In a development that was celebrated by champions of democracy around the world, Chilean voters this weekend elected a progressive slate of delegates to the constituent assembly tasked with rewriting the country’s right-wing constitution, which was imposed more than 40 years ago during Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship and has continued to reproduce inequality for over three decades since the end of his rule. After a U.S.-backed coup toppled and murdered Chile’s democratically elected socialist president Salvador Allende, on September 11, 1973, Pinochet’s regime implemented a wave of pro-market policies under anti-democratic circumstances at the behest of economists trained at the University of Chicago.
— source commondreams.org | May 17, 2021