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Hi Camila, thank you for being here today. I have two questions. First, I noticed your book says very little about the kinds of people who work to create and sustain corrupt political systems. This left me wondering: do you think those who benefit from historical injustice and systemic corruption have a moral duty to disgorge themselves of their tainted wealth and power (as a matter of reparative justice)? Or, perhaps more in line with the argumentative line of your book, do you think the world’s plebians should act so as to strip the privilege of those who have benefitted from historical injustice and corruption? (I have a quick follow-up to this if that’s okay, but I first would very much like to hear your response to this.)
It seems you missed my question. But I’ll pose my follow up here, in any case: I wonder if you think you, personally, should be forced to disgorge your tainted wealth and privilege. Here’s what I have in mind: the fascist military regime of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was responsible for killing thousands of people and torturing tens of thousands more. Your parents, whom you lovingly mention in the introduction of your book, not only benefitted from this regime, but actively participated in it. As this documentary, which was aired on one of the primary public television channels in Chile, briefly mentions, there is clear evidence that your mother, Verónica González Gil, was a long-term lover and confidante of Pinochet’s (https://youtu.be/eBW-tQOjwoI?t=270).
Owing to this connection, she was personally appointed by Pinochet to the country’s all-powerful economic council (as this official governmental decree from the dictatorship shows: https://www.bcn.cl/leychile/navegar?idNorma=158647), which was ideologically structured in accordance with the vision of the very same “Chicago Boys” that your book criticizes. From there, at just 30 years old, Pinochet made your mother the CEO of the newly privatized state sugar company, IANSA. Her tenure there was marked by extensive corruption, which only came to light after the end of the dictatorship (curiously, nearly every record of this has been purged from the internet).
Of course, your mother’s highly unusua...See full post
l appointment was just one part of a larger priv...See full post
In the years since that time, your family has continued to accrue massive wealth, with business operations extending from Chile to the United States. Not only have you not distanced yourself from these business operations, but you (with your university affiliation!) are listed as a consultant on one of their many companies’ webpages. (Scroll down here: https://www.lbbusa.com/?page_id=6057&lang=en) (I assume that is how you are able to afford to buy an apartment in NYC, or at least live in one of the properties your father owns there, according to NYC property records https://a836-acris.nyc.gov/DS/DocumentSearch/Index.)
There is of course much, much more to say here, but my question is this: do you not think strange, or even ironic, that you are personally the beneficiary of gross corruption and injustice, which you have not attempted to acknowledge or disavow in any way, but have rather used to advance yourself through an endless cycle of degree programs until, at long last, you are gaining recognition for a book that quite perversely is dedicated “to the plebians, in solidarity”? Should academia continue to celebrate and reward you and those like you, who, in the deepest sense, owe their positions to the privileges accruing from extreme evil? And if not, can you at least understand how plebians like myself, and the many very real victims of the horrors your family helped to perpetuate, might be a little bit offended by the publication of this book and the many academics now lining up to laud it?
And Camila’s co-panelists, aren’t you even a little ashamed to be sharing the stage with a person whose career is staked on such plain hypocrisy and whose enormous, unacknowledged privilege owes so much to the horrendous suffering and murder of others?