Plan Chillán and the Transformation of Chilean Agriculture: U.S. Rural Cooperation and Domestic Responses in 1950s Chile

As in many Latin American countries, the long-term crisis of agriculture inspired a passionate debate in Chile, and the modernization of the countryside was at the center of many of its most important economic, political and social projects throughout the twentieth century.  If most Chileans agreed on how the modernization of agriculture would boost economic growth, decreasing the country’s dependency on food imports; they disagreed on who should carry on and fund these projects and on whether and to what extent social and labor conditions had to be transformed as well. In the context of larger transnational debates on economic development and food security, Chileans negotiated, contested, and adapted diverse influences including U.S. policies and aid toward Latin America.

This paper focuses on one of this project of modernization and transnational dialogue:-Plan Chillán. Launched in 1953, the Chilean government conceived “Plan Chillán” as an experimental and small-scale program of agricultural development and improvement of living and health conditions intended to become a laboratory for further and larger-scale projects in the nation. Supported by the United States Government, the Rockefeller Foundation and the University of California, the Chilean government sponsored irrigation projects, the construction of milk-processing plants, the organization of cooperatives, and the expansion of agricultural education. As an effort to place Chilean history into a larger transnational framework, this paper looks at Plan Chillán as a space of encounter among US institutions (private and public), the Chilean state, and local peasants.  In doing so, this paper brings light to both the ways in which US policies and aid impacted the country as well as the extent in which Chile became a model for other developing nations at the time.