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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 36, Number 23. 23rd September 1973

Slow Starvation

Slow Starvation

About two percent of the population owned 50 percent of the land, and 3000 very large farms owned by big landlords accounted for about 58% of farm production and 80% of the farm land. Overa long period agricultural production increased at 1.6% annually, but food consumption was increasing at 2.3%. Chile was obliged to import large quantities of food, the cost of which constituted about 25% of the import bill. This is the significance of the copper strike earlier this year. The Chilean Government had to suspend copper shipments which resulted in a loss of foreign exchange and put a strain on food supplies.

Chile had a chronic balance of payments deficit in consequence. Heavy borrowing abroad created a massive foreign debt. Servicing this debt and the growing mountain of Government debt internally (25% of revenue annually was spent on the armed forces and police!) caused massive inflation.

For the industrial bourgeoisie, foreign and domestic, and the big landowners this meant rapid enrichment; for the masses, unemployment and poverty. Half of all Chilean families did not receive enough to maintain a bare subsistence 3nd were slowly starving. Half a million families (Chile's population is about nine million) lacked homes and a further half million lived in hovels.

About 55% of those economically active are industrial workers; a further 13 percent are white collar workers (university teachers, school teachers, technicians, students, doctors, etc); 23% are small traders and farmers, the rest being employers. The nine percent who were employers took 34.4% of the earnings. This latter grouping is not homogenous, but is split into a national bourgeois section (the domestic capitalists), a compradore section (Chileans dependent on foreign capitalists) and the foreign bourgeoisie.