Chile's electrification plans from the 1930s to the 1960s: the (pre)developmentalist thinking of Chilean engineers

Today, renewable energies provide for the majority of Chile's electricity production: in 2023, they represented 63% of it. Although there has been a diversification of renewable electricity sources over the past ten years, with a strong increase in solar and wind energy, hydroelectricity remains the most important one. Since the privatization of the electricity market and of water during the Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990), the private sector has been responsible for the generation, distribution and transmission of electricity. However, the public sector played a key role in boosting hydroelectricity from the 1940s to the 1970s.

This article aims to study the central importance of hydroelectricity in Chile's development plans since 1939, as well as the influence of Chilean engineers in them. This work develops the idea that these engineers formulated an economic thought based on the development needs of Chile. They attributed a central role to the State in the electrification of the country, due to the scale of the project; however, they did not neglect the role of the private sector, and proposed a rich and nuanced approach to the relationship between the private and public sectors.

These engineers had a great influence on energy policies and, as such, helped to plan and implement Chile’s development model. The economic arguments put forward were close to developmentalism, giving an important role to the State in electrification through the establishment of public electricity companies and emphasizing the positive impact that this would have on Chilean industry. But they also considered that private companies should be able to establish themselves sustainably in the electricity sector. Some of these engineers had developed these ideas as early as 1935, well ahead of the 1940s developmentalist wave. They considered electricity as a basic necessity, indispensable for economic development and social inclusion: the urgency of its implementation called for strong State involvement. This paradigm, that took form through the 1940s and 1960s, was abandoned during the Pinochet dictatorship and was not reinstated by subsequent democratic governments.

Adriana Calcagno is a CNRS postdoctoral researcher in the ERC-funded project “Energy Transitions in the History of Economic Thought”, led by Antoine Missemer, at the Centre International de Recherche sur l’Environnement et le Développement (CIRED). She works on the history of energy economics in 19th century Spain, 20th century Brazil, and 20th century Chile. She particularly links the issues of energy transition and energy sovereignty to those of economic development. Her thesis, defended in 2021, focused on the emergence of the structuralist theory of development in Latin America in the mid-20th century, focusing on Raúl Prebisch and the Economic Commission for Latin America.