the Soviet Union from the start they probably would've fared a whole lot better. Small countries exist at the leisure of the superpowers. I read a quote from Nixon claiming that if Chile succeeded they'd put the US in the same position that the British Empire was in prior to WWI. It's interesting that Kissinger and Nixon really did take the view that these countries existed to service the requirements of the American Markets. It was a combination of bad monetary policy along with an overemphasis on self reliance that worked in concert with American meddling to cause the economic downturn.

Agreed that this is fun. Arguing with people in forums I disagree with is a great hobby until I start researching Nixon's copper reserve levels.

It's only partially related to this, but if you haven't read Naomi Klein's the Shock Doctrine I highly recommend it. I haven't seen and meaningful critiques with regards to the factual accuracy of the book, and it does a great job outlining the ways that Neoliberal institutions are designed from the bottom up to disintegrate states that don't conform to the American conception of governance. She's an ideologue so you have to deal with some incendiary language but I think everyone with an interest in geopolitics should read it.