Bloomberg | "If it can happen in Chile, it can happen anywhere"

"If it can happen in Santiago, it could happen anywhere," he writes. John Authers, American writer and opinion columnist in Bloomberg. "It's the clumsy message that the rest of the world should receive from the sudden collapse of the civil order in Chile and, unfortunately, it's right."

Then the note enters into competition:

The riots and vandalism of recent days, which caused the state of emergency, a military response and even a statement by the President of Chile that the country is at war, have reached the most stable country and the most prosperous in Latin America, which had the longest unbroken democracy on the continent before the coup d'etat that established Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship in 1973, and enjoyed uninterrupted democracy since the peaceful fall. of his regime in 1990.

Out of the country, Chile was considered the living incarnation of the economic policy put in place under the Pinochet government by the Chicago Boys., a group of economists, many of whom attended the University of Chicago to learn about free market ideas. The pension reform in Chile, in which everyone has to pay state-supervised private pension schemes, has been used as a model by all the countries in the region and has allowed a constant accumulation of passive local capital.

At the same time, globalization has allowed Chile to benefit from its huge copper reserves. In relative terms, its success is undeniable. In 1975, shortly after Pinochet came to power, Chile's per capita gross domestic product was lower than that of Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and even its neighbor, Peru. Today, it has more wealth per capita than any of them and has avoided the crises that have hit the rest of the region.

So, the fact that Chileans have rebelled against the cost of living is alarming and suggests that a similar situation could easily occur in the rest of the developing world. Many have assumed that such insurrections would follow in the footsteps of the Great Recession; Instead, this moment seems to have been delayed in the midst of a decade of slow recovery, but it has also worsened inequalities. It is only now that it is coming back to us and that TV footage of protests in Lebanon and elsewhere is only amplifying Chile's message.

If Chile seems to be an unlikely source of combustion, why did this explosion take place? There are, I believe, four main reasons. Together, they offer a disturbing pattern for other possible critical points.

Chile: the neoliberal model of Pinochet, which captures Argentine candidates

The first is inequality. The Chicago Boys program has generated reasonably strong and stable overall growth, but Chile remains one of the most unequal countries in the world. It occupies one of the first places in inequality among members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and, according to the World Bank, remains more unequal than its neighbors Argentina and Peru. People are much more angry at the rising cost of living if it is accompanied by a feeling of injustice.

Secondly, a proposal to increase public transport fares and electricity bills has been triggered. There is plenty of evidence around the world that this could spur rebellion more than anything else, which should be taken into account by those who hope to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through a carbon tax.

The violent demonstrations of the Yellow Vests in France were due to increases in taxes on gasoline, considered punishing the inhabitants of provinces dependent on the car and favoring the metropolitan elites. In 2017, Mexico recorded riots and demonstrations against what is called "oil", a 20% increase in the price of gasoline, which was part of the partial privatization of the oil monopoly Pemex state led by the government.

Last year, Brazil was shaken by protests and truckers' strike in response to fuel shortages and a sharp increase in the price of diesel.

Third, Chile lacks a populist movement or cunning political leader. Such a character could have used public anger for his own purposes, but he also had a better chance of controlling it. For example, populist leftist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador frequently led public demonstrations, but managed to persuade his supporters not to resort to violence.

In Chile, where Conventional politics lacks a party or personality to channel its complaintsthe protesters resorted to self-destructive vandalism. Indeed, while Latin American charismatic populists tend to make Western leaders nervous – rightly so – Chile shows that they can play a vital role.

Finally, Chile's dependence on commodities, particularly copper, has led to serious collateral damage as a result of China's economic slowdown and the US-China trade war.

Chile relies heavily on its copper exports, the price of which in turn depends on the health of the Chinese economy. Given that China's growth is slowing to 6%, its slowest pace in three decades, copper prices are once again under pressure.

Chilean leaders must answer questions about why they have failed to diversify their economy so they do not rely solely on metals. But the country is far from alone. Several other emerging countries are also exposed to metal prices, including Brazil.

President of the United States, Donald Trump, said he hoped to sign a trade deal with China at a summit to be held next month in Santiago. If Trump or his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, have doubts about the damage their conflict could cause in the rest of the world, they could take the opportunity to look around during their stay.