4/14/97

CONTACT: Stanford University News Service (650) 723-2558

Chilean ambassador to keynote major conference on Chile

Chile's ambassador to the United States, John Biehl, will keynote a three-day conference at Stanford April 24-26 on that country's economy, politics and culture. Biehl is well known for his work with Costa Rica's Oscar Arias on the Central American peace process.

Sponsored by Stanford's Center for Latin American Studies and Overseas Studies Program, the Chilean Ministry of Foreign Relations and the Consulate General of Chile in San Francisco, the conference is open to the public and will focus on the dramatic changes in Chile over the last three decades. It will feature several prominent Chilean government officials and professors who teach in Chilean universities and at Stanford's overseas campus in Santiago. Stanford-based experts on Latin American social, literary, environmental, political and economic issues will also participate. Most of the discussion will be in English but some speakers will be translated from Spanish.

One session on international affairs is likely to focus on whether Chile should join the North American Free Trade Agreement, a controversial issue in both countries. Another will analyze Chile's so-called economic "miracle. " A third will focus on cultural-identity issues raised by modernization and past political repression. A fourth will focus on environmental issues. Chile has just adopted laws that establish its own version of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

For Stanford faculty and students, "Chile is important to look at in depth because it is often cited as a model of how neoliberal economic reforms can turn around a stagnant economy," said Kathleen Morrison, associate director of Stanford's Center for Latin American Studies. But it was under the 16-year dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet that the neoliberal economic model was adopted wholeheartedly, she said, "which raises the question of whether this success can be simulated elsewhere without an authoritarian structure."

Scholars and reformers are also interested in reassessing the Chilean model in the new post-Cold War political context, Morrison said. Pinochet came to power with U.S. assistance after socialist Salvador Allende began moving Chile further toward the left, and now the country is run by a coalition of the center and what remains. "With the collapse of the Soviet Union as well as the success of Pinochet's neoliberal reforms," Morrison said, "the political left in Latin America was completely undermined."

The conference will cover a 33-year time frame, from the election of the current president's father, the late Eduardo Frei Montalva, as president of Chile in 1964, through Allende and Pinochet, to the return of free elections in 1990 and the current coalition government headed by Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle.

For the Chilean government, the conference is a step toward reestablishing social and academic ties to California, said Fernando Toledo, scientific attaché to the consulate general and a doctoral student in environmental law at Stanford. During the 1960s, grants from the Ford Foundation led to extensive academic exchanges between the University of California and the University of Chile, he said. "The exchanges had a big impact on our government policies because many who had studied in the UC system went into government."

The conference offers Stanford faculty and students a chance to preview the potential experience they could have during a quarter at Stanford's Santiago campus, Morrison said. Santiago is the first overseas campus that the university opened in a country that was not fully industrialized. It is second only to Oxford as the preferred choice of Stanford undergraduates studying overseas.

Schedule, participants

The conference opens at 4 p.m. Thursday, April 24, with a performance of Chilean folk dances by a Bay Area group, Araucaria in White Plaza.

At 5 p.m. Ambassador Biehl will trace three decades of Chilean politics in a lecture in Room 80 of the Law School. The rest of the sessions will be in the Cypress Rooms of Tresidder Union.

On Friday, historian Stephen Haber, associate dean of humanities and sciences, will open the day's first session at 9 a.m. His remarks will be followed by a three-hour panel discussion of Chile's social and economic reforms, chaired by Morrison. Panelists will be:

• Genaro Arriagada, the former secretary general to President Frei (a position equivalent to the chief of staff to an American president) and a political scientist who was the intellectual architect of Chile's recent political transition.
• Luis Maira, most recently minister of planning, where he focused on reducing the number of Chileans living in poverty. He is now Chile's ambassador to Mexico.
• Oscar Muñoz, an economist critical of some Chilean economic reforms and now executive secretary of the Forum on Economic Development in the Ministry of the Economy.
• Teresa Valdés, professor of sociology and deputy director of Chile's Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO), a research institute in Santiago. Her work focuses on the increased social stratification in Chile that has accompanied rapid economic growth.

The conference resumes at 2 p.m. Friday with a three-hour discussion of Chilean identity led by Fernando Alegría, a Chilean poet and Stanford professor emeritus. Panelists will be:

• Edmundo Fuenzalida, professor at the University of Chile and director of Stanford's Santiago campus.
• María de la Luz Hurtado, film and drama critic and professor at Catholic University of Chile.
• Mary Louise Pratt, professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Stanford who has written about Chilean literature of protest during periods of repression.
• Bernardo Subercaseaux Sommerhoff, literary critic and professor of literature at the University of Chile, who writes about how the global economy affects cultural identity.
• Saturday's schedule begins with a 9 a.m. discussion of the evolution of environmental concerns chaired by Stanford law Professor Tom Heller, who spent a year in Chile studying the creation of special markets to deal with pollution problems. Panelists will be:
• Diego García, visiting fellow in environmental policy at Stanford who works for the Frei government on environmental policy.
• Ernst Hajek, ecology professor at the University of Chile.
• Fernando Toledo, scientific attaché of the consulate general and Stanford law student.
• William Durham, Stanford professor of anthropology and human biology, who has been involved with community-based conservation efforts in Latin America.

Following a 1 p.m. screening of a Spanish language video on the life of the late Eduardo Frei Montalva, a discussion of Chile's international affairs will be chaired at 2 p.m. by Stanford law Professor John Barton, who has been involved in the implementation of NAFTA. Panelists will be:

• Biehl, ambassador of Chile to the United States.
• Maira, Chile's ambassador to Mexico.
• Francisco Rojas, political scientist in international relations and director of FLACSO, Chile.
• Saskia Sassen, Columbia University professor of international relations who studies immigration and other regional connections across political boundaries. She is currently a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences on the Stanford campus.

For more information, contact the Center for Latin American Studies, (415) 723-2012.

From Frei to Frei: Perspectives on Chile Over Three Decades
Stanford University, April 24-26, 1997
Brief Conference Schedule

Thursday, April 24
4 p.m. Folk Dances of Chile performed by Araucaria, White Plaza
5 p.m. Keynote Address by Chilean A.m.bassador to the U.S. John Biehl, Law School,
Moot Court Room (Room 80)

Friday, April 25 (All sessions will take place in Tresidder Union, Cypress Rooms)
9 a.m. Reassessing the Chilean Model: Social and Economic Perspectives
2 p.m. The Construction and Reconstruction of Chilean Identities:
Cultural Voices from Outside and Within

Saturday, April 26 (Cypress Rooms, Tresidder Union)
9 a.m. Evolution of Environmental Concerns
1 p.m. Screening of a video, Tiempo para un lider, on Chilean political life from the
1940s to the 1980s.
2 p.m. Chile in the International Community

The conference is co-sponsored by the Stanford Center for Latin A.m.erican Studies, the Overseas Studies Progra.m., the Chilean Foreign Ministry, and the Consulate General of Chile in San Francisco.

For any updated information on events, please check the Center for Latin American Studies home page: http://www.stanford.edu/group/las.

For more information, contact the Center for Latin American Studies, (415) 723-2012.

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By Kathleen O'Toole