Outgoing Chilean President Michelle Bachelet’s visit to Cuba last week was a disgrace to her legacy as a democratic leader. But what’s worse, it was a huge blow to the remnants of a democratic, human rights-conscious and globalized left in Latin America.
For decades, Chile’s moderate leftist governments have been a model for Latin America’s democratic left. Moderate left-of-centre politicians across the region cited Chile as an example of a country that succeeded in reducing poverty on a long-term basis without the political repression, economic chaos and massive migration caused by the radical leftist regimes of Cuba and Venezuela.
Chile has reduced poverty from 40 percent of its population at the end of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in 1990 to 11.7 percent of the population in 2015, a larger drop than in any other Latin American country.
