Jorge Antonio Razeto Migliaro

Jorge Razeto has devised a local development paradigm that empowers and mobilizes communities and grassroots organizations to stimulate social, economic, cultural, and environmental growth.

While development models are often fragmented, Jorge is promoting one that focuses three main areas of mutually reinforcing growth–the activation of local economic systems, the rescue of the cultural and artistic patrimony of Aconcagua Valley, and environment protection and education–around the theme of regional heritage recovery. Believing that culture is part of the development of all societies, Jorge helps local residents convert culture into economic opportunities. By training local people in vocational arts, acquainting citizens with local cultural and environmental resources, and offering financial and professional assistance to support local groups as they launch initiatives on everything from community tourism to recycling, Jorge empowers grassroots organizations to strengthen their own capacities and improve their revenues. To analyze regional needs, coordinate the necessary resources for programs, and engineer opportunities for other institutions in Chile to implement this model, Jorge founded CIEM Corporation as the base for his work.

According to the 2000 National Socioeconomic Survey, 21 percent of Chile's population are poor and unemployment has reached 20 percent within low-income sectors. In the Valley of Aconcagua, which includes the Los Andes and San Felipe districts with a population of 250,000 inhabitants, national indicators are even grimmer. Because the valley's two main productive activities–agriculture and mining –have failed to include rural communities in the economic system, 35 percent of the population are poor. In the fruit exporter sector of the valley, thousands of former farmers have temporary work of 4 to 6 months a year; the copper mining company Codelco hires 95 percent of its employees in Santiago. Given this context, most of the community of Aconcagua is socially and economically excluded from the benefits of these two sectors, and there is no other solid source of employment and economic development. Youth lack opportunities to receive adequate technical training, further limiting their possibilities for successfully entering the job market. Environmental challenges further compound these economic problems. Local management of waste and agroindustrial rubbish has thus far failed, causing increasingly dangerous pollution levels in the Aconcagua River. Despite this environmental threat, neither the local government nor private companies have taken the lead in preserving the local ecology.
While both the government and citizen sector organizations have made efforts to promote local development, their approaches have been inadequate to deal with the depth and breadth of the problems. Such initiatives are often fostered from outside, or imposed, rather than built on an accurate diagnosis of the local situation. As a result, they fail to remove the true obstacles that hinder regional development. For example, efforts to stimulate productive enterprises have repeatedly proved unsuccessful because of the absence of mechanisms to steer credits to economically excluded small producers. Moreover, development programs typically focus on a particular dimension of reality–economic, social, or environmental–ignoring the connections between them and thus improving one at the expense of another.

Realizing that tackling economic, social, and environmental problems requires a comprehensive approach and widespread community involvement, Jorge founded the CIEM Corporation in 1994. Using heritage recovery as a means of mobilizing various local actors–including businessmen, small producers, social leaders, and the bishop–CIEM both trains and supports a wide variety of initiatives aimed at turning local culture into practical economic development opportunities for inhabitants.
The first project Jorge launched through CIEM exemplifies his approach. Taking an old convent donated by the bishop, Jorge utilized government subsidies for youth job training to qualify local young people in the skills needed for the restoration of the building like furniture making, locksmithing, carpentry, and painting. A local landmark was preserved, youth gained valuable job skills, and cultural value was added to the city, as the restored convent became a cultural center–the Centro de Artes y Oficios El Almendral.
Stemming from this project (all CIEM activities are promoted from the center), Jorge's development activities focus on one of four channels. First, to provide training that leads to economic opportunities for young people in the valley, CIEM runs a School of Artistic Trades. The school not only offers a high-quality two-year training to low-income youth, in four specialties in high demand in the region's job market–gold work, ceramic, artistic locksmithing, and engraving–but also includes personal development and entrepreneurial capacity to prepare students to face the labor market. To date, more that 450 youths have been trained and their success has been striking; former marginal youth have ended up having revenues superior to those of a university professional; and local governments offer grants for youth from their districts to attend.
To involve people in discovering and celebrating their cultural heritage, CIEM also maintains a cultural program. In addition to an art gallery, a cinema, and a museum, several events and workshops are held around music, dance, theater, and narration or literary competitions in the center. Itinerant events are also conducted in diverse towns like Aconcagua in its jails, hospitals, and other institutions. With the participation of more than than 3,000 children in these events, nearly 15,000 visits to the center, and 40 itinerant events completed, these cultural activities prove their value in laying the foundation for increased citizen mobilization.
With the aim of converting these cultural resources into economic opportunities, CIEM's third program focuses on the management of local community resources around patrimonial tourism. Jorge works with urban and rural poor communities, small producers and artisans, and small and medium managers of the tourism sector, providing them training in commercial tourist management, communications and community organization, technical support, financial aid, and research on patrimonial resources and publications. In eight years of this work, Jorge has supported 1,500 productive initiatives in 10 districts, which have generated employment for ecotourism and cultural tours.
Finally, to encourage local organizations in the fields of social promotion and productive development not related to tourism, CIEM operates a Social Projects Area. Thus far, 18 projects have been implemented that involve hundreds of grassroots organizations in the 10 districts of Aconcagua, reaching about 10,000 people. The Limited Gea company provides an outstanding example of one such CIEM-supported initiative; it is a recycling business that handles 80 percent of the garbage in the Aconcagua Valley and employs 140 people. Several other areas, including Iquique, La Serena, Alhué, and Talca, have already begun to replicate the El Almendral model with Jorge serving as adviser. In order to facilitate the replication of his approach more widely, Jorge has started to systematize all information related to projects, clients, financial issues, and impact assessments; he is planning to package this experience in book and audiovisual form. Through strong links with national and international universities and with national cultural institutions like Bodegón Cultural Los Vilos, Taller Coincidencias de Isla Negra, and Fundación Todos con Chiloé, Jorge is beginning to spread his idea more widely. The El Almendral experience has also been acknowledged by international organizations like the NESsT Foundation that has included the methodology in its training strategies.
Jorge is the executive director of the CIEM and his working team comprises 17 people from social, economic, administrative, and artistic areas. The annual budget averages $200,000, and Jorge has developed three main funding sources: 45 percent comes from projects for national and international agencies, 25 percent is from services provided to the government, and the rest is revenue from self-financing initiatives (printer, cafeteria, craft sales) or company sponsorships.

Born to Italian immigrants, Jorge received an education based on respect for diversity and solidarity. After obtaining a degree in social anthropology, Jorge created and coordinated a support fund for Small Development Projects for underprivileged communities in Chile, an organization that still functions today. He credits the five years he provided training and funding to 370 initiatives of self-managed productive organizations in rural and urban sectors as a valuable learning experience.
A Belgian interested in self-managed grassroots organizations in Latin America eventually offered Jorge a scholarship in Lovaina University, where he received a master's degree in development. While studying in Belgium, Jorge researched diverse experiences of self-management and productive development in Latin America and worked in the Development Studies Institute designing and assessing development policies for poor Latin American countries.
Although he was offered opportunities to stay in Belgium, Jorge preferred to return to Chile after the return of democracy. Having made the decision to live outside Santiago, he and his family moved to San Felipe in Aconcagua Valley. There, Jorge began working in development, mentoring and giving microcredit to local small producers, fostering approximately 700 productive initiatives.