Chile, Friedman and Pinochet

For some odd reason, I came across 'Eye of the Hurricane: Milton Friedman and the Global South'. OK, it's written by a Professor of Sociology in the Phillipines and pretty much damns the late Milton Friedman (and got me interested). It says:

While economists laud the recently deceased Milton Friedman for being “a champion of freedom whose work transformed economics and changed the world,” as a full-page advertisement in the New York Times put it, people in the South will remember the University of Chicago professor as the eye of a human hurricane that cut a swath of destruction through their economies. For them, Friedman will long be associated with two things: free-market reform in Chile and “structural adjustment” in the developing world.

Soon after the coup against the government of Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973, Chilean graduates of Friedman’s economics department, who were soon dubbed the “Chicago Boys,” took over the helm of the economy and launched a program of economic transformation with doctrinal vengeance. In light of his much-quoted assertion about political freedom going hand-in-hand with free markets, the irony that in Chile a free market paradise was being imposed with the bayonets of one of Latin America’s most bloodstained dictatorships could not have escaped the guru...

...The radical Friedman-Pinochet phase of the Chilean economic counterrevolution came to an end in the early 1990’s, after the Concertacion came to power. In violation of classic Friedmanism, this center-left coalition increased social spending to improve Chile’s income distribution, bringing down the proportion of people living in poverty from 40 per cent to 20 per cent of the population. This modification, which increased internal purchasing power, contributed to the post-Pinochet average yearly growth rate of six per cent a year.

However, with the social democratic regime unwilling to challenge the upper classes, the basic neoliberal contours of economic policy were kept, including the emphasis on agricultural and natural resource exports. This focus on primary product exports has created tremendous environmental stresses. Overfishing along Chile’s coasts has gone hand in hand with ecological destabilization from the spread of the fresh salmon and mussel farms inland. A booming wood export industry has promoted the growth of tree plantations at the expense of natural forests, resulting in Chile becoming the second most deforested area in Latin America after Brazil. Environmental management is widely acknowledged to be ineffective, being consistently subverted by the imperatives of export-oriented growth...

OK. So, the Wikipedia has this about the pre-Pinochet Chile:

...An economic depression that began in 1967 peaked in 1970, exacerbated by capital flight, plummeting private investment, and withdrawal of bank deposits by those opposed to Allende's socialist program. Production fell and unemployment rose. Allende adopted measures including price freezes, wage increases, and tax reforms, which had the effect of increasing consumer spending and redistributing income downward. Joint public-private public works projects helped reduce unemployment. Much of the banking sector was nationalized. Many enterprises within the copper, coal, iron, nitrate, and steel industries were expropriated, nationalized, or subjected to state intervention. Industrial output increased sharply and unemployment fell during the Allende administration's first year...

And on August Pinochet's economic policy:

...By mid 1975, Pinochet set about making economic reforms variously called "neoliberal" or sometimes "free market" by its supporters. He declared that he wanted "to make Chile not a nation of proletarians, but a nation of proprietors." To formulate his economic policy, Pinochet relied on the so-called Chicago Boys, who were economists trained at the University of Chicago and heavily influenced by the ideas of Milton Friedman.

The government launched an era of deregulation of business and privatization. To accomplish his objectives, the Chicago Boys privatized the pension system, state industries, and banks, and lowered taxes on income. Supporters of these policies (most notably Milton Friedman himself) have dubbed them "The Miracle of Chile", due to the country's sustained economic growth since the late 1980s./i>

And on his Legacy:

Chileans remain deeply divided on his legacy. Many see him as a brutal dictator who ended democracy and led a regime characterized by torture and favoritism towards the rich, while others believe that he brought economic growth to Chile...

Now, the ZDNet article says:

...The radical Friedman-Pinochet phase of the Chilean economic counterrevolution came to an end in the early 1990’s, after the Concertacion came to power. In violation of classic Friedmanism, this center-left coalition increased social spending to improve Chile’s income distribution, bringing down the proportion of people living in poverty from 40 per cent to 20 per cent of the population. This modification, which increased internal purchasing power, contributed to the post-Pinochet average yearly growth rate of six per cent a year...

BUT - the CIA Factbook entry on Chile says this (emphasis mine):

Chile has a market-oriented economy characterized by a high level of foreign trade. During the early 1990s, Chile's reputation as a role model for economic reform was strengthened when the democratic government of Patricio AYLWIN - which took over from the military in 1990 - deepened the economic reform initiated by the military government. Growth in real GDP averaged 8% during 1991-97, but fell to half that level in 1998 because of tight monetary policies implemented to keep the current account deficit in check and because of lower export earnings - the latter a product of the global financial crisis....

So - it seems like, without references, there's no truth to this thing about Milton Friedman and Chile. In short... does it actually mean anything?

I can't draw any conclusions. It seems that Friedman was one of many factors associated with the Chilean economy, it's hard to say that his thoughts were actually bad.