The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

by Naomi Klein

By 1963, twelve of the department’s thirteen full-time faculty members were graduates of the University of Chicago program, and Sergio de Castro, one of the first graduates, was appointed faculty chairman.29 Now Chilean students didn’t need to travel all the way to the U.S.—hundreds could get a Chicago School education without leaving home. The students who went through the program, whether in Chicago or its franchise operation in Santiago, became known throughout the region as “los Chicago Boys.” With more funding from USAID, Chile’s Chicago Boys became enthusiastic regional ambassadors for ideas Latin Americans call “neoliberalism,” traveling to Argentina and Colombia to set up more University of Chicago franchises in order to “expand this knowledge throughout Latin America, confronting the ideological positions which prevented freedom and perpetuated poverty and backwardness,” according to one Chilean graduate.30