The Divide: Global Inequality from Conquest to Free Markets

by Jason Hickel

the country as political refugees. The coup in Chile was similar in style to earlier US-backed coups, but it had a crucial new element. Instead of simply installing a new leader who would be friendly to US corporate interests, the US sought to totally remake economic policy in line with free-market principles – which was possible only because all opposition had been destroyed. According to a 1975 US Senate Committee investigation: ‘CIA collaborators were involved in preparing an initial overall economic plan which has served as the basis for the Junta’s most important economic decisions.’ The CIA funded a group of Chilean economists – graduates of the University of Chicago known as the Chicago Boys – to advise Pinochet’s regime, with the goal of instating the prescriptions laid down by Milton Friedman in Capitalism and Freedom. Indeed, Friedman himself was a key adviser to the Pinochet regime.