Cuba is a contemporary Orwellian dystopia. An island-prison with an archaic economy and starving citizens.

Heh. Not to excuse Castro's geriatric dictatorship and police, but Cuba is at present actually in the state of an economic boom.

They had "respectable" growth since 1996 that didn't turn negative even in the post-9/11 global downturn. And this time, the boom is not mono-culture but involves infrastructure construction, and diversifying agriculture (and energy savings -- they too started a lightbulb replacement programme). As for undernourishment, this was really bad in the wake of the post-Soviet-collapse economic crisis (which some say was primarily due to lack of oil), but the writer of the article forgot to check out more recent data: it has fallen back dramatically to less than 2.5% -- less than the average of either the Carribean or Latin America... including Chile (with a rate of 4%).

Whereas in many of the region's country's successive left wing adventurers are coming to power, attacking private property and foreign investors, Chile is growing at an astounding rate.

LOL, not even the WSJ would put out this gross a spin. Those lambasted economies, primarily Venezuela and Argentina, are growing even faster... As for Pinochet's supposed economic wonderland, this is rightly demolished by WB thusly (and I'm surprised about that too):

This radical reform therapy of protecting private property at all costs created an enormous economic crash in 1982. The great liberal experiment was saved by the all-powerful military state. Many private bankers and hundreds of companies were saved from economic ruin by the quite unliberal intervention of the state treasury.

By the way, how do PiS neolibs reconcile their beliefs with the AFAIK state-paternalistic, populistic mainstream of their party?

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}