Week 13: Towards and Uncertain Future
For this week, I decided to write about Chile. Chile is in the middle of a decisive moment as students went to the streets to protest against a rise in metro costs. The unrest is surprising as Chile lauds itself for being one of the most prosperous countries in Latin America. For my articles this week, I picked two opinion peaces that look into the nuances of the situation. The first piece, by the New York Times, titled Chile Learns the Price of Economic Inequality, examines the protests in the context of economic prosperity. While the Chilean economy is quite strong, the economic inequality means that only a few benefit from the wealth. Public spending on hospitals, public welfare, and more general methods of distributing wealth are virtually nonexistent. The article also points out that while the protesters began their movement after the rise in bus fare, tensions have existed for a long time due to this evident wealth inequality. The wealth gap in Chile is incredibly visual; San