Chile’s Michelle Bachelet Poised for Presidency

By Jonathan Franklin

SANTIAGO, Chile (WOMENSENEWS)—To many Chileans the
idea of quotas for female cabinet members is just the
latest in a stunning turn of political events in this
usually staid, conservative nation of 15 million.

"Fifty percent of my cabinet will be women," Chilean
presidential candidate Michelle Bachelet promised a
crowd of supporters last week. "We are going to set a
standard for Latin America."

Chileans lived, and too many died, under a dictatorship
from 1973 to 1990. Since then, however, the return to
civilian rule has left the country far more stable than
many of its South American neighbors. Now the relative
staid nation may be on the verge of making history as
the first country in South America to elect a female
president.

Current polls on the Dec. 11 election show Michelle
Bachelet, 54, the country’s minister of defense from
2002 to 2004, with a staggering 24-percentage-point
lead on her closest rival.

Her nearest competitor, Joaquin Lavin, a right-wing
conservative Catholic, has been floundering since the
beginning of the campaign. Sebastian Pinera, a
billionaire businessmen is pouring millions into a
last-minute campaign to oust Bachelet. Many analysts in
Chile, however, say his money came too late.

Spirit of Inclusion

In a country where politics are dominated by
traditional party structures and hostilities,
supporters say they like the refreshing spirit of
inclusion conveyed by Bachelet, a single mother with
three children.

"Michelle makes you feel like we did it together," said
Teresa Boj Jonas, a nutritionist who worked for the
candidate when Bachelet was the country’s health
minister, the post she held from 2000 to 2002. "The
other day I went to a birthday party with 15 women and
10 men. They were all talking about Michelle Bachelet
and her magic. She is awakening the idea that we need
new style of politics, not confrontational. She
generates confidence."

Bachelet’s national star power became evident in 2002.
Then, as the region’s first female defense minister,
she drew curious crowds who wound up liking the woman
who had survived the Pinochet regime brutalities and
wanted to move the country forward.

During the campaign, Bachelet has maintained a sense of
balance. In February she coordinated with her main
opponent to plan simultaneous vacations so both could
take a break from the race for two weeks. Until just
the last month she has refused to campaign on weekends
and is often seen at the supermarket or rushing to drop
her children at school.

"People see me, they look at the coherence and (that) I
am a mother, head of household," Bachelet told Women’s
eNews in an interview at her campaign headquarters in a
small two-story house tucked on a narrow street in the
center of Santiago, the capital of Chile. "Today in
Chile, one third of households are run by women, we
wake up, get the children ready and go to work. To them
I am hope."

Story of Survival

That Bachelet is alive and able to run for office is a
dramatic story of survival.

While socialist President Salvador Allende was in
office, the U.S. government under Richard Nixon aided a
military coup against him. After several attempts, the
military took over on Sept. 11, 1973, and immediately
began executing political and social activists.

In January 1975 Bachelet was arrested by a Chilean
military squad. As a member of the outlawed Socialist
Party, Bachelet was part of an underground resistance
and one of thousands accused of being an enemy of the
military government led by Army General Augusto
Pinochet.

Bachelet found herself under surveillance and then the
military sought to eliminate her.

But first the torture.

"It was horrifying," said Elizabeth Lira, a leading
Chilean academic who has studied and researched human
rights abuses in Chile. "You were arrested by 10 men,
heavily armed. They smacked you, beat you, then half
dressed in the middle of the night they threw you into
a vehicle. Then you were packed into cells and trapped
in a very small space."

"Our room had bars on the window," said Bachelet. "We
had four or five bunks, and we were eight women. The
beds were full, sometimes two women slept together, we
didn’t all fit . . . We were blindfolded all day, we
took them off, but obviously when the guards arrived we
lowered the blindfolds. If not, they beat us."

Father Accused of Helping Allende

The 1973-1990 Pinochet government killed approximately
3,000 Chileans. Many of them, including Bachelet’s
boyfriend, simply "disappeared" and their bodies have
never been located.

Bachelet’s father Alberto, a general in the Chilean Air
Force, was accused of working with the socialist
Allende government. He was tortured by his colleagues
until his heart collapsed. He died in a public prison
cell.

Bachelet’s mother, Angela Jeria, was kidnapped together
with her daughter and locked in a cage for five days
without food. Their cellmates were raped by guards.

"You can’t just say that she was held for 30 days. It
was 30 days of total fear," said Lira. "Rape was
frequent. Plus the punches, sexual abuse, denigration.
They had very long interrogations and the use of
electric current was common. You had to listen to the
others being tortured."

Thanks to their family connections to top military
officials, Bachelet and her mother were spared death.
Instead they were beaten, then exiled to Australia with
orders not to re-enter Chile. Bachelet, ever the rebel,
quickly helped organize Socialist Party resistance
groups and secretly planned her return to Chile.

Specializes in Traumatized Children

From Australia, Bachelet moved to East Germany, where she helped rebuild the Chilean Socialist party.

The Pinochet regime, meanwhile, was assassinating and
murdering its enemies, even some living in Europe.

Bachelet and her mother organized protests against the
military junta that drew media attention and put
pressure the regime. "We were more dangerous outside
than inside Chile," remembered Angela, Bachelet’s
mother.

In 1979, the military surprised them and let them
return.

By then Bachelet was a pediatrician who specialized in
trauma to children who live under dictatorships or
whose parents have been kidnapped. Her medical work
drew national attention and within five years she was
named minister of health, where she reworked the
countries policies to acknowledge AIDS and prenatal
child care as priorities.

Bachelet also studied military history. She took
courses, and in 1997 won a scholarship to to study at
the Inter-American Defense College in Washington, D.C.

Building on that, Bachelet, in 2002, became the first
woman in South America to serve as minister of defense;
a surprising development for an army that had just
years earlier held her captive and murdered her father
along with allies. It was a sign to the military: Watch
Out!

"It is easy to be so mad you can’t even talk to the
military," said Lira, the professor. "But to make them
realize they have chosen the wrong path! That is what
Michelle Bachelet has done with her past."

Jonathan Franklin, originally from Lincoln,
Massachusetts has lived and worked in Santiago, Chile
since 1995. He currently writes for many publications
including The Guardian (London), Rolling Stone (France)
and GQ (Italy). He can be reached at
chilefranklin2000@yahoo.com .

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