LASA 2015

PANEL: Chile and Brazil: Left Neoliberalism as the "New" Social Democracy?

Chiles Grupo Luksic, the Center-Left

and the New Spirit of Capital in Latin America
Fernando Leiva Letelier
University of California - Santa Cruz
fleiva@ucsc.edu

ROUGH DRAFT - Do not Quote Without the Author's Permission

Abstract:
Based on an in-depth case study, this paper examines how one of Chiles most
powerful conglomerates --Grupo Luksic -- transformed its growing economic power
into decisive (yet understudied) political, ideological and cultural leadership over the
state and society, including center-left political parties and intellectuals.
Two issues are highlighted. First, the appearance of a new form of capitalist classconsciousness made both possible and necessary by the colonization of every nook and
cranny of social life by the logic of capital as well as by the popular resistances such
colonization engenders. A new capitalist awareness has emerged: in addition to their
traditional role, capitalists understand that they must now play a leading and unmediated
role in the production of ideas, of rules, and subjectivities. Second, the rise and persistence of
'left neoliberalism' in Chile and Latin America needs to be explained by examining a
new phenomenon in the region: domestic transnational conglomerates are finding in
the political conceptions, discourses, and practices of the center-left the best fulcrum
for repositioning themselves vis a vis society. What is transpiring in Chile--as
enacted by the Luksic Group's support of Michelle Bachelet and Nueva Mayora-- is
the best exemplar of this new spirit of capital emerging in Latin America..

Grupo Luksic, the Center-Left and the "New Spirit of Capital" in Latin America
Fernando Leiva Letelier
University of California-Santa Cruz

"Decipher me or I will devour you"1

Introduction: The New Spirit of Capital and Left Neoliberalism

On the eve of the 2013 Presidential elections, Franco Parisi, a minor candidate
running as a right-wing populist, presciently declared: If seora Bachelet wins, then the
Luksics are going to devour Chile, and if seora Mathei wins, something which I am sure is
not going to happen, Angelini will become the owner of Chile, and then prepare yourself to
say hello to feudalism in our homeland.2 Parisis comments echoed a growing sentiment
among Chileans: the negotiated transition experienced after 1990, welcomed as it was,
seemed merely to have replaced the dictatorship of the military with the dictatorship of
large business conglomerates.3
Parisis stark appraisal suggested that beyond the campaign rhetoric of the two main
contenders, the real option voters faced in the 2013 electoral contest was limited to choosing
only between two styles of capitalist domination. On the one hand, a daughter of an Air
Force General member of Pinochets military junta, Evelyn Matthei, supported by the rightwing Alianza for Chile, represented a more conservative, traditionally Catholic, hierarchical
form of capitalist rule. Her candidacy, still steeped in pro-Pinochet allegiances and deeply
rooted in the rabid anti-Allende mobilizations of 1970-1973, deployed a political imaginary
pining for a return to authoritarian style of capitalist modernization favored by the Angelini
and Matte conglomerates. At the other end of the spectrum, the other daughter of another
Air Force General but tortured to death by his former comrade in arms after the 1973
military coup, represented a more secular and cosmopolitan form of capitalist domination.
Michelle Bachelet, despite running as the candidate of an expanded center-left coalition this
time officially including the Communist Party, was heavily financed in 2013 by the Luksic
group, one of Chiles largest conglomerates. Not only did Luksic fund her campaing but also
directly influenced the design of her campaign and government program.4
How is it that four decades after class conflict took the bloody form of state terror
and repression against popular movements and left political forces, powerful sectors of
Chiles capitalist class identified Michelle Bachelet and the Nueva Mayora center-left
coalition as the best political force to represent its class interests? How did the Luksic Group
come to actively support a political reform program to be implemented by a gaggle of
Christian democrats, liberal socialists, renovated socialists, left socialist technocrats which
even includes high-ranking members of Chiles Communist Party? How does such a
development force us to alter how we study contemporary Latin American politics?

1. Capitals New Relation to Society and the role of "Left Neoliberalism"

In many ways, the above conundrum condenses the confounding character of the
new politico-economic and cultural dynamics unfolding in contemporary Chile as well as in
many other countries of Latin America. What are the material and symbolic foundations of
this alliance between domestric transnational capital and the center-left, a phenomenon some
have labelled as "left neoliberalism'? This paper tackles such conundrum fully aware that it
holds the key for decoding the nature of the current historical moment. Instead of explaining
domestic transnational capitalist support for Bachelet by merely focusing on the ideological
conversion undergone by Chiles center-left, extensively analyzed elsewhere (see Leiva 2008,
2012), here we interrogate the transformations experienced in the valorization of capital
itself and, in turn, how these foster a qualitatively new organic relationship between capital
and society. On the basis of an in-depth case study of Grupo Luksic, my analysis shows how
this particular conglomerate transmuted its expanding economic power into decisive (yet
understudied) political, ideological and cultural leadership over the economy, the state, the
political system, and society as a whole.
Using the Luksic group as a case study, I deploy here a critical cultural political
economic analytical approach essential for comprehensively understanding why in Chile and
Latin America we are witnessing the emergence of left neoliberalism (Saad-Filho 2013). In
countries of the Southern Cone such as Chile and Brazil as well as in Uruguay and Ecuador,
we observe a mutually beneficial coexistence, collaboration, mutual support, and codependence between domestic transnational conglomerates and center-left governments. As
I argue below -- the rise of left neoliberalism cannot be fully explained just on the basis of
ideological shifts within Latin Americas center-left. Rather, we need to dive into the depths
of the regions deep neoliberalism in order to explore the material and symbolic aspects of
this prolonged cohabitation between domestic transnational capital and the center left, a
phenomenon that challenges the core assumptions of traditional perspectives and
approaches.
By concentrating on the Luksic Group, arguably one of the more modern and lucid
factions of Latin America's capitalist class I aim to show how the combined effects of the
transnationalization and financialization of its circuits of capital have enabled a new form of
capitalist consciousness and societal engagement. Such a new awareness --what I call the
new spirit of capital in the periphery" -- represents more than attempts to neutralize critics
through new regimes of justification (Boltanski and Chiapello 2002, 2007; Boltanski and
Thvenot 2006), or simply new variants of elite discourse calling for a more inclusive
capitalism as suggested by meetings sponsored by the City of London and the Davos World
Economic Forum.5 In the case of Chile, this new spirit comprises more than that. More
than a response to crises of legitimacy and representation, it reflects a new form of capitalist
class-consciousness, made both possible and necessary by the extensive and intensive colonization
of every nook and cranny of social life by the logic of capital, and by the widespread
community-based resistance such colonization has engendered. Hence what is transpiring in
Chile--as enacted by the Luksic Group's support of Michelle Bachelet and Nueva Mayora-reflects a new awareness that, in the periphery, capitalists qua capitalists must actively and
directly engage in the valorization of capital proper, but must also play a leading and unmediated
role in the production of ideas, of rules, and subjectivities.6
3

The notion that under the present historical conditions the valorization of capital
depends to a much greater extent than ever before on the production of subjectivity has
been advanced by different studies on the nature of contemporary capitalist development in
the US and Western Europe (i.e. Martin 2002, Read 2003, Marazzi 2011, Moulier Boutang
2011, Peters and Bulut 2011).
Two new facets, saliently illustrated by Chile's Luksic group, however, are
underscored here.
First, that it is the transnationalization and, more importantly, the financialization of
circuits of capital, which render it materially indispensable as well as materially possible for
domestic transnational conglomerates to significantly engage in the inter-connected realms
of rules, idea, and subjectivity production. In the case of Luksic, for example, expanding the
scale of the valorization of capital anchored in copper and gold production requires
overcoming the active resistance of local communities struggling against the privatization of
water, contamination of air and waterways and multiple other forms of accumulation by
dispossession. And what makes it possible for the Luksic conglomerate to fund think-tanks,
buy political influence, hire consultants and non-governmental organizations, target these
communities with philanthropic and diversionary campaigns many designed by center-left
consultants, is their expanding volume of profits, a rising proportion of them with a financial
origin.
Second, transnational capitalists of the periphery, such as Chile's Luksic Group, are
finding out that the most useful fulcrum for repositioning themselves vis a vis society is
provided precisely by the political conceptions and discourse of the center-left. In contrast to
traditional right-wing political formations dogmatically clinging to market-centric discourses,
the center-left proffers to peripheral capitalists new possibilities for intervening the social
fabric, thanks the center-left's understanding that markets and international competitiveness
must be complemented with a judicious and active reliance on other important mechanisms
of social coordination such as the state and trust-based networks. At a time when the
centrality of the power of capital, private property, and markets, are no longer being
questioned by the institutional political forces, this is exactly what transnational domestic
conglomerates are seeking to find in order to successfully navigate the obstacles posed by
localized conflicts and resistances on the part of communities and indigenous peoples.
Despite their reduced scale, these mobilizations have manage to, if not block particular
investment projects and operations, at least require continuous explanations to prospective
global investors and shareholders.
Such a coincidence of interests between the center-lefts political strategy and
domestic transnational capitals class interests must be closely examined so as to better
explain the seemingly odd alliance between what in Latin America had been considered two
"irreconcilable" forces.
Contemporary Chile, perhaps more clearly than Brazil or Uruguay, is the exemplar of
such concurrence of interests in the region. On the one hand, after more than two decades
in government, Chile's center-left has honed a coherent and sophisticated political discourse
claiming that, in the era of neoliberal globalization, political instabilities are rooted in
misalignments between the pace of capitalist modernity and human subjectivity.
Consequently rather than seeking to challenge the status quo, its political action has aimed to
4

address this lack of correspondence by offering the citizenry a narrative horizon that exalts
achieving international competitiveness "with solidarity" through greater synergies between
state, market and trust-based forms of social coordination (Lechner 1997, Leiva 2008). At
the same time, domestic transnational capital has come to envision that the center-left
articulates such a project. Additionally, long-term profitability particularly in mining projects
that will be many decades in operation requires, as Jean-Paul Luksic, CEO of Antofagasta
Minerals states, "improving our links with society in general, so that it comes to know what
we do and how we do it. ... We need to let people know the importance of our activity so
that it becomes appreciated and valued by the common citizen." 7
Just like center-left policy makers who discovered that providing political legitimacy
required a recalibrated state with the capacity of forging a new type of relationship with civil
society, transnational capital has also come to understand that, "we need to learn how to
look at our operations from the point of view of the community, assuming responsibility for
its concerns. Only thus will can we build a relationship based on trust (Luksic 2009:12
[my translation, second emphasis added])8 Hence a shared and parallel understanding has
surfaced: the political success of the center-left as well as the economic success of domestic
transnational capital both hinge on performing what I have called the "socio-emotional"
turn. This shared discursive field -- the purposive blazing of paths aimed at building trust-makes transnational capital and the center-left into potential bedmates and politicoeconomic allies, providing the material foundations for the rise of "left neoliberalism" in the
periphery.9 This also explains how despite its noisy break with dogmatic neoliberalism, the
center-left might come to decisively contribute towards further strengthen the power of
capital and its hegemony over society.
2. The Expanding Power of Domestic Transnational Conglomerates
Diverse studies have analyzed the rise and role of grupos econmicos in Chile. A
good number of these have been highly critical ((Dahse 1970, Rozas and Marin 1988, Fazio
1996, 2000, 2005), while others, with a more descriptive approach, have focused on the
implication of their rise for corporate governance, regulation policy and the macroeconomy
(Sanfuentes 1984, Paredes and Sanchez 1994, Fuentes 1997, Lefort and Walker 2005, Lefort
2010). Hardly any of these studies, however, examines the interconnections between their
growing economic weight and their ascending political, ideological and cultural power over
society.10 Therefore the task of systematically exploring how grupos econmicos become the
fundamental conduits for articulating accumulation, hegemony, and subjectivity in the
present historical moment remains an unfinished task. And as I have argued elsewhere,
fathoming such connections remains a key research endeavor since the grupos have become
key protagonists opening up new frontiers to the valorization of capital by redrawing the
limits separating the "economic" and "non-economic" realms (Leiva 2010).
In terms of pure economic heft, in 2002 the largest twentyfive Chilean business
groups controlled over 90 percent of the assets of the largest companies operating in Chile, a
proportion that has remained stable since 1990. The country's five largest business groups
have controlled almost 50 percent of the total assets of listed companies in the local stock
exchange, a (Leffort 2010).

This high level of monopoly control has allowed Chile's business conglomerates to
shape the structure and dynamics of the Chilean economy. In 2013, for example, the revenue
perceived by only the twenty largest grupos represented close to 53% of Chile's 2013 GDP
(See Table 1).
Table 1.
Chile's Twenty Largest Grupos Econmicos According to Income, December 2013

Grupo Economico

Angelini
Paulmann
Cueto
Solari
Luksic
Matte
Fernandez-Leon
CGE
Said
Hurtado Vicuna
Saieh
Navarro
Sigdo Koppers
Penta
Calderon
Yarur
Salfacorp
CAP
CCHC
Ponce Lerou
Subtotal

Ranking in
Revenue in Billions Terms of
of US$
Revenue
(1 US$ = Ch$
495.31)
36.56
20.88
13.69
12.81
10.12
8.39
4.97
4.97
4.94
4.78
4.52
3.60
3.13
2.84
2.77
2.29
2.14
1.83
1.76
1.67
145.83

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20

Percentage
Share of GDP
(2013 GDP
= US$ 277.2 bn)
13.19
7.53
4.94
4.62
3.65
3.03
1.79
1.79
1.78
1.72
1.63
1.30
1.13
1.03
1.00
0.83
0.77
0.66
0.64
0.60
52.61

Source: Calculated by author on the basis of Centro de Estudios de Economa y

Negocios, "Ranking de Grupos Econmicos", April 2014, Table 5, page 5.
The extraordinaryly high volumes of surplus extracted from their operations in
Chile's export industries, retail and the service sector, the diminished size of the domestic
market, and favorable government policies, led these business conglomerates to successfully
transnationalize their circuits of capital. Abetted by policies of the center-left government
(including bilateral free trade agreements), Chilean business conglomerates embarked in an
intensive effort to internationalize their operations after 1990. Indeed, in the following
decades, Chile's largest conglomerates transformed themselves into global players.11
6

Governmental spokespersons have celebrated such expansion as a source of national pride,

underscoring that "the expansion of Chilean direct investment abroad shows a horizontal
projection, in the sense that what is done outside of Chile's is precisely what is being done well
within the country" (Direcon 2013c: 5 [my emphasis, my translation]). By the end of 2013,
Chilean businesses had accumulated investments abroad totaling US$ 93. 9 billion12 (
The growing centrality of the economic conglomerates in the production,
appropriation, and distribution of the surplus, has provided them with the material basis for
extending their influence to all other realms of social life
.
In mid 2015, Chile was rocked by a series of scandals CAVAL, Penta, Soquimich
(SQM) involving the Luksic, Penta, and Ponce Lerou groups respectively. Peeling back yet
another layer of Chile's post-transition politics, these scandals reveal how Chile's post-1990
political system really works. Court inquiries about an elaborate, widespread and illegal
system of political contributions by SQM, the crown jewel of the Ponce Lerou
conglomerate, revealed that this single conglomerate would contribute between US$ 1 to
US$ 10 million during each electoral campaign for both righ-wing and center-left candidates.
Chilean journalists were surprised by these amounts given that the average cost of a
campaign for the 2013 elections was around US$ 150,000 per Congressional seat. This meant
that "hypothetically the contributions by SQM represent an amount equivalent to fully
funding the campaign of between 7 and 70 Congressional deputies."13 Using these amounts
as a baseline, such revelations suggest that the Ponce group alone, fully funded anywhere
from 6 to 60% of Chile's 120-member Chamber of Deputies, and this group ranked 20th in
2013 in terms of size as measured by revenue.14
These scandals have shocked Chileans, showing the extent to which political control
by Chile's transnational capitalist class in post-1990 Chile was deeply entrenched not only in
the 1980 Constitution, but also in the daily functioning of political institutions and parties of
the right and center-left wholly dependent on the grupos econmicos.
As the case study of the Luksic group below suggests, this increasing power of
Chile's capitalist class must be explained by looking beyond the legal and illegal forms
through which they control both center-left and right-wing elected politicians; A rigorous
explanation must delve into the mechanisms and logics that have allowed Chilean capitalists
to successfully reframe their relationship with society. As the analysis below suggests, in no
small part, this has been made possible thanks to two decades of past Concertacin
governments and the reforms to be enacted by the Nueva Mayora government headed by
Michelle Bachelet.

3. The Grupo Luksic

Critical analysts of Chiles conglomerates have argued that the Luksic group grew
first and foremost thanks to its pillage of Chiles main natural wealth through large scale
private mining (Fazio 2011 [my translation]). Though mining operations have been pivotal,
the Luksic group has relied on a much broader range of initiatives in its expansion into
Chile's most powerful conglomerate. 15. Its trajectory from Forestal Quienco, originally
founded in 1957 for logging eucaliptus trees for timbering in Chile's coal mines, to its
present status as one of the most successful business conglomerates in Latin America and
one of the world's top ten copper producers, tracks a journey across many different socioeconomic terrains. In the economic realm, its profits have flowed from manufacturing,
beverages and food, services, real estate, telecommunications, mining, energy, transport,
shipping and port services, and especially banking, endeavors which have allowed it to
organically grow16 into a truly transnational business group.
Combined reliance on financialization, transnationalization, along with a flexible
corporate structure firmly under family control, has allowed the Luksic family to
continuously amplify its ability to extract surplus across a broad spectrum of activities and
socio-spatial terrains. In fact, a comprehensive account of the Luksic Group's expansion
over the past half century would point to its ability to sagely seize opportunities to diversify
and internationalize its mining, financial, manufacturing, service and media activities, while
transmuting this ever burgeoning economic power into greater political, intellectual, and
cultural influence over society over all realms of social life.17 Its arc from a small provincial
domestic company to a truly "global player" within the capitalist world economy must be
also tracked across the "non-economic" realm of politics, ideas and culture.
Tracing all the threads behind the rise of the Luksic Group into a powerful domestic
transnational conglomerate and how, in close collaboration with "left neoliberalism," it it
enacts the new spirit of capital in the periphery implies examining four inter-related areas of
its involvement over the past decade: (1) the valorization of capital, (2) the production of
rules, (3) the production of ideas, and (4) the production of subjectivity (See Figure 1).

3.1. The Valorization of Capital

The mythology constructed around the Luksic group emphasizes that
"entrepreneurship and profit making" constitute part of Luksics DNA; and hard work
and an uncanny business acumen on the part of its founder, Andrnico Luksic Abaroa,
along with an unforeseen stroke of luck,18 certainly not exploitation and plunder, explain
the group's trajectory from humble origins to global wealth and predominance. To be sure,
such a narrative is supported by the fact that the Luksic group is one of Chiles more
modern conglomerates. Unlike others, it cannot trace roots back to Chiles generic
bourgeoisie (Brodersohn 1970), namely landed oligarchic families who in the 19th century
begun shifting their center of gravity from land to commerce, then banking, and later, in the
first half of the twentieth century, to mining and manufacturing. The patriarch of the
Luksic, grandfather of the current owners, arrived in Chile in 1900 as an immigrant from
Croacia, and settled in Chiles copper rich northern city of Antofagasta. Marrying the
8

daughter of a rich industrialist, the familys first son, Andrnico Luksic Abaroa, started as
owner of a Ford auto dealership, and became controlling-owner of the Portezuelo mine, at a
time when it was not a profitable venture. According to family lore, Japanese investors
offered to buy the mine for 500 thousand, and Andronico Luksic Abaroa quickly agreed
without realizing that the sum offered sum was in dollars not pesos.19
Figure 1.
A Critical Cultural Political Approach to the Luksic Group

Valorization of
capital

Production of
Subjectivities

"New Spirit"
of Capital
(Grupo
Luksic)

Production of
Ideas

Production of
Rules

Moving to Santiago, Andrnico Luksic Sr, began a string of successful investments

in the 1960s initially in the forestry sector, turning that half a million dollars into a
conglomerate today valued at US$ 15.3 billion (See Table 1). In 2014, Forbes listed
Andronico Luksic Sr.s widow and her family on its 84th place of the worlds billionaires,
with assets calculated at US$ 13.5 billion.20
From its beginnings in the context of import-substitution industrialization model,
the Luksic group was able to take advantage of the laissez-faire policies of the Pinochet
dictatorship, but a qualitative leap in its economic, political, and cultural power transpired
under the center-left Concertacin administrations (See Figure 2).
Figure 2. Major Highlights Luksic Group History 1957-2013
The Period of Import-Substitution Industrialization
1957
Sociedad Forestal Quienco S.A is created.

1960

Sociedad Forestal Quienco S.A. adds Empresas Lucchetti S.A. and

Forestal Colcura S.A. to its activities.

The Pinochet Military Regime Years (1973-1989)

1970s Hoteles Carrera S.A. is added to Quienco.
1980
Controlling interest over Antofagasta (Chili) and Bolivia Railway Company
Ltd., a company founded in the late 19th century and listed on the London
Stock Exchange in 1888.
1980s Acquisition of shares of Banco OHiggins and of Banco de Santiago.
Controlling share of Madeco and Compaa Cerveceras Unidas are
acquired.
The Years of Civilian-Elected Regimes (1990-2015)
1993
The O'Higgins Bank/Banco Central Hispano (OHCH) group is
established
1995
Control over Banco de Santiago.
1996
Grupo Luksic is divided into two holding companies.
Quienco is established as the financial and industrial parent company of
the Group.
Antofagasta Minerals PLC as the mining holding company with financial
and manufacturing interests exchanged for a 33.6% interest in Quienco.
1997 Quiencos subsidiary VTR sells 100% of mobile phone company Startel,
to CTC.
Antofagasta Minerals begins large scale mining projects
1999
Quienco sells stake in OHCH, later acquiring 51.2% of Banco de A.
Edwards and 8% of Banco de Chile.
Quienco sells its stake in VTR Hipercable. It then buys a 14.3% stake in
Entel S.A.
2000
Start of low-cost copper production in Los Pelambres mine.
2001
Quienco becomes the controller of Banco de Chile.
2002
Banco de Chile and Banco de A. Edwards are merged.
Quienco divests Lucchetti Chile, then buys Calaf through a joint venture
with CCU.
Quienco buys 11.4% of Almacenes Pars, later sold off with profits.
2003
AM demerges 33.6% interest in Quieco.
Antofagasta Minerals acquires Aguas de Antofagasta.
2006
Antofagasta Minerals acquires exploration rights in Pakistan
AM acquires Equatorial Mining to consolidate control over Sierra Gorda
mining district.
2008
Banco de Chile and Citibank Chile merge on January 1st.
Historical transaction between Madeco and French cable producer
Nexans.
Antofagasta Minerals includes Marubeni (Japan) as partner in the El
Tesoro and Esperanza mines
2009
Sale of remaining Entel shares (2.9%).
2010
Quienco divests Telsur.
Citigroup exercises its options for 17.04% of LQIF, controlling entity of
Banco de Chile, increasing its share to 50%.

10

Quienco buys 67% of shares of Universidad Catolica's TV Channel 13

Quienco acquires a 20.6% stake in shipping company CSAV. In early this
stake reached 37.4%.
Madeco signs agreement withNexans and increases its stake up to19.86%.
In March, Quienco signs agreement to purchase Shells assets in Chile.
The transaction is closed on May 31.
2012
Quienco carries out capital increase of US$500 million.
Quienco increases stake in CSAV to 37.44%.
SAAM spin-off from CSAV in February.
SM SAAM created as parent company of SAAM. Quiencos stake in SM
SAAM is also 37.44%
2013
Quienco increases stake in Madeco to 65.9%.
Madeco divided in Invexans and newco Madeco.
Enex acquires Terpel Chile for US$240 million.
Quienco increases stake in CSAV to 46% and in SM SAAM to 42.4%.
Quienco carries out capital increase of US$700 million.
Source: Quienco S.A., Company Presentation January 2015, Antofagasta Minerals and
Press Reports
2011

In 1996, the Luksic group was reorganized into two holding companies, Quienco S.A. in
charge of its financial and manufacturing sector, and Antofagasta Minerals PLC to
coordinate its mining-related businesses in Chile and abroad. Each one of these companies
directly controlled by the Luksic family has experienced phenomenal rates of expansion
under the Concertacin administrations. The Luksic group went from an estimated
valuation of US$ 1.9 billion in 2002 to US$ 15.7 billion in 2012 (See Table 1). This sevenfold expansion in the span of a decade is the result of both it having gained control over the
Banco de Chile in 2003 and having its copper, gold, and molybdenum mine of Los
Pelambres, achieving its full-scale operations.
From a critical political economy perspective this upward trajectory has been anchored on
the Luksic Group's ability to produce, appropriate, and distribute surplus using a panoply of
mechanisms including (a) the exploitation of living labor; (b) the appropriation of mining
rent; (c) significant reliance on financial extraction; (d) accumulation by dispossession; (e)
skillful speculation/net value management of its companies, and (f) the establishment of
international alliances and joint-business ventures with the world's largest transnational
corporations and banks such as Citibank, Heineken, Marubeni, Shell, Nexans, and LloydHapaag. The relative importance of each one of these mechanisms has changed over time,
but they all have played a role in the valorization of capital under Luksic control (See Figure
3).

11

Table 1
Expansion of the Grupo Luksic, 2002-2014

Year

Quienco S.A.
(1)

Antofagasta

Minerals PLC
(2)

Net Asset Value (NAV)

Net Assets

(in US$ millions)

(in US$ millions)

Grupo Luksic
= (1)+ (2)

Total Estimated Valuation

(in US$ Million)

2002

671

1274.7

1945.7

2003

1450

1249

2699.0

2004

1989

1911.6

3900.6

2005

2028

2763

4791.0

2006

2721

3948.1

6669.1

2007

3071

4906.5

7977.5

2008

2142

6432.6

8574.6

2009

3275

6,617.4

9892.4

2010

5789

7525.8

13314.8

2011

5137

7807.4

12944.4

2012

6858

8804.8

15662.8

2013

6541

8663.6

15204.6

2014
5351
8034.7
13385.7
Source: Quienco S.A. and Antofagasta Minerals Annual Reports and Company Presentations

*Net Asset Value (NAV) is defined by Quienco as the market value of its operating companies and
investments, less financial debt.

All of these mechanisms have been at the core of the activities by the companies managed
through its two branches, the holding companies Antofagasta Minerals plc, and Quienco
S.A.
Antofagasta PLC
Antofagasta Minerals PLC is a Chilean-based copper mining group with interests in
energy, transport and water distribution. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a
constituent of the FTSE 100 index.21 During 2012 its operations produced 709,600 tons of
copper in concentrate and copper cathode, 299,900 ounces of gold and 12,200 tons of
molybdenum in concentrate. Antofagasta Minerals operates mines in Chile, Peru, Argentina
and in 2014 it purchased Duluth Metals in Minnesota. It also operates in the segments of
railway transport and water services.
Thanks to its mining operations, the Luksic Group is able to appropriate
extraordinary amounts of surplus. A sense about the important role played by mining rent
and surplus profit can be obtained by looking at the "EBITDA margin" of Antofagasta
Minerals' operations. This standard core measurement of a corporation's core profitability is
12

determined by the ratio between earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and
amortization (EBITDA) over total revenue. In 2013, AM's core profitability for its mining
division was of 45.2% (see Table 2). The mine Los Pelambres, the 'crown jewel' of its
mining operations, provides Antofagasta Minerals with a 58% rate of profit as measured by
the EBITDA margin.

Figure 3.
Grupo Luksic and the Valorization of Capital

Extractio
n of surp
lus
from liv
ing labo
r

Mining

rent

Financia
l
Accumu

extractio
n

lation by
disposs
ession

Specula
tion/
Net valu
e manag
emen

13

Table 2
Antofagasta Minerals Revenue and EBITDA by Division, 2013

A. Mining
1. Los Pelambres
2. Esperanza
3. El Tesoro
4. Michilla
5. Exploration
6. Corporate and other
B. Transport
C. Water

5,639.1
3,129,4
1452.4
747.4
307.9
(274.9)
(83.3)
196.6
135.9

Earnings Before
Interest, Taxes,
and Depreciation
Allowances
(EBITDA)
(in US$ millions)
2,547.7
1,814.0
649.2
426.4
16.3
(274.9)
(83.3)
76.8
77.7

Total

5,971.6

2,702.2

Revenue
(in US$ millions)

Estimated
Profit Rate
(EBITDA
Margin)

45.3

(Percentage)
45.2
58.0
44.7
57.1
5.3
39.1
57.2

Source: Antofagasta Minerals, 2013 Annual Report, p.3

Such extraordinary high rates of profits, even for copper and gold mining (a fact
extensively publicized by the Antofagasta Minerals literature for investors) are rooted not
only on the higher than average content of its mineral deposits, but also on the Luksic
group's ability to reduce production costs. Through appropriation of water resources
belonging to communities such as Caimanes in the Choapa Valley where Los Pelambres is
located, cheaply disposing of highly toxic slag and other materials on both sides of the ChileArgentina border (discussed in greater detail below), and the reduction of labor costs
through extensive use of subcontracted labor in its mining operations, Antofagasta Minerals
has provided the Luksic group with a powerful stream of surplus. In 2014, of almost 19,000
workers employed in its mining division, more than 14,200 workers were subcontracted, the
equivalent of 77.3 of the Antofagasta Minerals' labor force (See Table 3). Subcontracting is
also extensively used in the railway transport and water divisions managed by Antofagasta
Minerals.22

Quinenco S.A.
The Luksic's non-mining business activities go back to 1957, when from modest
beginnings, Forestal Quienco morphed over the span of four decades from a logging outfit
into a financial and manufacturing conglomerate heavily relying on financialization to
generate profits. According to company literature, the Luksic holding company Quienco
S.A. has "developed a value creation system through the professional management of its
investments" that ensures "continuous growth of share holder value" through (1) acquisition
of companies; (2) restructuring bringing administrative and operational improvements; (3)
maximum profitability; and (4) divestment. (Quienco 2015:11). In the late 1990s, Quienco
14

formulated a strategy that would reposition it as a major holding company. As Guillermo

Luksic declared:
"El desafo de crear valor, de multiplicar un patrimonio que est distribuido en muy
diversos sectores de actividad, de mejorar sus retornos y de aumentar su sensibilidad
a las oportunidades de inversin que plantea el mercado, entraa un reto para cuyo
logro Quienco no est partiendo de cero. La sociedad, efectivamente, tiene una
larga trayectoria en el manejo de negocios diversificados y en la realizacin de
transacciones oportunas en coyunturas favorables. La decisin ahora es sistematizar
estas funciones con los ms altos estndares profesionales y hacer de Quienco un
centro de negocios que, aparte de cumplir las funciones propias de toda sociedad
matriz, est en condiciones de maximizar sus tres principales activos. Las empresas
filiales y coligadas que lo integran, la probada capacidad de Quienco para hacer
transacciones favorables y el tercero, tan importante como los anteriores, es la
capacidad de sus cuadros ejecutivos. Una nueva dinmica en estas tres direcciones ya
est en marcha." (Quienco 1999: 12).

Table 3.
Labor Force of Grupo Luksic, 2014
Antofagasta Minerals

4228
827
258
5313

Subcontracted
14424
392
531
15347

Total
Employed
18652
1219
789
20660

Professional
& Technical
22
5920
3
599
601
160
55
7360

Other
Workers
16
8340
1
1599
1626
4
13
11599

Total
Employed
55
14807
5
2236
2244
170
75
19592

Own
Mining
Transport (Ant-Bolivia Raiway)
Water (Aguas Antofagasta)
Sub-Total

Percentage
Subcontracted
77.3
32.2
67.3
74.3

Quinenco S.A.
Executives
Quinenco
LQIF
Invexans
Techpak
Enex
CSAV
Other subsidiaries
Sub-total
Total Grupo Luksic

17
547
1
38
17
6
7
633

40252

Data for Quienco includes subsidiaries and labor emplyed in Chile and abroad
Source: Compiled by author on the basis of Antofagasta Minerals 2014 Annual Report, Quienco 2014 Annual
Report, p. 61

Certainly the continuous professionalization of its management, iron-clad family

control, and seizing of opportunity have been ingredients of Quienco's success as it grew
from a company managing US$ 262 million in assets in 1986 to a manufacturing and
financial conglomerate with US$ 71 billion assets under its management (Quienco 2015: 2).
Selling off companies and getting out of certain economic sectors (hotels and telecoms)
while taking advantage of government loans, available cash and alliances with foreign
transnational capital to enter into others (financial services, transport, energy, shipping and
port services) have been a factor explaining its successful expansion (See Table 4). According
15

to its own reports, Quinenco S.A., "has carried out various transactions throughout its
history, generating US$ 1.7 billion in profits over the last 16 years." (Quienco 2015: 12).
These profits have resulted from divestments of US$ 4.1 billion of companies that the group
bought and restructured to sell for a profit. The streams of these profits have been US$ 915
million from the sale of different telecoms, US$ 57 million from the sale of Almacenes Paris
(retail), US $ 37 million in the sale of it utiliy holdings, and US$ 711 from the sale of LQIF
Inversiones Financieras and Banco O'Higgings. Though it claims to have lost US$ 21
million (US$ 10 million in its sale of Hotel Carrera and US$ 11 million in its sale of Luchetti
(Beverage and food)), and the US$ 1.7 billion represents a hefty 41.5 percent profit rate.
Timely divestments have provided Luksic with cash resources to invest in new companies
and sectors, but they are not the whole story.
Table 4
Quienco's Shifting Portfolio, 1960-2014
Decade
1960s
1970s
1980s

1990s

2000s

2010

2014

Economic Sectors
Lumber
Beverage & Food
Hotels
Beverage & Food
Hotels
Manufacturing
Telecom
Financial Services
Beverage & Food
Hotels
Manufacturing
Telecom
Financial Services
Beverage & Food
Manufacturing
Telecom
Financial Services
Beverage & Food
Manufacturing
Financial Services
Beverage & Food
Manufacturing
Financial Services
Media
Energy
Transport
Port & Shipping Services

16

Quienco's ability to take advantage of opportunities and expand its power is directly
linked to the growing financialization of its operations. In the midst of the 1980s crisis, the
Luksics bought in 1981 Banco O'Higgins and in 1988 begun buying shares of Banco de
Santiago.23 In 1993, it partnered with Banco Central Hispanoamericano, a transnational bank
from Spain, to conform OHCH, taking majority control of Banco Santiago finally in 1995.
After the 1996 reorganization of the Luksic group into Quienco S.A. and Antofagasta
Minerals plc, Quienco initiates its first public offering of shares in the New York and the
Santiago Stock Exchange, allowing Quienco to generate US$ 279 million. In the ensuing
years, Quienco buys a controlling interest in Banco de A. Edwards, and after sellling off its
telecoms, is able to buy 8.3% of Banco de Chile, slowly raising its shares to 11.2% by the
start of 2000.
Quienco finally obtains control of Banco de Chile thanks to a US$ 120 million loan
from the Banco del Estado, a public institution under the leadership of Socialist Jaime
Estvez. 24 After the Luksic's gain control of Banco de Chile in 2002, the amount of
resources available to expand their economic power increased significantly. Control over
Banco de Chile meant a qualitative leap in the dynamics of Quienco and Grupo Luksic:
After 2003, an ever increasing proportion of Quienco's cash flow and profits have a
financial origin.
Measuring financialization for Chilean conglomerates poses a number of analytical
and methodological challenges (Leiva and Malinowitz 2007) and the challenge of using firmlevel data to accurate measure financialization are not insignificant (Bichler and Nitzan
2012).
In order to calculate the role of financialization in the expansion of the Luksic
group's economic power, I utilize two complimentary measures, both based on the
consolidated financial and annual reports filed by Quienco S.A., the holding company for
its non-banking and banking companies under its control.
The first measure is based on Quienco and subsidiaries consolidated cash flow and
gages the financial origin of cash flow from ordinary operations. Given that in 2009
Quienco adopted new international financial reporting standards, this estimate is
discontinuous, and is reported below for 1998-2008 and 2009-2014 separately. In addition
to this inconvenience, one should note that cash-flow measurements are "jumpy" and at
best, offer an approximation to processes of financialization.
Despite these problems, when we look at Quienco for the 1998-2008 period (See
Table 5), we see a significant changes after 2002, when control over Banco de Chile, the
country's largest private bank, is finally achieved. Hence for the 1998-2002 period, the
financial origin of Quienco cash flow averaged 6.5%, where as for the 2003-2007 years, it
averaged 12%, climbing to 15% in 2008.

17

Table 5
Quienco S.A. Financial Origin of Cash Flow from Operating Activities, 1998-2008
(in thousands of millions of Ch$)
Percentage
Cash Flow of
Interest
Dividends
Other
Year
Total
Financial
Income
Received
Income
Origin
(%)
1998
658.6
22.9
15.7
1.8
699.0
5.78
1999
478.8
20.4
10.1
5.4
514.7
6.97
2000
516.3
8.1
10.9
6.2
541.5
4.65
2001
551
13.1
19.7
3.4
587.2
6.16
2002
469.7
14.1
29.3
2.7
515.8
8.94
2003
408.1
2.8
74.6
1.9
487.4
16.27
2004
469.0
2.1
49.1
6.5
526.7
10.96
2005
521.1
4.8
69.2
2.4
597.5
12.79
2006
715.1
3.8
49.3
14.6
782.8
8.65
2007
851.8
7.2
54.8
14.1
927.9
8.20
2008
883.4
7.4
121
27.4
1039.2
14.99
Source: Calculated by author on basis of Quienco and Subsidiaries Consolidated Cash Flow from
Annual Reports of each year.
Collection
Accounts
Receivable

For the 2009-2014 period, Quienco adopted new reporting standards, making it
possible to perform a more comprehensive measurement of financialization of its cash flow
that that differs in three important aspects from previous ones: (1) cash flow data is
reported in net terms; (2) it encompasses and separates ordinary, financing, and investment
activities of the conglomerate; and (3) clearly differentiates its banking from non-banking
companies. When the financial origin of cash flow is measured based on this latest reporting
standard, some surprising results emerge. First, for Quienco's non-banking companies
(beverage and food, manufacturing, energy, transport, port services and shipping), the
financial origin of profit is relatively small for the 2009-2014 period, declining from a high of
5.3 percent in 2009 to a low of 1.5 per cent in 2014, averaging 3.3 percent (See Table 6).
Second, when the financial origin of both non-banking and banking are considered, we obtain
some startling results: the financial origin of Quienco cash flow averages 55% for 20092014, hitting 78.3% in 2010 descending to 38.5 % in 2014.
Arguably, such measurements based on consolidated reports do present problems
arising from Quienco's densely interlocked network of companies. Nonetheless as has been
pointed out "... over the longer term, the ultimate yardstick that guides accumulation is not
the 'shadow measure' of cash flow, but the legally sanctified entity of reported net earnings.
(Bichler and Nitzan 2012: 66).

18

Table 6 Financialization of Quinenco: Financial Origin of Net Cash Flow, 2009-2014

(In thousands of millions of Chilean $ and percentages)
2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

359.1

304.6

1,055.4

1,653.9

2,054.9

2,540.7

17.4

2.2

15.1

9.6

23.5

14.4

NON-BANKING SERVICES
Income from Ordinary Activities
Other income by function
Financial Revenue

4.1

14.5

22.6

21.3

16.3

22.9

21.5

16.7

37.7

30.9

39.8

37.3

380.6

321.3

1093.1

1684.8

2094.7

2578

5.7

5.2

3.5

1.8

1.9

1.5

Net interest and readjustment income

670.1

767.3

873.8

956.2

1,061.3
0

1,248.70

Net Commission income

242.1

292.3

308.8

307.3

287.1

272.2

Other operational income

22.7

23.6

24.7

22

27.2

29.4

934.9

1083.2

1207.3

1285.5

1375.6

1550.3

Financial originated cash flow Non-Banking Enterprises

Subtotal Cash Flow Non-Banking Services
Financial origin of cash flow in Non-Banking (as %)
BANKING SERVICES

Subtotal Total Cash Flow Banking Services

COMBINED NON BANKING AND BANKING
Financial Origin of Cash flow Non-Banking and Banking
Total Cash flow Non-Banking and Banking
Measure 2 of financialization (%)

956.4

1099.9

1245

1316.4

1415.4

1587.6

1315.5

1404.5

2300.4

2970.3

3470.3

4128.3

54.1

44.3

40.8

38.5

72.7

78.3

Source: Calculated by author on the basis of Quienco and Banco de Chile Consolidated Statements

Relying on a "legally sanctified entity" of consolidated profits, a second measurement

offers an alternative estimate about the role that financialization has played and continues to
play in the expansion of Luksic's power. When we compare non-banking with banking
origin of consolidated profits, an even more impressive account about the centrality of that
financialization plays in Quienco's growth strategy. Over the 2009-2014 period, profits
from banking represent an annual average of 83% of Quinenco's consolidated profits (See
Table 7)
Table 7 Financial Origin of Profits, 2009-2014
Profits from
Non-Banking
Activities

Profits from
Banking
Services

Estimate of
Financial Origin
Year
Consolidated Profits
of Profits
(%)
2009
132.4
380.7
513.13
74.2
2010
355.2
593.0
948.2
62.5
2011
-31.9
722.8
691.0
104.6
2012
642.6
812.3
876.6
92.7
2013
-26.5.
899.8
873.2
103.0
2014
549.6
855.5
1,405.0
60.9
Source: Compiled by author on the basis of Quienco Memoria Annual 2010, 2012, 2014
Data obtained from Estados Consolidados de Resultados
Original data in Ch$ converted to US$ using annual average dolar observado data from Banco Central website

19

The above data suggests that financialization and financial extraction, in addition to
surplus from living labor, mining rent and accumulation by dispossession, has also become
another key lever enabling the economic expansion of the Luksic group.
All of these processes - surplus extraction from living labor, mining rent,
accumulation by dispossession, financial extraction and others--are tightly controlled
through financialized networks of property relations codified in interlocking companies and
family-controlled corporations established in tax havens such as Lichtenstein. Quienco has
about 1,222 shareholders but 81.3 percent of shares are owned by Luksic family companies.
Likewise, 69.85% of Antofagasta Minerals is also owned by the Luksic family through a twotiered network of Luksic owned corporations and foundations (See Table 8).
Two important insights emerge from the above overview of the valorization of capital
under Luksic control. First, fully mapping the Grupo Luksic's operations is difficultthat task
pales in comparison with the task of documenting the actual political-economic mechanisms
through which conglomerates such as this accumulate capital. As we saw, over the last
decade, and under center-left administrations, Grupo Luksic grew at least seven-fold in size.
Through surplus extraction from living labor, mining rent, accumulation by dispossession,
and financial extraction, Luksic has found seeming exponentially growing sources for
expanding its economic power over society. At the same time, these mechanisms and the
rapid expansion of its power has engendered growing community resistance. An example is
the decade long conflict pitting Antofagasta Minerals against different communities. Since
2001, for example, the surrounding communities have resisted the expansion of Luksic's Los
Pelambres mine. In 2010, neighbors and small-scale agricultural producers engaged in a 45day long hunger strike in protest of Antofagasta Minerals. The small locality of Caimanes, in
the Quilimar Valley, has been resisting mining operations through social mobilizations and
legal action which have bogged down operations and forced Luksic to even tear down its
Mauro tailings dam which according to Antofagasta Minerals would mean the death of Los
Pelambres. Communities rightly fear that the El Mauro tailings dam will crumble and a toxic
river of arsenic and other cancer-causing metals will further destroy their land and livelihoods.
At the same time, they protest that contamination of the Pupo river by Luksic mining had
decreed the death of agricultural activities in the region. They claim, that ever since Los
Pelambres arrived, they have had live in the wake of its deathly destructive effects. 25

20

Table 8
The Mechanisms of Family Control
a. Substantial Shareholding of Antofagasta Minerals plc (as of March 16, 2015)
Controller of
Principal AM
Shareholders

Principal AM Shareholders

Ordinary
share
capital (%)

Preference
share capital
(%)

E. Abaroa
Foundation
(Liechtenstein)
E. Abaroa
Foundation
(Liechtenstein)
J. P. Luksic

Metalinvest Establishment
(Liechtenstein)

50.72

94.12

Total
share
capital
(%)
58.04

Kupferberg Establishment
(Liechtenstein)

9.94

--

8.27

Aureberg Establishment
(United Kingdom)

4.26

--

3.54

64.92
5.10

94.12
--

69.85
4.24

Luksic Family
Blackrock Inc.
(USA)
Source: AM, Annual Report 2014, p. 101

b Table of Substantial Shareholding of Quienco SA (As of Dec 31, 2014)

Controlled
Principal Quienco
Total share capital (%)
Shareholders
Andsberg Inversiones Ltda*
41.29
Ruana Copper AG Agencia
15.39
Chile*
Inmobiliaria e Inversiones
10.82
Rio Claro S.A.*
Inversiones Consolidadas
8.48
Ltda*
Inversiones Rio Claro Ltda
2.72
Inversiones Salta S.A.*
1.42
Inversiones Alaska Ltda.*
1.21
Luksic Family
81.33
BTG Pactual Chile SA
7.47
Corredores de Bolsa
Banco de Chile por cuenta de
2.06
terceros no residents
Banco Ita por cuenta de
1.42
inversionistas
Moneda S.A.
1.31
AFP Habitat S.A.
0.72
Others (no info)
5. 69
Source: Antofagasta Minerals and Quinenco Annual Reports

21

Thus, a second important aspect emerges from the above overview of the
accumulation of capital by Luksic: in order to sustain, reproduce, and amplify each one of
the pillars of its power, capitalists like the Luksic family must also actively engage in the
production of rules, ideas, and subjectivity as a necessary condition to contain, dissolve and
vanquish societal resistance. As we shall see below, the specific characteristics of the
valorization of capital engaged by the Luksic group, makes such an engagement necessary,
but the vast amounts of surplus under its control, has made such engagement possible in
unexpected ways: a growing collaboration with center-left politicians, intellectuals, political
parties, think-tanks and non-governmental organizations.

3.2.The Production of Rules

Influencing political processes has remained a central component of the Luksic
growth strategy. Compiling a detailed catalogue of the Luksic Group's interventions in
politics --the realm of rule production-- is research that remains to be undertaken. Compiling
such an inventory would simply be a first step towards a detailed reconstruction of how
political intervention has shaped its trajectory. A comprehensive assessment of the group's
political influence would additionally require contextualizing such interventions within
specific politico-economic conjunctures and business decision points, a task clearly beyond
our goals here. Nonetheless, I identify here three key mechanisms that illustrate how this
conglomerate influences those individuals and institutions involved in rule making.26 Over
the past two decades, the Luksic group relied upon (1) the setting up of public policy thinktanks; (2) the funding of electoral campaigns at the local and national level; and (3) the hiring
of former high-government officials and cabinet members as Luksic executives (See Figure
4).
1. Think Tanks - The Case of Res Publica

In the midst of 2011, as Chile experienced massive social mobilizations, Andrnico
Luksic Craig, cited the former Chief Economist of the OECD Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel for
lunch, to invite him to convene a group of reflection on the situation of the economy and
human development in Chile.27 Christened tentatively as Res Publica, the group included
eight economists, one lawyer, a sociologist, and a Jesuit priest, representing views from the
establishment's political spectrum.28

22

Figure 4
Grupo Luksic and the Production of Rules

Tanks
k
n
i
h
T

y
c
li
Public Po
idates
d
n
a
c

l
a
ic
of polit
g
n
i
c
n
a
n
Fi

rnment
e
v
o
g

r
e
form
Hiring of
cutives
e
x
E

c
i
s
k
s Lu
ofNicials a

Meeting once a week in 17 different working groups, Grupo Res Pblica Chile
(GRPC) shaped public debates on possible exits to deepening political crisis, influencing the
Nueva Mayora government programs. After completing its work, GRPC publicized a final
proposal consisting of 95 different policy measures that in May of 2013 were presented for
consideration of political authorities, the private sector, and the public.
If we understand hegemony as operating through the ability to fix the terms of
political discussions, forcing opponents into a perpetual state of responding to the initiative
of hegemonic forces, then the goals of GRPC in this regard were fully accomplished.29
Conformed by both right-wing and center-left intellectuals and technocrats, the Luksicfunded GRPC produced a framework for reforms organized along four main themes: the
political system, decentralization and the state; the role of markets, environmental
regulations and economic development; social issues and inequality; and issues related to
drugs and crime. As one of the participants declared "Este informe no se centrar en el
debate terico sino que en propuestas de cambios en polticas y prioridades de gobierno. Los
documentos de revisin de la experiencia, as como los estudios ms tcnicos de trasfondo,
pueden ser parte de un libro ms acadmico que prepararemos despus de dar nuestro
informe de propuestas".30
Stressing the non-partisan and technical nature of the endeavour helped to
underscore that the GRPC, "Did not seek to form part of anyone of the presidential
candicacies, though it aimed to hopefully ensure that all the candidates incorporate portions
23

of our proposal as their own, or that they at least take these proposals into account as useful
background information at the time of formulating their programs."31 This is indeed exactly
what happened. The Nueva Mayora tax reform program, a key plank of its overall program,
extensively drew from the Luksic-funded GRPC proposal. In fact, after Bachelet's election,
when in mid 2014, when the Nueva Mayora's tax reform efforts led by then Minister of
Finance Alberto Arenas seemed to be floundering, a backroom deal was forged between
Minister Arenas and GRPC member Juan Andres Fontaine, someone who also happened to
have been on the Board of Directors of Quienco.32 After finishing its work, the Luksic
group hired in March 2014 former GRPC members Andrea Repetto and Alvaro Sapag,
former head of the National Commission on the Environment under Michelle Bachelets
first government as Quienco advisers.33
2. Funding Electoral Campaigns

A second and much more traditional mechanism has been the use of its wealth to
finance electoral campaigns for president, deputies as well as senators. Though detailed
amounts have not been revealed, investigative journalists have discovered that the Luksic
family used its extensive array of companies under its control, to make such contributions.34
Participants in campaign funding were determined to be those Luksic companies exposed to
greater risks from legal and regulatory frameworks, those involved in contested mining
projects and finance, appear as some of the main conduits for funds to politicians. In this
sense, Minera Los Pelambres, Banchile Administradora General de Fondos, and Banchile
Corredores de Bolsa were exposed as having contributed to the past three congressional and
presidential campaigns. Another nine companies, including Quienco -- the holding
company for the group's manufacturing and financial branch, and its subsidiaries CCU,
Invexans (ex Madeco), Alusa, Banco de Chile, BanChile Factoring and Minera El Tesoro, as
well as lesser known companies such as Inversiones Rio Azul and SIM S.A also engaged in
campaign funding (Matamala 2015). In addition to these practices, the 2013 Annual Report
of Antofagasta Minerals PLC reveals that it legally contributed US$ 2.3 million towards
presidential and local elections.35
3. Hiring Center-Left Cabinet Members: Oiling the Revolving Door

Given Chile's elitist "insider" style of decision making, the most effective mechanism
used by Luksic has been its strategy of recruiting former high-level cabinet members and
appointing them to the boards of different Luksic-controlled companies. Through such
practices, the Luksic group ensures that it will capture the wealth of political contacts
developed by these individuals while in the public sphere, so that they can be deployed in the
service of ensuring the Luksic Group's bottom line by fortifying its political ability to engage
in "risk assessment" and risk management.
In practice for more than two decades, the Luksic group is now are able to ensure that
center-left cabinet appointees will defend the conglomerate's interests as they pass in both
directions of the 'revolving door': from the Concertacin cabinet into the plush seats of
Luksic directorships, and then, once again, as they move from Luksic boardrooms back into
cabinet posts.

24

Table 9
The Revolving Door, Going Out: Concertacin Ministers Hired by the Luksic Group
Government Ministerial
Post

Domestic/Foreign
Transnational Conglomerate

From the Patricio Aylwin Administration

Rene Cortazar Sanz (PDC)
Labor and Social Security
Eugenio Tironi (PPD)

Secretaria de
Comunicaciones

Enrique Correa (PPS)

Secretario General de
Gobierno

From the Eduardo Frei Administration (1994-1998)

Alejandro Jadresic (PDC)
Mining, National Energy
Commission

Director of Channel 13 in
representation of the Luksic
Group
Lobbying and media
consulting Lucchetti-Per,
HydroAysen
Lobbying and media
consulting

Member of the board of

Channel 13 (Luksic Group)

From the Ricardo Lagos Administration (1999-2004)

Nicols Eyzaguirre Guzmn (PPD)
Finance

President and member of

the board of Channel 13
(Luksic Group)

Jaime Estvez Valencia (PS)

Director Banco de Chile,

President Banco del

Estado, Public Works,
Transport

From the First Michelle Bachelet Administration (2005-2009)

Viviane Blanlot (PPD)
Defense

Board of Directors,
Antofagasta Minerals (2014_
Alejandro Ferreiro (PDC)
Economy
Director of Invexans (exMadeco)
Ren Cortzar (PDC)
Transport and Telecom
Director of Channel 13 (Grupo
Luksic
Source: Compiled by author on the basis of Poderopedia, Wiki-Pedia and press reports

At least seven high level cabinet members of different Concertacin administrations,

including Minister of Labor, Ren Cortzar (PDC), Minister of Mining Alejandro Jadresic
(PDC), Minister of Finance Nicols Eyzaguirre (PPD), Minister of Defense Viviane Blanlot
(PPD) and Minister of Economics Alejandro Ferreiro (PDC) were tapped by the Luksic
Group for later service on boards of its different companies (See Table 9).
Its deep pockets and good eye for recruiting center-left politicos allows the Luksic
group to place center-leftists who have served on their boards or in key administrative
positions of Luksic companies, in strategic posts and ministries of the Nueva Mayora
government. In the wake of the student mobilizations of 2011 and 2012, not only did trusted
Luksic employees such as Ren Cortzar, Alberto Arenas, and Nicols Eyzaguirre play key
roles in defining the Nueva Mayora government program, but several other Luksic
employees were named to ministries of strategic importance for the conglomerate's future
25

expansion (See Table 10). Alberto Arenas was named by Michelle Bachelet to the Ministry of
Finance and oversaw that Chile's rules concerning its integration with global capital flows
and the tax reform implemented by Nueva Mayora follows guidelines laid out in the
proposal by Res Pblica. Aurora Williams as Minister of Mining, and Christian Franz as the
Superintendent of the Environment will ensure that the group continues to appropriate
mining rent and that the resistance of local communities to the accumulation by
dispossession as they defend water, ecosystems, and neighborhoods free of cancer-causing
heavy metals and toxins will not curtail operations.36 Minister of Energy, Mximo Pacheco,
close friend and climbing partner of Andrnico Luksic Craig, former board of director of
Banco de Chile, will promote policies that allow Luksic companies to continue counting on
cheap electricity for their mines, even if it means destroying thousand-year-old ecosystems,
grabbing water for life and communities, to use it to power the valorization of capital.

Table 10
The Revolving Door: Going In. Luksic and the Nueva Mayoria Government
Luksic Employment
Luksic Group and Michelle Bachelet's 2013 Campaign
Rene Cortazar
Board of Directors, TVChannel 13
Alberto Arenas

Board of Directors, TVChannel 13

Luksic Group and Michelle Bachelet/Nueva Mayoria Government

Alberto Arenas
Former Board of Director for
TVChannel 13
Aurora Williams
Former Finance Manager for
Antofagasta Terminal Internacional,
Former Manager of Client Services
for Aguas Antofagasta
Nicolas Eyzaguirre
President, Member Board of
Directors of Channel 13
Mximo Pacheco

Former Board of Director of Banco

de Chile
Christian Franz
Advisor and consultant for
Antofagasta Minerals
Source: Compiled by author on the basis of Press reports

Political Responsibility in
Nueva Mayora
Member of Nueva Mayoria
Campaign Program
Chief Nueva Mayora
Campaign Program
Minister of Finance, key
architect of Tax Reform
Minister of Mining

Minister of Education, key

architect of the Educational
Reform
Minster of Energy,
Superintendent of the
Environemnt

Yet when it comes to buying the best political talent and maximizing political access,
the Luksic's are exemplary equal opportunity employer. Hence, after funding Michelle
Bachelets 2013 candidacy, the Luksic group announced the new line up of its top tier
management. Sebastian Pieras closest political ally, former Minister of Interior and
Defense, Rodrigo Hinzpeter and a leader of Renovacin Nacional, was named Quienco's
Chief Legal Counsel.37 Later, Vivianne Blanlot, a former head of Chile's environmental
agency, Bachelet's former Minister of Defense and a militant of the center-left Partido por la
Democracia, was named as one of the eleven Board of Directors of Luksic's Antofagasta
Minerals PLC.38
26

3.3. The Production of Ideas

Consistent with the Luksic group's search for intellectual influence, they have
become the benefactors of some of the worlds most important institutions of higher
education. Andrnico Luksic Jr. is a Trustee at Babson College and a member of the Global
Advisory Council at Harvard University. He is also a member of the Deans Council at the
Harvard Kennedy School, the Global Advisory Board at Harvard Business School, the
Advisory Committee of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard
University. Not limiting his influence to just the Americas, Andrnico Luksic is also a
member of the Advisory Board of Tsinghua University School of Economics and
Management in Beijing, the International Advisory Board at the Blavatnik School of
Government at the University of Oxford, and the Latin America Executive Board at MIT
Sloan School of Management (See Figure 5).
Figure 5
The Luksic Group and the Production of Ideas

Andronico Luksic Visiting Scholars Program - Harvard

University/David Rockefeller Center for Latin American
Studies (1999)

Andronico Luksic Grants Program - Notre Dame - Kellogg

Institute - Universidad Catolica de Chile (2013)

Tsinghua - MIT Sloan School of Management t

1. Funding International Universities

In addition to providing important contacts and a way of recruiting talent for its
economic and political operations, such support has also bought the Luksic important
intellectual and political influence. A recent example of this is the Rethinking Chile at the
Beginning of the Twenty-First Century, a seminar organized by the David Rockefeller
Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS) for and by the Andrnico Luksic Scholars on
November 22, 2012.39 From 2001 to 2012, 15 Chilean scholars and practitioners from a
variety of disciplines and organizations had the opportunity to study at DRCLAS and think
about Chile from diverse and critical perspectives as Luksic Visiting Scholars for a semester
27

or year in Cambridge. The "Rethinking Chile" seminar was framed as "an opportunity to
share and build upon this knowledge and will be a platform from which to recast the themes
investigated by the scholars during the last twelve years within the context of major changes
in the global context." 40 Attended by Andrnico Luksic, Massachussets Governor Deval
Patrick, Harvard President, and Chiles Ambassador to the US, according to the DRCLAS,
the seminar brought together "about 15 reknown national experts along with the presidents
of the main universities of Chile." Adding, that among the one hundred participants,
"Andronic Luksic observed the fruits of the support of his foundation has provided for over
a decade to fostering links between Harvard and Chile."41.
The MIT Sloan School of Management has also praised Mr. Luksic's generosity, "
when it announced that MIT Sloan had opened a new office in Santiago, Chile, "which will
help to promote MIT Sloan programs to prospective students in the region, provide new
opportunities for faculty research and collaboration with Chilean universities and companies,
and enhance action learning programs. The office has its own dedicated staff, and was made
possible by a gift from Andrnico Luksic, a member of MIT Sloans Latin American
Executive Board and the Visiting Committee."42

3.5. The Production of Subjectivity

Like other grupos econmicos, the Luksic Group has come to play a decisive role in
the shaping of neoliberal subjectivities. It does this though a variety of conduits including (1)
its ownership of media companies such the Universidad Catlica de Chile's TV Channel 13;
(2) investments in publicity for Luksic products, brands, and services; (3) the hiring of image
and media consultants for its holding companies and enterprises, many times called to action
when Luksic affiliates confront obstacles and community resistance; (4) philanthropic
foundations targeting communities resisting the scaling up of Antofagasta Minerals
operations; and (5) philanthropic foundations aimed at ensuring the generational
reproduction of the labor force.
In 2010, the Luksic group bought 67 percent share of Universidad Catolica's TV
Channel 13 for US$ 55 million.43 According to Andrnico Luksic Craig, acquisition of TV
Channel 13, " allows us to enter into a media sector that has enormous potential for growth
through a brand such as Channel 13 that was a pioneer and enjoys tremendous prestige."44
This was not the first foray in the media sector. Another brother had been founder of the
business magazine Capital and remained its main shareholder until 2004 and earlier that year
had attempted to a competing TV station, Chilevision, owned by Sebastian Pinera. 45
The Luksic's however were molding the subjectivity of Chileans long before they
became owners of Canal 13. In 2014 alone, US$ 1.2 billion dollars were spent in publicity,
with close to US$ 493 million in open TV advertisements and US$ 273 million in newspaper
ads (ACHAP 2014). As any superficial analysis of TV or newspaper ads reveal a concerted
effort to promote greater consumerism, debt, and individualism. Young, light-skinned,
blonde and affluent-looking models, promote the notion that happiness and a sense of
belonging through debt-fueled consumption and credit card use. Luksic controlled
companies such as Banco de Chile and CCU, Chile's premier beer and beverages company,
have been one of the main promoters of such a message.46
28

Figure 6
Luksic Group and the Production of Subjectivity

Media (TV)

Publicity for Luksic products, brands, and services

Hiring of media consultants

Philanthropic foundations targetting communities

Philanthropic foundaitons aimed at the generational reproduction of labor

Subjectivity is also shaped by different Luksic family sponsored foundations. Though
philanthropic civic action campaigns targeting communities resisting Luksic companies are
discussed below, it is important to remark on Luksic foundations aimed more broadly at the
generational reproduction of the labor force. In this regard, the Fundacin Andrnico
Luksic Abaroa plays a major role, although the Luksic family also supports other
foundations such as Fundacin Educacional Oportunidad which is devoted to improving
early childhood education in Chile, and Fundacin Amparo y Justicia which provides legal
support to victims of sexual abuse.
Even in this type of philanthropic activities, the Luksics rely on a merger and
acquisition strategy. The Fundacion Andrnico Luksic Abarcoa was officially founded on
2000, after Andronico Luksic A. took over the Fundacin Federico W. Schwager, which
since 1955 had been in existence in Chiles southern coal mines. In 2008 it signs new
agreements with Fundacin Chile and the Centro Cultural Matucana 100. However in April
2010, the Luksic family meets in one Strategic Planning session which decides that the
Foundation will focus its efforts in the educational realm, particularly in the technicalprofessional training for middle level students in regions" (Fundacion Luksic 2010-2012: 4).
Through a competitive funds managed by the Fondo para Iniciativas Escolares (FIE), the
Fundacion Educacional Luksic, and other projects, the Fundacin Luksic seeks to "generate
conditions for social movility through our commitment with education of quality that fosters
the development of competencies and skills for the 21st century, and thus, become an
example of efficiency and management for all society to see."47
29

This desire to become a demonstrative example of what "modern" approaches could

accomplish has led the Fundacin Luksic to pioneer new pedagogical approaches that foster
individual responsibility and partner with entities such as Fundacin Educacional
Oportunidad and Grupo Educativo, from which educational experts linked to the
Concertacin such as former Minister of Education Mariana Aylwin and Claudia Peirano,
have defended private for profit education and undermined calls by the student movement
for a comprehensive nationwide public quality educational system.
Its focus on children and young students is steeped in the neoliberal morals and
pedagogy of individualism and entrepreneurship. On the one hand, the Fundacin Luksic
stresses that, "A travs de nuestros programas buscamos replicar las caractersticas que
fueron parte esencial de la vida de nuestro fundador, Don Andrnico Luksic Abaroa, quien
en el mbito personal y empresarial supo generar oportunidades de crecimiento, no solo en
el aspecto econmico, sino que especialmente, en el desarrollo de las potencialidades de las
personas."48 On the other hand, allied with Grupo Educativo led by Claudia Periano, it
embraces the Fontn Relational Educational System (SERF), originally started in Colombia
and applied to some 20,000 Colombian students. The SERF pedagogical approach is
extolled because " given its manner of operation, this model enables the development of
skills which are key for the 21st century, such as autonomy, curiosity, responsibility, the
ability to work in teams, efficient time management skills and analytical, critical and reflexive
thinking, among others."49

4. Enacting the Citizenship of Capital in Eleven Movements

Any one of the numerous conflicts pitting local communities against the
conglomerates' plans for scaling up their operations offers us opportunities for observing
how the new spirit of capital is enacted in contemporary Chile. Appearing as being about
environmental issues and/or involving indigenous rights, each one of these conflicts
constitutes a hub around which all of the resources drawn from capital's involvement in the
valorization of capital, the production of rules, ideas, and subjectivity are deployed. These
conflicts have become the prime loci for understanding how capital, in close alliance with
the center-left, attempts to restore its hegemony over society. Indeed, an increasing reliance
on those mechanisms associated with "accumulation by dispossession"50 (Harvey 2007),
encourage conglomerates such as the Luksic group to step outside the world of production
or what Marx called "the hidden abode" of capital.
In an historical twist laden with irony, if we are to force the "secret of capital," we
now need to follow Mr. Moneybags as he goes on his way out under the arched entrance
emblazoned with "No admittance expect on business," following his steps back onto the
"noisy sphere" not just of circulation but of all the realms of social life in which capital now
seeks to enact its citizenship.51 And as we step back out from the hidden abode, we will
witness a different change in the physiognomy of at least one of our dramatis personae: the
transformation of Luksic from Mr. Moneybags and Capitalist into a full-fledged citizen of
the neoliberal republic that he and his confreres helped constitute, with the assistance of the
military initially, and now with the enthusiastic support of the center-left.

30

We can begin our shadowing of Mr. Moneybags by noting that a report by

Pricewaterhouse Coopers indicated that 12 investment projects amounting to US$ 13.06 bn,
an amount representing 4,8% Chile's 2012 GDP, had been paralyzed due to conflicts
involving indigenous communities and disputes concerning application of the ILO's
Resolution 169 (PWC 2014: 9). Additionally, in its annual survey of investment projects, the
Chilean Federation of Industry (SOFOFA) reported that in 2013, fiftythree such projects
were immobilized, either postponed, paralyzed or abandoned, on account of socioenvironmental conflicts. The dollar amount of investments ensnared by legal proceedings
initiated at the behest of different communities, represented US$ 70.9 billion, an amount
equivalent to 25.5% of Chile's 2013 GDP (SOFOFA 2013). Data on such conflicts shows that
59.9% of these investment projects corresponded to the mining sector, and 38.7 to power
generation (See Table 11). Over US$ 10 billion of these paralyzed projects, at least 14%
directly involve Luksic companies.
The dynamics of these conflicts reveal the interests and logic of action of key social
and political actors such as (1) the domestic transnational conglomerates and their drive to
accumulate capital; (2) the popular sectors and the communities that resist the new forms of
accumulation by dispossession that threaten their livelihoods and ways of life; (3) the role of
the state and state apparatus in these conflicts; and, most importantly, (4) how the
Concertacin/Nueva Mayora center-left coalition and their constellation of epistemic
communities conformed by think tanks, foundations, non-governmental organizations, and
an extensive network of consultants on conflict management and media manipulation have
developed new political technologies to appease mobilized popular sectors and support state
action in favor of the grupos econmicos while finding highly profitable niches of activity
from deploying their neo-socialdemocratic/neostructuralist political discourse.
In almost every sector of strategic importance- mining, energy, water, beverages,
transportation, the Luksic group has been involved in a long-term battle against local
communities. One of the longest and most embarrassing ones involves its efforts to expand
the scale of operations at its most profitable Los Pelambres mine and the communities of
Caimanes and the Choapas Valley.
Given the implications for its operations and shareholders, the Luksic group has had
no choice but to overcome these obstacles by engaging in the production of rules, ideas, and
subjectivity, a process which the unthinking observer might confuse as evidence of a new
civic awareness on the part of capital.
The stylized depiction here presented underscores how the strategy of conglomerates
such a the Luksic group are the outcome of interactions between its own drive to increase
accumulation of capital, resistance by communities and workers affected, and by a political
system, that since 1973 and reaffirmed by the late 1980s negotiated pact, should exist mainly
to facilitate their objectives. Furthermore the highly stylized depiction presented below
rather than offering a finely grained study of these conflicts, aims to illustrate in broad
brushstrokes the gamut of hegemonic practices of the Luksic group, and how these are
intimately linked to the politics of the center-left. These following eleven steps illustrate how
the Luksic conglomerate has discovered the need to operate at the economic, political,
cultural and ideological fields of the system of domination and how in order to due so
effectively it must elicit and hire the collaborations of the center-left.
31

Table 11 Chile Investment Projects Stopped by Community Resistance as of 2013

CORPORATION
Mining Sector
Minera Los Pelambres (Antofagasta Minerals - Nippon LP )*
Minera Doa Ins de Collahuasi (AngloAmerican - Xstrata- Mitsui)
Minera Cerro Casale (Barrick Gold - Kinross Gold)
Minera Quebrada Blanca (Teck - InversionesMineras - Enami)
Minera El Morro (Goldcorp - New Gold)
Minera Nevada (Barrick Gold)
Minera Santo Domingo (Capstone-Korea Resources Corp.)
Divisin El Salvador (Codelco Chile)
Minera Lobo Marte (Kinross Gold)
Minera Inca de Oro (PanAust - Codelco Chile)
Compaia Minera Cerro Colorado (BHP Billiton)
Anglo American Sur (Anglo American)
Minera Mantos de Oro (Kinross Gold)
Minera Doa Ins de Collahuasi (Anglo American -Xstrata Mitsui )
Minera Hemisferio Sur (Southern Hemisphere Mining)
Minera Quebrada Blanca (Teck - Inversiones Mineras - Enami)
Minera Purn (Minera Mantos de Oro)
SUBTOTAL MINING SECTOR
Energy Sector
CGX Castilla Generacin (EBX Group)
Aysn Transmisin (HidroAysn)
HidroAysn (Endesa Chile - Colbn)
EnergyMinera (Codelco Chile)
E-CL (GDF Suez - Codelco Chile)
Endesa Chile (Enersis)
Ro Grande (Southern Cross)
Southern Cross
Gener (AES Gener)
Suez Energy Andino (GDF Suez)
Codelco Chile
Ro Corriente (Southern Cross)
Hidroelctrica Trayenko (Grupo Centinela)
Endesa Chile (Enersis)
EnergyAustral (Origin Energy - Glencore)
Pacific Hydro Chile (Pacific Hydro)
Abastecimientos CAP (Grupo CAP)
Colbn
Acciona EnergyChile (Grupo ACCIONA)
Endesa Chile (Enersis)
Illapa
FibroAndes (Consorcio Energtico Nacional)
South World Business
Ecoingenieros
HydroChile (Eton Park)
Inversiones Baquedano
Termoelctrica del Norte (Termonor)
Endesa Chile (Enersis)
Fundo El Toyo
Enacon
Minera Mulpun (Antofagasta Minerals - Carbon Energy)

STATUS

Subsector

Postponed
Postponed
Postponed
Postponed
Paralyzed
Paralyzed
Postponed
Given Up
Postponed
Postponed
Paralyzed
Given Up
Given Up
Given Up
Paralyzed
Given Up
Given Up

Copper
Copper
Gold
Copper
Gold
Gold
Copper
Copper
Gold
Copper
Copper
Copper
Gold
Copper
Copper
Copper
Gold

Given Up
Paralyzed
Paralyzed
Postponed
Postponed
Paralyzed
Given Up
Given Up
Postponed
Given Up
Given Up
Given Up
Given Up
Paralyzed
Paralyzed
Postponed
Given Up
Postponed
Given Up
Paralyzed
Paralyzed
Paralyzed
Given Up
Paralyzed
Given Up
Paralyzed
Paralyzed
Paralyzed
Given Up
Paralyzed
Postponed

Generation
Tran/Distrib.
Generation
Generation
Generation
Generation
Generation
Generation
Generation
Generation
Generation
Generation
Generation
Generation
Generation
Generation
Generation
Generation
Generation
Generation
Generation
Generation
Generation
Generation
Generation
Generation
Generation
Tran/Distrib.
Generation
Tran/Distrib.
Hydrocarbon

Size of Project (in

millions of US$)
10000*
6500
6000
5600
3900
8500
1800
1000
800
600
467
200
200
173
100
20
12
45872
5000
4000
3500
1700
1500
1400
1400
1400
1300
1200
1100
1081
1000
781
733
500
460
450
193
184
155
95
82
80
80
56
40
37
37
17
13

SUBTOTAL ENERGY SECTOR

MANUFACTURING AND INFRASTRUCTURE SECTORS
COUNTRY-WIDE TOTAL

29561
1070
76516

SOURCE: Compiled by Author on the basis of SOFOFA "Catastro Proyectos de Inversin 2013", p. 31.

32

Eleven Steps: Restoring Hegemony in a Duet with the Center Left

Step 1: Accumulation:
The drive for accumulation propels the conglomerate to rely on ever intensifying
forms of accumulation by dispossession, that is using up an increasing volume of highly
scarce water resources as well as increasing the emission of cancer-producing toxic materials
and waster products. In a never ending race to transnationalize operations and satisfy
international investors and financiers, the Luksci Group not only increases the flexibilization
of labor, but also the dispossession of communities.
Step 2: Resistance:
Communities of agricultural producers, neighbors and workers come to feel that
their very lives and livelihoods are being threatened and undermined by the conglomerate's
expansion. Local resistance and defense of their livelihoods begins and expands to the
national and transnational level.
Step 3: Initial Contention:
Through the central and regional state apparatus, the center-left government
attempts to intervene, using persuasion and pressure to solve the conflict. Once the
preferred methods of political pressure, and/or police repression fail, and the conflict
becomes entrenched, a new set of actors and toolsets are drawn.
Step 4: Crisis Management and Advising:
In this new phase, center-left associated NGOs and former government officials are
hired as consultants. The consulting firms of former Aylwin cabinet members Enrique
Correa (Imaginacin Consultores) or Eugenio Tironi (Tironi Asociados) are put on a retainer
to advise Luksic on how to neutralize community opposition.
Step 5. Elite Intellectual Processing of Reality.
Center-left politicians, parties, and academics are invited to form part of think tanks
or fora to think about the future of Chile and the important role that energy, infrastructure,
and global economic integration plays in ensuring passage from underdeveloped to
developed status. Proposals drawn by Luksic funded think-tanks like Grupo Res Publica
Chile (GRPC) and the Luksic Harvard Scholars while at the David Rockefeller Center for
Latin American Studies, draw up public policy proposal that, taking into account popular
discontent, preserve the centrality of the strategic objectives of domestic and foreign
transnational capital.
Step 6: Corporate Civic Action:
On the basis of the plans and media campaigns suggested by center-left advisors, the
conglomerate targets civic-action campaign in clearly delineated and studied social and
spatial territories. These form part of a new 21st century ngo-private sector designed
counter-insurgency campaign seeking to overcome community resistance through
33

cooptation, division of community members, and propaganda barrages aimed at

delegitimizing local grassroots leaders and community opposition. Techniques successfully
deployed by the center-left governments to coopt the labor movement and the urban poor,
are refined and redeployed in the service of Luksic corporate objectives. Tironi Asociados,
for example, has transformed the social science methodologies developed in the 1980s at Sur
Consultores, into counter-insurgent methodologies at the service of private capital. Its
website boasts that "We use the methodological dispositive "Open Conflict Management"
(GAC), geared towards solving conflicts on the basis of generating spaces for dialogue and
agreement between private enterprises and communities (see details
inwww.gestionabierta.cl). We compile maps of actors and public relations risks by
researching the perceptions of different stakeholders."52
Many of these consulting firms are conformed by individuals involved in social
science research, many with a long trajectories in well-know left-leaning externally funded
research centers dating back to the times of the dictatorship such as Sur Profesionales,
Grupo de Investigaciones Agrarias (GIA), Grupo de Estudios Agro-Regionales (GEA), and
with dense ties to the center-left political parties and center-left government service. They
market themselves as skilled teams of professionals capable of "establishing relations of
trust" with the communities. One such outfit, closely linked to Tironi Asociados, explains,
"We are a team of senior social sciences researchers, oriented towards delivering solutions
and strategies so that private sector investment projects and operation can be sustainably
inserted in communities. Our focus is the establishment of trust with local, regional and
national interest groups, thereby facilitating an harmonious installation of operations with
neighboring communities."53 In this manner, the techniques for social mapping initially put
at the service of Concertacin governments to ensure governability and coopt social
movements, are marketed in the private profit-making sphere and put at the service of the
needs of private capital, including the Luksik Group.
Step 7: Incorporation into Corporate Directorships.
Hiring of Center-Left Individuals in Management Positions. The conglomerate
directly incorporates center-left intellectuals, politicians, former ministers to the board of
directors of different companies, banks, and even the group's main holding companies such
as Vivianne Blanlot's incorporation into Antofagasta Minerals. In May of 2015, five key
members of the Nueva Mayoria cabinet had been part of the board of directors of key
Luksic companies.
Step 8: Joint-Policy Formulation- Participatory Hegemonic Governance
Thanks to its financing of politicians, intellectuals, ngos, and foundations, the
Luksic Group is able to promote the coming together of a broad coalition of individuals
entrusted with addressing public issues that directly impinge on their profitability. Convened
by Luksic and involving central and local government institutions, representatives of the
private sector, and civil society organizations, to jointly concoct policies to address the
"externalities" created by Luksic for profit operations. By deploying its "new spirit," the
Luksic group is able to deploy what has been called "hegemonic participatory governance"
(Greaves 2004). An example of such initiative supported by the Luksic group has been able
to draw is that in order to draw attention away from how Luksic's Los Pelambres mine
contaminated and robbed the water resources of communities in Illapel. As the Antofagasta
34

Minerals 2014 Annual Report announces, " It is crucial to have strong relationships built on
trust with local communities in the areas where the Group operates: it is not possible to run
a mine successfully without their co-operation and agreement. Having clear social policies
and regular contact with community members helps to manage potential conflicts and
maintains the Groups social license to operate. During 2014, Los Pelambres adopted a new
approach to engagement with communities.54 The initiative is called Somos Choapas (We
are from Choapa, the region in which Los Pelambres is located and required an investment
of US$ 31.3 million (Antofagasta Minerals 2014: 27). Through such broad based initiatives
and the rediscovery of the importance of "public-private partnership" launched and
managed by a broad array of center-left actors convened by the Luksic group, the Somos
Choapa initiave invites "the community to dream." In the multilayered activities
orchestrated around this invitation, the Luksic group is able to dissolve the specific demands
of communities of Caimanes confronting the Luksics.55
Step 9: Naming of Presidential Advisory Commissions:
What has given good results at the local level is now converted into a national-level
form of building "participatory hegemony." Hence, on April 15, 2015, Michelle Bachelet
announces the constitution of the Advisory Commission for a Environmental Impact
Evaluation System.56 These Presidential Advisory Commissions, have long been used by the
Bachelet administration in the case of the most controversial topics it has faced: the student
movement, the role of private financing of politicians, equity, and now systems of
environmental impact. These Advisory Commissions are all inspired in the notion that "the
efficiency of any system of evaluation rests on its social legitimacy."57 As Bachelet explained
"sustainable development cannot be achieved with biased perspectives or on the basis of the
superiority of one group over another."58
Although there is always a smattering of left-leaning representatives from civil
society, this Advisory Commission, like all others in the past, are heavily weighed in favor of
government technocrats and representatives from private sector and business organizations.
As Flavia Liberona, one of the twenty-four individuals asked to be part of the
Environmental Impact Evaluation System commission explained, Upon seeing the
composition of the group there is something that seems odd. There are only three
representatives from civil society, and many, many representatives from the business
association, the private sector, and consulting firms. It seems that there is a heavy slant in
favor of a pro-investment agenda."59
Step 10: Extra-Institutional Resistance Deepens:
Communities of workers and neighbors reject these more sophisticated forms of
intervention. In response, they radicalize their collective action, relying on direct action and
extra-institutional forms of organization (popular assemblies), as they come to understand
that political institutions cannot represent their interests as these, as well as center-left
political parties, have become part of the Penta-politica, that is they have been transformed
into paid-for instruments responding to the interests of large private conglomerates, such as
Penta, Soquimich and the Luksic group.

35

Step 11: New Tripartite Capital-State-Civil Society Alliances and Hegemonic Practices:
To confront its many challenges, Nueva Mayora resorts increasingly to promoting
public-private sector partnerships. These seek to produce joint-efforts between capital, the
state, and civil society, and form an integral part of what I have called the Nueva Mayora's
option for a flexible elite-centered neocorporatist governability strategy.60 The many
conflicts force two conditions necessary for the emergence of public-private partnerships.
First, the government realizes that with the resources at its disposal, it cannot adequately deal
with the problems and demands made by the citizenry and the variety of social actors.
Second, the private sector, internalizes the notion that "it must take into account the
opinions of the citizenry and that support by either the national or local government, will
help it achieve a faster integration into national and global markets."61
After an initial "birth by fire," these eleven steps presented here in a highly stylized
form, have had the opportunity to be progressively perfected as they have been deployed in
a series of community-private sector conflicts over the past decade. The list of such struggles
is long: Mapuche indigenous peoples, Freirina, the case of the "black-neck swans" of
Angelini's CELCO project, the Freirina community's struggle against Agrosuper, and the
Valle de Huasco communities against the Luksic and other destroyers of vital ecosytems.
Struggles against Hydroaysen in Patagonia and the Luksic's power plant in Alto Maipu, have
allowed politicians, municipal governments, center-left consultants, and a slew of nongovernmental/consulting firms, to rehearse their roles, find what skills renders them the
greatest benefits. The result is that all of these actors conform part of the Luksic
constellation of initiatives as it deploys its "new spirit" in the periphery.

5. Conclusion: A New Organic Relationship between Capital and Society

A new spirit of capital embodied in the countrys most powerful transnational
conglomerates has emerged in Chile. This "new spirit" is reflected in the newly found
understanding that in order to restore hegemony, the private sector must actively and
directly participate in the production of ideas, rules, and subjectivity, as vital complements
and extensions to their traditional involvement in the valorization of capital. As a result, a
new organic relationship between capital and society has emerged.
Focused on how the Luksic group enacts this spirit, it would be a mistake to reduce
to limit this new form of capitalist class-consciousness and praxis to just this one, allegedly
more cosmopolitan and lucid fraction of Chile's capitalist class.62 Enlightened by this new
spirit, Chile's transnational capitalist class has found in the center-left an indispensable ally,
as evidenced by the significant funding Chiles business elites provided to the Bachelet
campaign, the political parties, candidates, consulting-firms think-tanks and elected officials
linked to the center-left Nueva Mayora coalition.
Indeed, I contend that Grupo Luksic and factions of Chile's transnational capitalist
class have found in the Michelle Bachelet/Nueva Mayora government a vehicle for
defending their tactical and strategic class interests. A preliminary mapping of the multiple
contact points and conduits between the Luksic Group and the Concertacin/Nueva
36

Mayora for the construction of coincidences and collaborative initiatives, has been
presented here.
Arguably the Luksics have been at the vanguard of this process, yet this "new spirit"
has been operating for more than a decade. Additional expressions of how this new spirit
operates will be found by reviewing the new forms of political mediation and forms of
political representation emerging from Chile's contemporary political economy. However, in
order to find such evidence, one must discard faulty, indeed biased analytical frameworks
used for examining Chilean politics, which in the past were based on rigid boundaries
separating politics from economics, the state from civil society, and the interests of the
center-left from those of transnational capital. Such borders have become increasingly
porous and indeed irrelevant. The alternative analysis presented above reveals how at the
present historical conjuncture, representation of the interests of domestic transnational
capital can be supported and enacted by a government composed of center-left men and
women, many of whom personally suffered the effects of state-terror. However, it is not
enough to show how the expansion of transnational capital has breathed this "new spirit"
into life, and how by enacting it, capitalists find in the center-left an useful ally. It is
necessary however to go an extra analytical step to show how such representation can be
forthcoming from a Nueva Mayora government promising to bring about "structural
reforms" to the economic and political model initially established under Pinochet, later
enhanced and institutionalized by more than two decades of center-left management, until it
was finally questioned by the social mobilizations of 2010-2011.63

37

Enigma presented by the Sphynx, a monstruous amalgamation of different beings, to those strolling in the
public sphere of the time, passers-by outside the road to Thebes.
1

Franco Parisi: Si gana la seora Bachelet, la hegemona de los Luksic se va a comer Chile El Dnamo, 11
October 2013. http://www.eldinamo.cl/2013/10/11/franco-parisi-si-gana-la-senora-bachelet-la-hegemoniade-los-luksic-se-va-a-comer-chile/
3

A long string of highly publicized of abuses by Chile's corporate class La Polar (unilateral raising of interest
rates on consumer loands), Agro-Super (pigs), pharmacies (collusion by the three main chains to inflate prices),
as well as the 2015 scandals of illegal financing of political parties and candidates involving the Penta
conglomerate as well as SOQUIMICH, and the special treatment given that Andronico Luksic as president of
Banco de Chile gave to Michelle Bachelet's son and daughter in law, known as the CAVAL case, all led to what
some analysists have called a "crisis of the elites." El Mostrador, 8 April 2015. This disenchantment explains
why 50% of voters with the right to vote abstained in the 2013 presidential elections.
Luksic is Chile's most powerful conglomerate as measured by the valuation of assets under its control in
December 2013 (CEEN 2014). For how the Luksic's influcence in politics has been portrayed in the media, see
Las extensas redes de Andrnico Luksic en la Nueva Mayora, El Mostrador, February 11, 2015.
4

The agenda and speakers of the May 2014 Conference on Inclusive Capitalism: Building Value, Renewing
Trust captures some of the concerns of the global financial elites. See the conference website http://www.inccap.com/index.html
6

My argument draws and supports a key notion advanced by Jason Read in The Micro-Politics of Capital: Marx
and the Pre-history of the Present (SUNY Press, 2003).
7

Speech by Jean Paul-Luksic on the 25th Anniversary of the Centro de Estudios del Cobre (CESCO),
September 1, 2009, Santiago, Chile. http://www.cesco.cl/assets/docs/estudios-ypresentaciones/Discurso_Jean_Paul_Luksic.pdf
8

Speech by Jean Paul-Luksic on the 25th Anniversary of the Centro de Estudios del Cobre (CESCO),
September 1, 2009, Santiago, Chile. http://www.cesco.cl/assets/docs/estudios-ypresentaciones/Discurso_Jean_Paul_Luksic.pdf
9

It should not be a surprise then, that when the Consejo Minero, of which Jean-Paul Luksic is a prominent
member, the business association representing the most powerful mining transnationals operating in Chile, saw
to come up with a new public relations strategy, two of the three selected consulting firms were Imaginacin
Consultores and Tironi Asociados, both key leaders of the center-left. perjudicarlos. See " Consejo Minero
redefine su rol estratgico y licita nuevas asesoras comunicacionales", La Tercera 17 May 2011. Part of the
report says: "
A juicio de un ejecutivo del sector, hoy es necesario que las mineras muestren ycuantifiquen el aporte
que hacen al pas. "Nadie puede no estar de acuerdo con el hecho de que la minera es la actividad
econmica nmero uno del pas. Sin embargo, eso no es percibido por toda la poblacin, por eso hay
que dar a conocer la contribucin que hacemos", explic la fuente. Para definir la estrategia a seguir, a
comienzos de mayo, el gremio recibi las propuestas de, al menos, tres agencias: Comunicacin
Estratgica, de Eugenio Tironi; Imaginaccion, de Enrique Correa, y BBDO, de Martn Subercaseaux.
Las tres entidades coinciden en la necesidad de que la gente se sienta cercana a la industria. Tironi, por
ejemplo, propone que es necesario reposicionar al sector. Para eso deben bloquear la principal
amenaza que enfrenta la industria, que es el dao al medioambiente. Fuentes conocedoras de la
propuesta dicen que plantean un plan de comunicaciones entre 2011 y 2014 que se enfoque en los
nios, jvenes y los profesionales de hasta 35 aos, y modernizar el mensaje a travs del uso de las

38


redes sociales. Correa, en tanto, propone que el discurso del Consejo Minero se base en mostrar la
evolucin de un profesional al llegar al sector minero. "Es decir, contar cada historia humana como
una oportunidad", seala una fuente. La propuesta de Subercaseaux va en lnea con la necesidad de
acercar los aportes que hace la industria al pas, pero en temas ms cercanos, como los hospitales,
parques y escuelas que se construyen con el aporte que entregan al pas."
A new stream of scholarship is overcoming such narrowness. See for example Tomas Undurraga (2011). His
research "Rearticulacin de grupos econmicos y renovacin ideolgica del empresariado en Chile 1980-2010:
Antecedentes, preguntas e hiptesis para un estudio de redes" begins to overcome such limitations.
10

Beyond the territorial expansion of the circuits of valorization of capital, As, hoy las empresas chilenas se
cuentan entre los 10 principales productores de madera aserrada en el mundo; son el 3er operador de retail en
Amrica Latina; ocupan el 4 lugar en la produccin mundial de celulosa y cido brico. La produccin de
empresas controladas por capitales chilenos controla el 30% de la produccin mundial del litio y sus derivados,
el 33% del mercado mundial del yodo, el 35% de mercado mundial de procesamiento de Molibdeno y el 47%
del mercado mundial de nutricin vegetal de especialidad. Empresas vinculadas a capitales provenientes desde
Chile representan el 37% de la carga area de Amrica Latina, un 0,6% de trfico areo mundial.
Adicionalmente, Las empresas chilenas hoy se posicionan a nivel mundial como uno de los mayores fabricantes
de nodos para la electro recuperacin de cobre y zinc. (Departamento de INversiones en el Exterior 2014)
.
11

DIRECON data (now Direccin de Inversiones en el Exterior) differs from IMF data in that in its usage,
foreign direct investment" includes "no slo el aporte de capital realmente materializado por las empresas en el
exterior, sino adems los crditos garantizados a la empresa filial, la reinversin de utilidades en el mercado de
destino y tambin en terceros mercados, el aporte de otros socios no controladores y otras formas de
financiamiento, as como retiro de inversiones."
12

"Ponce revel aportes anuales a campaas de hasta US$ 10 millones," La Tercera, April 20, 2015.
http://www.latercera.com/noticia/politica/2015/04/674-626181-9-ponce-revelo-aportes-anuales-a-campanasde-hasta-us-10-millones.shtml
13

14

A few weeks after the CAVAL, Penta, and SQM scandals, new information appeared show how the Saieh
group, owner of Corpbanca and of the media duopoly COPESA and ranked 11th in terms of revenue, had
funded the center-left think tanks of Chile Siglo 21, CIEPLAN, and CEGADES, a well as contributed to the
campaigns of Nueva Mayora and UDI candidates. See "Corpbanca se suma al listado de grandes empresas que
financian el pensamiento poltico," El Mostrador, 15 May 2015. At around the same time, public opinion polls
showed that only 3% of those polled expressed any trust on political parties, the lowest point in history.
15 As measured by assets.
The literature prepared by both branches of the Luksic Group for investors, namely the company profiles
composed by Antofagasta Minerals PLC and Quienco, highlight a business strategy that after initially
focusing on cutting costs, it seeks to organic and sustainable growth of the core business. Antofagasta
Minerals 2015 Company Presentation.
16

17On

February 13, 2015, Sebastian Davalos Bachelet, oldest son of President Bachelet was forced to resign
from a government appointment at Presidencys Socio-Cultural Directorship for receiving a US$ 10 million
loan for his wifes company with only $ 6,000 in assets after it became know that the loan was approved after
meeting with the President of Banco de Chile, Andronico Luksic.
http://news.yahoo.com/chilean-presidents-son-resigns-charity-amid-loan-scandal-225453551--finance.html
La historia del grupo que impulso su fortuna por un golpe de suerte, El Mercurio (Economia y Negocios
On Line), March 28, 2013. http://www.economiaynegocios.cl/noticias/noticias.asp?id=107252
18

19

Ibid

20

http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/#tab:overall_country:Chile

39


21

Antofagasta PLC Home Page (http://www.antofagasta.co.uk)

No available data allows us at this time to gauge the extent to which Grupo Luksic's other holding company,
Quienco relies on subcontracted workers and labor flexibility strategies. However Banco de Chile workers, as
well as workers from other Luksic manufacturing firms have engaged in strikes and labor actions in defense of
better wages and working conditions.A visual account of a 2011 Banco de Chile strike is available at "Workers
Strike at Chile's Largest Private Bank. http://www.demotix.com/news/794254/workers-strike-chiles-largestprivate-bank#media-794240
22

For one of the best accounts of the impact of the 1981-1982 crisis of Chile's financial system on the grupos
econmicos, see Patricio Rozas and Gustavo Marn (1988).
23

24 Obtaining

51% control of Banco de Chile required US$ 541 million, but this sum would never have been
possible without the support of socialist Estvez. Luksic rewarded his services by naming him in 2007 as to the
Board of Directors of Banco de Chile "El negocio que convirti a Estvez en el socialista preferido de la lite,"
El Mostrador, 21 October 2011. http://www.elmostrador.cl/pais/2011/10/21/el-negocio-que-convirtio-aestevez-en-el-socialista-preferido-de-la-elite/

25

Antofagasta PLC Home Page (http://www.antofagasta.co.uk)

A fascinating research project would be to examine how Grupo Luksic and other conglomerates participated,
informed, and shaped the center-left government's negotiations of free trade agreements and international
econoic agreements. . The conversations during those long airplane flights to China between Luksic and
Bachelet, or between Luksic Board of Directors and "socialist" functionaries from the Ministry of Finance
charged with these negotiations, are a mine trove to be explored for conforming a detailed genealogy of how
the alliance between domestic transnational conglomerates and "left neoliberalism" has been really forged. The
sons of both Ricardo Lagos and Michelle Bachelet stared their careers and contacts with the private sector in
the area of "international economic relations". My working hypothesis would be that the benefits of such an
alliance was first registered by the grupos economicos when they saw how effective the "center-left" was in
opening markets and investment opportunities for their expansion aborad and that this established the bases
for subsequent "domestic-focused" collaborations.
26

El Otro 13 de Andrnico Luksic, La Tercera, Reportajes. 26 May 2012. See

http://diario.latercera.com/2012/05/26/01/contenido/reportajes/25-109514-9-el-otro-13-de-andronicoluksic.shtml
27

According to press reports, in addition to Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel, former Chief Economist of the OECD
and current director of the AFP Habitat, the other members were
Los convocados son: el economista y ex ministro del ramo Juan Andrs Fontaine, el decano de la Escuela de
Gobierno de la Universidad del Desarrollo, Eugenio Guzmn; el abogado DC y consejero del Consejo para la
Transparencia, Alejandro Ferreiro; ms la economista y docente de la Universidad Adolfo Ibez, Andrea
Repetto.A ellos se suman el sacerdote jesuita y capelln de Un Techo para Chile, Cristin del Campo; el
socilogo Vicente Espinoza y los economistas Dante Contreras, director del Departamento de Economa de la
Universidad de Chile; Francisco Gallego, investigador del Instituto de Economa de la UC; Osvaldo Larraaga,
acadmico de la Universidad de Chile; Nicols Figueroa, investigador del Departamento de Ingeniera
Industrial de la Universidad de Chile, y el destacado consultor Jorge Quiroz.
28

To see this in action, examine the launch event. See the launching event
http://95propuestas.cl/seminarios/seminario-santiago/.
29

Se presentarn a mediados de mayo de 2013: Res Publica Chile, el grupo impulsado por Andrnico Luksic,
alista propuestas, El Mercurio, December 2, 2012.
30

My translation. Se presentarn a mediados de mayo de 2013: Res Publica Chile, el grupo impulsado por
Andrnico Luksic, alista propuestas, El Mercurio, December 2, 2012. The text in spanish is: No pretende ser
31

40


parte de ninguna candidatura presidencial, aunque aspira a que ojal todas tomen parte de las propuestas como
suyas o, por lo menos, como informacin til al momento de elaborar sus propuestas.
See the report by the Centro de Investigacin Periodstica (CIPER), "Los forados a favor de la elusin que
dej el acuerdo tributario de Arenas con la derecha". It should be noted that both Alberto Arenas and Juan
Andres Fontaine had been on the Board of Directors of different Luksic enterprises.
http://ciperchile.cl/2014/07/17/los-forados-a-favor-de-la-elusion-que-dejo-el-acuerdo-tributario-de-arenascon-la-derecha/. On the role of Fontaine, see http://www.elmostrador.cl/pais/2014/07/18/la-importanciade-llamarse-fontaine/. On the backroom wheeling and dealing regarding the tax reform, see
http://www.lasegunda.com/noticias/economia/2014/07/947910/senadores-desclasifican-la-cocina-delacuerdo-tributario.
32

33

Grupo Luksic Ficha a Andrea Repetto y Alvaro Sapag, Revista Que Pasa, 24 March 2014.

Daniel Matamala, "Aportes Privados a la Poltica. La lista completa: la verdad sobre las 1,123 empresas que
financian la poltica en Chile." http://ciperchile.cl/2015/04/23/la-lista-completa-la-verdad-sobre-las-1-123empresas-que-financian-la-politica-en-chile/
34

Los super ricos tras los aportes a las campaas politicas, El Mostrador, December 9, 2014.
http://www.elmostrador.cl/pais/2014/12/09/los-super-ricos-tras-los-aportes-reservados-a-las-campanaspoliticas/
35

"Superintendente de Medio Ambiente de Bachelet es asesor de Barrick

Gold, Agrosuper y las mineras de los Luksic" El Mostrador, March 17, 2014.
36

37

Rodrigo Hinzpeter ser gerente legal del holding de los Luksic, www.24horas.cl, April 2, 2014.

"Antofagasta plc nombra a Vivianne Blanlot como directora independiente." 28 March 2014.
http://www.nuevamineria.com/revista/antofagasta-plc-nombra-a-vivianne-blanlot-como-directoraindependiente/
38

Website of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Harvard University.
http://www.drclas.harvard.edu/regional_office/events/rethinking. Accessed on 7/27/13 2:46 PM
39

"In 2011, Mr. Luksic was named Vice Chairman of the International Business Leaders Advisory Council for
the Mayor of Shanghai. He is also a member of the International Advisory Board of Barrick Gold, the
Brookings Institution International Advisory Council, the Advisory Board of the Panama Canal, the
Chairmans International Advisory Council at the Council of the Americas and a member of the Latin America
Conservation Council of the Nature Conservancy."
40

41

http://drclas.harvard.edu/news/actualidad-los-dos-chile

42

https://mitsloan.mit.edu/alumnimagazine/2013/fall/international-office-chile.php

43

El Mercurio, August 6, 2010.

44

Ibid. My translation

El Mostrador 4 DE JUNIO DE 2010 Canal de Piera despierta apetito en el mercado

El desconocido inters de Andrnico Luksic por comprar Chilevisin
45

See for example, Banco de Chile's Voy por Mi Cuenta Club Banca Joven
http://www.mundomovilagencia.cl/2008/03/31/campana-banca-joven-banco-de-chile-reloaded/. The
campaign is described as follows "...la campaa cuenta con varios atractivos. Adems de seguir captando a los
chicos a travs del celular, se gestionaron ms de 50 beneficios muy valorados para los clientes del banco. El
team estar compuesto por 12 chicas que recorrern las principales universidades de Santiago, Via y Temuco,
46

41


adems de carretes universitarios y eventos deportivos durante todo el ao. Mundomovil tambin se encarg de
producir los teams y el acceso del banco a estos connotados eventos. Sin duda una campaa que dar que
hablar y donde el banco adems ha hecho una millonaria inversin en otros medios para tener una cobertura
360."
For Banco de Chile TV ads, see examples in http://www.museopublicidad.cl/marca/banco-de-chile/

47 http://fundacionluksic.cl/quienes-somos/la-fundacion/

48 http://fundacionluksic.cl/quienes-somos/la-fundacion/
http://fundacionluksic.cl/proyecto/sistema-de-educacion-relacional-fontan-serf/. The Foundation reports
that in close alliance with Grupo Educativo, Desde 2012, SERF se ha introducido en cursos de 7 Bsico a IV
Medio de cuatro establecimientos educacionales: el Liceo La Chimba de Antofagasta (Corporacin Municipal
de Desarrollo Social de Antofagasta), el Liceo Bicentenario Mara del Trnsito de la Cruz de Molina
(Municipalidad de Molina), el Liceo Alcalde Gonzalo Prez Llona (Corporacin Municipal de Educacin de
Maip) y el Instituto Agrcola Pascual Baburizza de Los Andes (Fundacin Educacional Luksic). A partir de
2015 dos nuevos liceos de la regin del Maule comenzarn a trabajar con este sistema.
49

Harvey (2007) describes the mechanisms of accumulation as dispossession as: 1. the commodification and
privatization of land and the forceful expulsion of peasant populations (as in Mexico and India in recent times);
2. conversion of various forms of property rights (common, collective, state, etc.) into exclusively private
property rights; 3. suppression of rights to the commons; 4. commodification of labor power and the
suppression of alternative (indigenous) forms of production and consumption; 5. colonial, neocolonial, and
imperial processes of appropriation of assets (including natural resources); 6. monetization of exchange and
taxation, particularly of land;7. the slave trade (which continues, particularly in the sex industry); and 8. usury,
the national debt, and, most devastating of all, the use of the credit system as radical means of primitive
accumulation.
50

51

Marx, Karl Capital I, Chapter 6, "The Buying and Selling of Labor Power".
Accompanied by Mr. Moneybags and by the possessor of labour-power, we
therefore take leave for a time of this noisy sphere, where everything takes
place on the surface and in view of all men, and follow them both into the
hidden abode of production, on whose threshold there stares us in the face
No admittance except on business. Here we shall see, not only how capital
produces, but how capital is produced. We shall at last force the secret of profit
making.

52

See http://www.tironi.cl/

53

See the organization fdcsocial.cl http://fdcsocial.cl/Joomla/index.php/quienes-somos.html (my translation)

54

According to Antofagasta Minerals:

"A NEW APPROACH Los Pelambres, the Groups largest operation, sits at the head of the Choapa
Valley and interacts with 42 different communities. Under the new model adopted by the Group, Los
Pelambres, together with regional and municipal authorities, is heavily involved in a wide, multistakeholder dialogue process among all these communities and other local stakeholders. The aim is to
articulate a common vision for the sustainable development of the region, addressing structural
challenges and bottlenecks (both related and unrelated to the mining operation) and defining a
portfolio of projects to realise this vision funded through a public-private alliance" (AM 2014: 57).
A total of US$ $31.3m was invested by Antofagasta during 2014 on community projects near to its
operations (AM 2014:57).

42


Social and environmental considerations are an integral part of all project design standards. When
applying for environmental permits, the Group must commit to specific impact prevention, mitigation
and compensation measures that become legally enforceable. The project construction stage is labour
intensive and provides a window of opportunity for employing local people. This effort was
particularly successful during the construction of Esperanza (now Centinela) when the Groups
apprenticeship programme recruited and trained 400 local workers, 10% of whom were women, who
later joined its permanent workforce
55

See http://somoschoapa.cl/

56

"Bachelet presenta Comisin Asesora para Sistema de Evaluacin de Impacto Ambiental

Grupo de expertos tendr nueve meses para generar un informe sobre el sistema de evaluacin de proyectos."
http://www.t13.cl/noticia/politica/bachelet-presenta-comision-asesora-para-sistema-de-evaluacion-deimpacto-ambiental
57

Ibid

58 "Con mayor representacin empresarial, Bachelet crea Comisin Asesora para el estudio del nuevo SEIA"
El Dnamo, April 16, 2015.

59

Flavia Liberona, President of Terram, El Pulso, 15 April 2015.

See Fernando I. Leiva, Renewing Neoliberalism: Nueva Mayora, Governability, and Social Movements in Chile, book
manuscript
60

Mario Rosales, "Gestion Integral del Desarrollo Econmico Territorial (GIDT): Modulo III Gobiernos
subnacionales y alianzas publico-privadas", BID-INDES.
http://idbdocs.iadb.org/wsdocs/getdocument.aspx?docnum=36737835
61

This task is taken on in my book manuscript, Renewing Neoliberalism: Nueva Mayora, Governability and Social
Movements in Chile
63

43