The writer shouldn't feel too sorry for Chile because they turned against their home-grown socialist problem in the 1970s, rather than become another technological and economic backwater like Cuba.  Today Chile is arguably one of the best-run countries in the western hemisphere, economically and politically.  Arguably they are even more 'progressive' than the USA - after all, they have already elected a woman president!  ;-)

Chile is not a 'third-world' country by any stretch of the imagination, despite what the writer of this letter implies.