But the society, whose 4,000 companies generate a third of Chile’s economic output and has an incalculable influence on its government, didn’t address the central demand of demonstrators who have paralyzed the country since Oct. 18: an overhaul of the country’s laissez-faire capitalism to ensure a more equitable distribution of wealth.
“They’re afraid they can lose it all,” said Juan Pablo Hermosilla, a Santiago lawyer whose law firm works with the country’s wealthy. He called the unrest an earthquake that has shaken members of the elite, now “looking down into the abyss and they don’t know what to do.”...