Chile: corruption and power

Abstract

All power carries along elements of corruption. This article pretends to establish historical comparisons showing political perversions in different periods of our republican past. There is no doubt that Pinochet´s tirany will be remembered as the most criminal and abusive in Chilean’s history, but brutality and lack of honesty has existed on a lesser scale in our country throughout history. This investigation pretends to eliminate the vision of an honest republican Chile, free of illegal lobbying and fraud.  The myth of Chile´s exceptional honesty is a creation of its conservative historiography that magnifies the Portalian governments authoritarianism, misrepresenting the democratic advances of the twentieth century. The author intends to prove the lies behind this vision: for even though it is true that in our history there have existed periods of major political corruption as is the case of Chile’s parlamentarism between 1891 and 1925, so similar to the actual transition of 1990-2005, the same relationship exists now, between individual business and politics, the same absolute power of political parties, the same voting system, and the same lack of politician’s prestige.