The Silence of Numbers Revisiting the Political Economy of the Chilean “Miracle”

The Chilean “miracle” during the Pinochet dictatorship is a modern-day chimera: with a gun in one hand and a monetarist stethoscope in the other, it rests on three foundations. The first involved the elimination of the opponents to the reforms. The junta was responsible for the assassinations of economists, forcing many others into exile. The second was the controversial support of the IMF and the World Bank, which provided financial assistance to service Chile’s external debt during the 1982 financial crisis, despite human rights violations. The third was the set of econometric instruments and indices that international observers and Chilean policymakers used to assess economic growth. This article delves into the intricacies of the so-called miracle, and in particular into this latter aspect that can be challenged from a feminist perspective. Data was scarce, biased, and limited during Pinochet’s era, but traditional indicators like GDP or national accounts were insufficient to account for the environmental and human costs of growth—a problem that was not specific to Chile but one underscored by the Chilean experience on a global scale.