- Joined
- Feb 23, 2014
- Messages
- 57,520
- Reaction score
- 25,157
Chile was already one of the wealthiest nations in South America before him, totally different situation to somewhere like Cuba which grew from slave plantation culture, Chile grew via emigration of European farmers and then a very significant nature resource economy.
A lot of its ups and downs have been due to those changing resources, the bottom dropping out of the phosphate market in the early 20th century and then the changing price of copper since then.
You're wrong about Cuba. It was a wealthy nation pre-Castro. "Prior to the Cuban Revolution, Cuba ranked fifth in the hemisphere in per capita income, third in life expectancy, second in per capita ownership of automobiles and telephones, first in the number of television sets per inhabitant. Its income per capita in 1929 was reportedly 41% of the US, thus higher than in Mississippi and South Carolina."