Chile Project

How Chile became home to the world's most radical free-market experiment-and what its downfall suggests about the fate of neoliberalism around the globeIn The Chile Project, Sebastian Edwards tells the remarkable story of how the neoliberal economic model-installed in Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship and deepened during three decades of left-of-center governments-came to an end in 2021, when Gabriel Boric, a young former student activist, was elected president, vowing that "e;If Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism, it will also be its grave."e; More than a story about one Latin American country, The Chile Project is a behind-the-scenes history of the spread and consequences of the free-market thinking that dominated economic policymaking around the world in the second half of the twentieth century-but is now on the retreat.In 1955, the U.S. State Department launched the "e;Chile Project"e; to train Chilean economists at the University of Chicago, home of the libertarian Milton Friedman. After General Augusto Pinochet overthrew socialist president Salvador Allende in 1973, Chile's "e;Chicago Boys"e; implemented the purest neoliberal model in the world for the next seventeen years, undertaking a sweeping package of privatization and deregulation, creating a modern capitalist economy, and sparking talk of a "e;Chilean miracle."e; But under the veneer of success, a profound dissatisfaction with the vast inequalities caused by neoliberalism was growing. In 2019, protests erupted throughout the country, and in 2022 Boric began his presidency with a clear mandate: to end neoliberalismo.In telling the fascinating story of the Chicago Boys and Chile's free-market revolution, The Chile Project provides an important new perspective on the history of neoliberalism and its global decline today.