Good can come from bad. The Chilean mining disaster which left 33 men trapped underground for seventy days may be a case in point.

For the first time in its history, Chile was the focus of the attention of the whole world – which had hitherto only had a vague impression of a place that alternated between military dictators and Marxists – and, when the world saw the real Chile, it liked what it saw.

First, there was the courage of the miners themselves. In particular, one cannot begin to imagine the mental toughness required to survive those first 17 days of their ordeal when they had no idea that anyone was coming to rescue them. Yet these men were strong enough not only to survive, but to show considerable dignity and good humour as they were rescued.

Second, there was the well-organised rescue effort that brought them out ahead of schedule. The whole nation was united behind it. The articulate new President of Chile and his hard-working Minister of Mines were seen to be leading from the front, and they gave the world a new image of South American statesmen, as caring and competent technocrats, nothing like the stereotypical strongmen and demagogues of the past.

In fact, Chile has long had a great deal going for it. It has one of the best developed market economies in South America and its democracy seems relatively stable. This year’s peaceful transition from a left-wing government to a right-wing administration after a free election would have been unthinkable thirty years ago.

Chile’s tourist industry is growing in international prominence and the reputation of the country’s wines is improving. The country’s maritime tradition, mineral exports, and diverse immigration has always meant that its international contacts have been better than most.

We have been saying for some time that Latin America has the potential to become one of the faster growing regions of the world over the next decade – so long as it can retain political stability and sensible economic policies, and ideally also do something to limit population growth. Mexico and Venezuela show how political stability cannot be taken for granted, but the Chile that rescued those miners showed what a confident and enterprising free country can do and ought to be the symbol of what the whole continent could become.

There are people – and a disproportionate number are found in academia and the media – who were secretly devastated when the Berlin Wall fell and free markets were seen as triumphant. These people could barely disguise their glee at the 2008 bank crash: they dusted off their old predictions of the inevitable end of capitalism and spread over the airwaves like a rash.

They have been proved wrong – again. The global economy did not collapse and is now recovering, albeit slowly. The recovery is strongest where free market policies are being followed; the remaining basket cases, like Greece, are the countries where state regulation continues to restrict growth.

This has been reflected in the way elections since 2008 all over the world have tended to favour parties that are seen as more committed to free markets policies than their rivals. The strength of democracy lies in the fact that “ordinary” voters often have a reserve of common sense that is lacking in self-styled “experts”.

The strength of the free market system is clear not only in the resilience of existing capitalist economies but in the way capitalism is making progress even in countries with anti-capitalist ideology at the very time it was supposed to be in meltdown.

Most nominally anti-capitalist states adopted free-market reforms long ago, like China and Vietnam. Only two unreconstructed Marxist economies remain, largely cut off from the rest of the world: North Korea and Cuba.

Those two may soon be reduced to one. Cuba’s regime is granting a quarter of a million of its subjects licences to set up their own businesses.  The idea that a citizen even needs a licence to exercise economic freedom is itself obnoxious – and the Cuban government is acting less out of kindness than desperation, since the Cuban state has just been forced to confront reality to the extent of laying off a million public sector workers.

Nevertheless it is still a move in the right direction – and it could be towards something spectacular. Before the Castro regime came to power, Cuba was “America’s Playground”. A corrupt and incompetent government deprived the Cuban people of the benefits of that huge source of income – which was why Castro was able to seize power – but it demonstrates how Cuba has a huge economic potential that has been left untapped for more than half a century. That potential could be unlocked if strong, honest government could be combined with real free market reforms. If that in turn encouraged entrepreneurial Cuban exiles to return, Cuba’s future could be very bright indeed.