On The Media System Goes Global Robert McChesney mentions how Chile “is held up as the greatest neoliberal success story in Latin America”. The New York Times apparently stated that Augusto Pinochet's coup “began Chile's transformation from a backwater banana republic to the economic star of Latin America”. Right beside that quote, on the margin of my copied reading is the word ASCO (revolting). Capitalized like that, and underlined three times.
I don't often get visceral reactions like that, but for some reason anything having to do with the overthrow of Salvador Allende's government makes me very angry. I don't think there's any direct, logical reason for it. I have no ties with Chile or Allende other than the language I speak and I guess a shared colonial past (though it's still present for us in Puerto Rico). But injustice is injustice, no matter where it happens, and when I finished watching Patricio Guzman's La batalla de Chile (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=397228709346047907), and kept crying for about half an hour after it had ended, my emotional connection to Chile and Allende had been established.
For me, it has come to represent everything that's wrong with the current neoliberal agenda that runs the world and that McChesney so criticizes. The system's hypocrisy, its disregard for actual democracy and the unfairness of a world dominated by a single country all come into play in this story.
The quotation included by McChesney demonstrates how the mainstream media oftentimes serves as a lackey to this unjust system. I mean, seriously, “success story”?! Under what standards can a military coup of a democratic government be considered that? And what about the thousands of people who disappeared during Pinochet's dictatorship? And I don't even have to go as far back as Pinochet's regime to confirm that this system does not make Chile an “economic star”. As is happening in other parts of the world, Chile's public education system is in crisis, and thousands of students and citizens have taken their struggle to the streets asking for its democratization, sometimes being victims of terrible police abuse. The problem with such a portrayal is that it can be harmful; and can give the impression that the system is working, that inequalities have been eradicated, and that people are happy as a clam.
I'm guessing its Erica's post. In any possible way, I feel you. Being acknowledge as 'raising economy' isn't always translated as equal distribution of people welfare, just and fair law enforcement, or flawless human right enforcement. In some cases, macroeconomic achievement does not represented well at the micro level. High GDP, low inflation, but as you've mentioned, the public education system is in crisis. But sadly, macroeconomics (cmiiw) is the only indicator used by government to evaluate economic development and economic policy. A country is not all about its macro achievement. it's a system, and like any other system, it will operate well with the support from its sub-system. if one of the subsystem down, it will affect the whole system. Perhaps now Chile is an economic star, but that won't last without any good will to fix the situation at the lower level. And based on your post, instead of being a watchdog, media seems only serves as amplifier for the status quo.
ReplyDeleteI do hope the situation in Chile will get better! Perhaps with your smart and sharp writings, you can help them :)
Erica-san, ganbatte ne!