Twenty-Five Years after Allende.

The author of the article reports on the socio-economic developments in Chile. Chile hardly holds the patent on a pullback from politics, a reflex now rampant from Peoria to Poland. But few countries in recent decades have traveled quite the distance backward that Chile has. Chile is a case of rapid growth with little development-growth concentrated in the export of natural resources. Neither a solid middle class nor a well-paid working class has emerged. In the past, Chile suffered from a chronic job shortage, and the poor subsisted on a network of welfare and social solidarity. The new economy has dismantled welfare and dismembered community aid while at the same time making low-wage jobs plentiful.