The "mentorship system" you've heard of isn't a mentorship system. When it works it connects you with a friendly Chilean that can help you by picking you up from the airport, helping you find accommodation, introducing you to other friendly locals and showing you around the city. They are generally no more experienced or connected than participants in the program. Sadly it works less than 50% of the time - most participants rarely see the "mentors" they've been assigned to.
They could be more useful to the startups if they were provided with some mentorship training and if there was some light-weight facilitation like YC's Office Hours to help it along.
I didn't know that there were mentors who were not experienced entrepreneurs. I have several (very successful and experienced entrepreneurs) friends, who are mentors for Startup Chile participants. They've advised these companies, hooked them up with important contacts for their businesses and even provided office space. I guess I generalized that to the whole mentorship system.
I think nico is talking about a CORFO program that I've only barely heard mention as a Startup Chile participant (someone else mentioned getting mentorship thru it, but I've never seen anything from Startup Chile on how we could participate).... while jot is talking about the padrino program.
They could be more useful to the startups if they were provided with some mentorship training and if there was some light-weight facilitation like YC's Office Hours to help it along.