The Days of Our Chilean Lives
Michelle and Evelyn, childhood friends, know each other well. Their fathers worked closely as Air Force generals more than four decades ago. But questions about the death of Michelle’s father continue to swirl around the two families. Was Evelyn’s father complicit in the torture and death of Michelle’s father? The two women will find themselves facing off once again, but this time in the Chilean presidential election on November 17.
The first round of voting in Chile’s presidential election occurs on November 17. Michelle Bachelet of the left-leaning Socialist Party and Nueva Mayoría coalition and Evelyn Matthei of the center-right Independent Democratic Union and Alianza coalition have been battling for months over the Chilean electorate. Bachelet has a natural advantage as she was president of the Andean country from 2006-2010, while Matthei is a former senator and Minister of Labor under the current president, Sebastian Piñera.
In 1970, Salvador Allende became the first democratically-elected Marxist president of any Latin American country. Michelle Bachelet’s father, Alberto Bachelet, supported the Allende presidency. After three years under President Allende, however, General Augusto Pinochet led a CIA-backed coup d’etat that toppled Allende and installed Pinochet as the military dictator of Chile. His regime was backed by Matthei’s father, Fernando Matthei. The elder Bachelet was imprisoned for opposing the coup and tortured; he died from the effects of his imprisonment. Many have questioned Fernando Matthei’s role in General Bachelet’s death given that Matthei led the military installation in which Bachelet was held.
Under the Pinochet regime, Chile underwent numerous social, political, and economic transformations. The Pinochet government was responsible for 3,000 killed or “disappeared” persons (socialists, university students, etc.), and the torture of thousands more. Additionally, Pinochet implemented neoliberal economic reforms promoted by Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago. While these reforms fostered national economic stability, they also resulted in extreme internal socio-economic inequality. The dictatorship divided the Chilean public for decades, including Michelle and Evelyn. During the dictatorship, Michelle Bachelet worked covertly to transmit messages among socialist organizations and was herself imprisoned and tortured as a result. Conversely, the younger Matthei supported Pinochet during the 1988 plebiscite that determined if he would remain in power or if the country would return to a more open democratic system. Chile finally transitioned back to a democracy in 1990.
Years following the end of the Pinochet regime, the effects of his governance reverberate throughout the Chilean political and economic systems. The economic and social reforms – such as a ban on all abortions and a market-driven education system – remain in place. And his political influence ensured that he avoided the judicial system for his alleged humanitarian crimes until a Spanish judge ordered his arrest in London in 1998. Although young Chileans are less concerned with the Pinochet dictatorship than their elders (just as the Cold War paradigm is no longer relevant to the younger voters in the United States), now, seven years after his death, his time in power still remains one of the most divisive subjects among the Chilean public. That notwithstanding, two months after the country commemorated the September 11 coup that toppled Allende in 1973, the Chilean people will vote for a new president. This commemoration brings to the forefront the atrocities of a dictatorship in a year when two women on opposite sides of that regime vie for the nation’s highest office.
In a changing Chilean society increasingly distancing itself from the 17-year rule of Pinochet, the two leading candidates represent a transition that defines the country. Both women serve as reminders of the nation’s uncomfortable past, but they also point to a future that is defined not by dictatorship, but rather by hope for new possibilities. Matthei promises to preserve the economic growth that accelerated under President Piñera, a fellow center-right leader. President Bachelet promotes a plan of social justice that includes free public university education, greater equality for same-sex couples, and increased socio-economic equality. Yet despite their differences in vision, the two leading presidential candidates represent a shift from a past that has defined Chile for too many years.