The Republic of Chile, my present location, has a lady president, Verónica Michelle Bachelet Jeria, or simply Michelle Bachelet, who was inaugurated March 11, 2006, succeeding Ricardo Lagos.

One remarkable fact about her, and there are others that I’ll get to, is that she is an agnostic in a predominantly Catholic country.  According to Nationmaster.com, Catholics make up 75% of Chile’s population.  However, church attendance amounts to only 25%, which makes it look as if personal professions of Catholicism are largely ritualistic or reflexive.  By comparison, church attendance in the US is 44%, and of course no thought of an agnostic president can be seriously entertained there.  Michelle is a Socialist.

Also unprecedented in Chile is the presidency of a woman. 

Michelle is a fifth-generation Chilean of French and Greek extraction, a surgeon and epidemiologist, and a polyglot, speaking five languages.  She attended high school in Bethesda, Maryland, and medical school at the University of Chile, here in Santiago.  Later she studied military strategy, and was Minister of Defense and Health under Lagos.

Her father, Air Force Brigadier General Alberto Bachelet Martínez, was a high-ranking official in the government of Salvador Allende, the Socialist president of Chile from 1970 to 1973.  Allende’s leftist policies and his establishment of diplomatic relations with Cuba and the USSR brought about his deposition in a coup d’état staged by Augusto Pinochet, the notorious right-wing dictator who ruled Chile from 1973 till 1990.  There is some debate about the extent of US involvement, and especially that of Henry Kissinger, in the installation of Pinochet, but if it was not engineered by the US, it was certainly in line with what Richard Nixon had been advocating.  Michelle’s father was imprisoned in 1973 on charges of treason and tortured routinely.  He died in prison in 1974.  Michelle herself and her mother were held in a secret detention camp in Santiago, and were themselves tortured.  In 1975, she was exiled to Australia.  After that, she lived in East Germany, where she continued her studies, returning to Chile in 1979.

In 1990, with the defeat of Augusto Pinochet in a plebiscite, Patricio Aylwin Azócar became Chile’s president, and during his term in office, Michelle began to work in the government.  In 1999, she campaigned for Ricardo Lagos.

Michelle’s approval rating has fallen from 66% to 51% during her first year in office, largely because of the chaos wrought by her plans to convert Santiago’s subway lines and buses into a regional system, called Transantiago.  Santiago has the most extensive subway system in South America, and it is very efficient and beautiful.  But the buses, which were operated independently, have been incorporated into Transantiago only with some hopefully temporary difficulties.  For the time being, most people have taken to the Metro, which is always jam-packed, with long lines at the ticket windows.

Michelle, a separated mother of three, has authorized the distribution of free morning-after pills (Emergency Hormonal Contraception, EHC) to girls as young as 14.  This apparently has brought a measure of criticism upon her.

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